The first New Year's Resolution I've ever kept...

So this is the final post. The last four recipes have been cooked, I can return to a life of beans on toast, with occasional fish fingers and chips thrown in for good measure. This is a four recipe post, so I'll jump right in.

Firstly: pheasant. I hadn't eaten this game bird in years, to be honest, I didn't think I liked it (for the reason that it did not taste like chicken). I wasn't even be supposed to be cooking it for Green Eggs and Ham, but the butcher was out of rabbit. I pot roasted it using this recipe (it has white wine, cream and sweetcorn mash). The bird I bought was rather large, so I just used one, rather than the two suggested.

The smell of game is alarming, much stronger than meat you buy in the supermarket. I questioned whether we should eat it, but Sam was hungry and grew alarmed that I might bin it when I suggested that it wasn't fragrant, so full of trepidation I pressed on. It hadn't quite been drawn properly--and I don't mean that the giblets were included. Sam had to be a knight in shining armour and rescue me from the offending innard: I am squeamish in the extreme. However, after bubbling away on the stove for a hour and being served on its bed of mash, with carrots from the pot, it came out as a rather delicious supper. The sweetcorn complimented the strength of flavour in the meat. Pheasant, I am pleased to say, was not at all as I had remembered it.

The second dish was a pudding from Olive Magazine's December issue: raspberry and mascarpone terrine. I'm afraid it's not online, so I'll describe as best I can: it's a layered dessert, done in a loaf tin, comprising layers of: sponge fingers (should be soaked in sherry, but I used brandy); mascarpone and cream, which are slightly set with gelatine; raspberries; and raspberry coulis, topped off with more whipped cream and raspberries. Sounds good, festive and calorific, right? Well it was--although I blew my dinner guests' heads off a bit with the switch in alcohol.

As bread has been my big victory of this project, I felt it wouldn't be right to write the final post without doing another loaf of bread. This week I tackled Dan Lepard's cottage loaf from Short and Sweet. The difference with this one, is that you use half of the flour to make a 'sponge' over a few hours before you make the dough. This did make nice bread, however I really couldn't taste the difference between this and his simple bread--perhaps my bread tasting palate is defective. Becoming able to make bread has taken the best part of this year, but now I am quite smug with the pleasure of being able to do it.

So, lastly: lasagne. My mum's lasagne is one of my favourite things ever and I've never bothered learning how to make it, as I always put an order in when I go home. I'm finishing up with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's butternut squash and fennel lasagne, which is not at all like Mum's. This is from his Veg Everyday book. It has a bechemal sauce, which is infused with peppercorns, onion, celery and bay leaves, pasta, a layer of roasted butternut squash, a bit more sauce, another layer of pasta, a layer of sautéed fennel (I used a third of the 750g recommended, as I think massive amounts of fennel make food taste like soap, so I replaced with caramelised onions), goats cheese (lots), the rest of the bechemal and a layer of cheddar. Vegetarian lasagne is often an extremely dull meal of mean ratatouille slapped in between pasta sheets and a poor replacement for it's meaty, savoury cousin. Hugh F-W has come up with something altogether different, and it seemed to go down well with carnivores and vegetarians alike. Friends E and G and baby O came to join us for a final lazy blog lunch. The lasagne takes a while to make, so I made some vanilla ice-cream the day before, and also bought the starters from a farmers' market. It was the perfect to celebrate the end of 2012 and this challenge: with an old friend, her husband, their baby who was born this year and Sam. I may not cook as many new recipes in 2012, but I'm fairly sure that boozy lunches and dinners with friends will remain on the menu. Thanks so much for reading.

What's for pudding?

This week a special on puddings. One of the greatest compliments which Sam ever paid my cooking was to start liking desserts as they ones I make 'are so nice'. However, the potential for morbid obesity in Kirkstall Towers is now soaring.

Firstly, this week, a clafoutis, which I made from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's bread and pudding Daily Telegraph pamphlet that I have become so attached to.

I didn't technically make a clafoutis, as they are always cherry, apparently, and as the fairly unpleasant looking cherries which you can buy in November cost four quid a punnet, I used plums. So it was technically a flaugnarde. From the ingredients, I thought I was making some kind of plum pancake., but this was like nothing I've ever tried. Sort of like a warm custard, or possibly a pastry free flan. In the words of Greg Wallace, or what I imagine he would say if he got his chops round this: 'soft, sweet with a sharp kick of fruit'.

The second pudding I made was a beauty, but in all the hustle and bustle of taking part in A's Thanksgiving extravaganza, I forgot to photograph it. As you will know, darling reader, once I find a source of recipes that works for me, I'll cook a large number of recipes from it and bore you with them. So we're back to Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet. A, who I think I might have mentioned, is American, throws a magnificent Thanksgiving feast for his lucky English friends every year, and I usually make an American pudding for it. This year I picked banana cream pie. This was quite a bit of work, it involved making some very short pastry, then making a caramelised banana filling, which had huge potential for burning. I went to bed on Wednesday, having let A know that I had filled a pastry case with what looked like banana porridge, quite worried I'd made something inedible. The following evening, I introduced a layer of caramel into the recipe, to sit on top of the banana, (I figured it couldn't possibly hurt) whipped the cream to go on top, and folded in some flaked almonds. You should probably only eat it once a year, along with many of the delicacies on A's menu, but it worked very well.  Greg Wallace (can you tell I'm glued to Masterchef at the moment?) would say 'sweet, rich, creamy, and amazing idea with the caramel, Sally, you are a genius'. 

Whopping Whoopies!

For those of you who are fans of my photographs, you know the ill-lit ones which divide my posts so you can get a rough idea of the aesthetic qualities of the dish, I'm very sorry, there aren't any this time. And, also, hello, it's been a while.

For starters, something so simple, I can barely believe I haven't ever made them: dumplings. These were to go in a buffalo stew. I really couldn't believe how easy they were. Just a combination of flour, suet and water. And so satisfying. I'm very glad I've discovered that there are absolutely no tricks to making these--or am I, this could lead to my rapidly becoming as wide as I am tall.

So, my love affair with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's cooking continues. I have had a month of buying lovely new cookbooks, one of which is River Cottage Veg Everyday. I bought it because I want to eat less meat. Sam is also, currently, of the mind that a bit less meat might be good for us--I shan't bore you with our reasons. Anyway, I made porotos granados a hearty soup of squash, beans (green and canellini) and sweetcorn--straight off the cob, natch! This is quite spicy from the smoked paprika (and I could only find hot not sweet) but it's everything an autumn soup should be: filling, warming, and a bit like a stew, so you don't feel cheated out of your dinner on a cold night.

Ok, and lastly, the second cookbook I picked up in a post payday Amazon frenzy is Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet, an amazing baking bible, beautifully packaged and wonderful in its variety (there are also some savoury recipes in there). I decided to have a go at whoopies, as I like the name and they're not widely available in Leeds (beyond Harvey Nicks).

Some time ago, whoopies were heralded by certain foodie types as 'the next cupcakes', but I think they are nicer as they have a marshmallow filling, rather than diabetes inducing amounts of buttercream on top. I made Lepard's raspberry varient on these half soft cookie/half cake but a bit like a scone American mallow filled treats--although I used blackberry jam for the filling instead. These also had coconut in them. I mis-read a direction somewhere along the line, and instead of having several small and dainty mini cakes, I ended up with eight truly prodigious ones. No matter, they were good, and easy to make--certainly no harder than cupcakes. I would like marshmallow to glue more of my foods together.

So, I am now a mere dinner party away from completing my 111, which is quite exciting. See you next time.

I heart Hugh (he's bready brilliant)...

A little while ago my mothership sent me a pamphlet of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's breads and puddings from the Telegraph. Much as I dislike the tory press, their cookery booklets are not to be argued with and this one has proved (hur, hur) a gem. I'm about to tell you about three recipes from it.

First off, his basic bread recipe. I actually looking at the kneading diagrams for this, and stretched my way into some of the lightest loaves ever to come from my hands. 

I love bagels, they are one of my favourite things to eat of a weekend morning, and the fact that the dough needed poaching was intriguing enough to inspire me to have a go. The steps are thus: mix (quite a dry dough, presumably that is because they are soaked through in the pan of  water), knead, prove, shape, prove and then BOIL. I shaped the ring-doughnut shape pushing a hole in the middle and then stretching, rather than Hugh's way of rolling a sausage shape and then sticking together, because, as he even admits to in the recipe, they can come apart in the water if made like that. Poaching them (one minute each side, and I timed it) was fun, not least because they smelled amazing. Once out of the water, glaze with egg (I left some glazed, topped some with sesame seeds and others with Malden Salt and black pepper). Brilliant, I am now a bread genius, these were delicious--despite every one being a slightly different size!

Finally: brown bread ice-cream. When I first heard of this a few years ago, I assumed it was some hideous high fibre version of my favourite food. Not so--the bread is toasted in the oven with lots of sugar, the ice-cream itself is made from a custard base, with no fibre in sight, just lots of cream, sugar, whole milk and egg yolks. the toasty bits are mixed in as the mix is firming up in the ice-cream maker. I really enjoyed this, it tasted like premium ice-cream, and the bread was sort of caramelised and, although its flavour was distinctly recognisable, it worked.

Tinker Tailor Sorbet Pie

I hope you will forgive the trial of a third focaccia recipe this week--in an effort to become a Jack of all trades and master of one, I have given myself focaccia to try and work on in this project. The other recipes, I can assure you, are all completely new to me.

 This week I had a theme: literary food. I put out a call for this on Twitter and N came up with the Lamb Shank Redemption and, between us, Tinker, Tailor, Sorbet, Pie. (Actually, I meant food which had appeared in books, such as Proust's madeleines--but N's ideas made me laugh, so I was game.) I'm not really a fan of Nigel Slater's shows--the faux notes on notice boards reminding him to cook for a fisherman he probably met at a production meeting two weeks ago being one good reason for this--but he does produce recipes that work. He came up with Lamb Shank with anchovy last week on his new series, which I nicked and applied our much more fun title to.

The butcher had sold out of lamb shanks, so it had to be the Lamb Shoulder Redemption. I scaled up the recipe for five. The anchovies merely flavour the sauce in which you braise it, so you don't end up with fishy meat. It's extremely easy, produces lamb so tender that you can cut it with a spoon, and--even though I hit the white wine before I'd finished cooking and therefore the sauce was somewhat thinner than I might have wanted, and the parsley stayed in the fridge and never made it into it--it still elicited these words from H when she was polishing it off: 'I'm a bit sad my dinner's ending'. I served it with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's foccacia. This is less messy than Paul Hollywood's version, and more authentic than the recipe I tried a few months ago. However, Paul Hollywood's recipe, despite the fact that my kitchen table was resurfaced in sticky, sticky dough, wins on taste. (Hugh F-W's is much easier to make when you're doing other things, like cooking the rest of dinner.)

And finally: Tinker, Tailor, Sorbet, Pie, or Baked Alaska. As plums were in season, I went for a plum middle, and made the following: sorbet. Which I then spooned into a large novelty coffee cup (lined with cling film so I could get it back out) and froze for an hour. While the sorbet was freezing in its 'mould' I chilled an all-in-one, two-egg sponge cake in the fridge (I'd made it whilst the ice-cream worker was doing its work). The trick to a Baked Alaska is to keep everything really cold till the eleventh hour, so I lifted the sorbet out of the cup after an hour, turned it upside down to make a dome, put it on the cake, covered the whole lot in more cling film, and stuck it in the freezer for three more hours. When it came to nail-biting cooking time (and I admit at this point I wasn't at all sure it would work: images of weeping meringue and melting sorbet haunted me all day, and there was some back-up Ben and Jerry's in the freezer) I whipped up the meringue from this recipe from Waitrose, quickly took the sponge and sorbet out of the freezer, smeared the meringue on, stuffed it on the oven as fast as I could, and started praying!

I'm afraid I only took this after we had eaten the rest--hence melting!

This was the best dessert I have made all year. The sorbet was fruity and sharp (and, praise be, frozen), the meringue did not weep and was crispy and fluffy and you could taste the cake was home made. I am blowing my own trumpet, but this was a day on which I made sorbet, cake, and meringue for one dish, so I feel as though I deserve it!

Pollocks to it!

I'm getting more lax than ever with these posts--nevermind, be assured that cooking is continuing and I'm grinding my way onwards to culinary enlightenment (or at least expanding my imagination beyond cooking pesto pasta three times a week). Although, the first of the dishes for this week is not so exotic: fish fingers.

Fish fingers are one of my favourites, perhaps because they were one of the few convenience foods that were allowed over the threshold when I was little (how I yearned for Findus crispy pancakes and chicken kievs [Mum I am grateful you didn't make me obese, really]). ANYWAY, there have been a few recipes around for home made ones and I've been, as a new age (desperately scrabbling for a word which isn't 'foodie') nibbler, I wanted to know if homemade meant better.

Whatever the taste may have been like the fact that I was using pollock and not cod automatically made the fish fingers 'better' than the vast majority of shop bought ones, as pollock are much more plentiful than cod. I used Jamie Oliver's recipe for fish fingers, from his recent fish supplement for the Telegraph. Jamie, I am sorry, I pillaged your recipe--I completely forgot to do any shopping, bar getting the fish--there was no parmesan or lemon for my crumb coating, middle-class disaster if ever there was one! Instead, I rolled the fish strips in flour (trick of my mum's for when you're coating things, makes the egg stick better), dipped them in a beaten egg and then coated them in a mixture of bread crumbs and parsley.

I failed to make them uniform in size, so Sam referred to them as goujons, H, who was visiting for supper as fish finger pieces. Anyway, they were good, despite the fact that they cooled extremely quickly and were tepid when we ate them. They were crispy, and the taste of the fish was much more present than in Captain Birdseye's variety. Excellent chips by Sam.

Sam, doing the only permitted eating on the day of making

The other dish for this post was in honour of F, who popped over from Australia for a visit. As it happened to be her birthday I created a sticky ginger cake with lime icing. It's this exact recipe, but I was using a cake pamphlet from Olive Magazine. The biggest problem with this one is the self restraint it requires, as after baking it has filled the kitchen with a lovely gingery cakey smell, and it has cooled and it looks ever so inviting, you have to pack it up to mature! No eating allowed. Until that is, you unwrap it two days later, cover the top in butter icing flavoured with lime zest and juice.

It's nice. No scrap that, it's delicious and several people have verified this. I recommend this it's sticky, the treacle gives it a dark toffee flavour and the lime icing, despite it being a buttercream, stops it from being all too cloying, and, please forgive me for sounding like a second-rate food critic, gives it another dimension. This is one for the list of favourites.

A tale of a tea loaf

And so back to the more chatty style of post. This week I have returned to that which I am most comfortable with: baking.

New recipe number one was supper on a miserable Thursday evening and cooked as comfort food for the other half as he found himself bogged down with work. We whittled red meat out of the things we fancied and settled on some kind of pie--I had just been paid so this pie, complete with a near full jar of Waitrose's grilled artichokes, was slapped on the evening's menu.

I could not find wild mushrooms in Leeds city centre, and had to settle on closed cup and chestnuts. Also, I did as the recipe suggested and was lazy enough not to make my own short crust pastry. I came to regret this, as I have now reached the proud point of being able to make better-than-shop-bought pastry (gentle readers who have been with me throughout this journey will remember I used to be Sally Carrie Cackhands with pastry: it scared me, and that which I made was not nice to eat). Anyway, Mr Waitrose's slightly tough pastry aside, it was very good. The mushrooms gave it a really autumnal taste and because it was filled with veggies, sharing a rather large pie between us for supper did not leave us feeling as sordid as we might have. Before I move onto the next recipe, the pie is not blind baked, and you can avoid the problem of a 'soggy bottom'--which seems to have plagued those commenting on the BBC's webpage with the recipe--by cooking it on a chip tray with holes in it.

I have also successfully made my Grandma's tea loaf (or rather loaves: the recipe makes a brace). All families seem to have foods which are traditional to them; whether it be your mum's Sunday roast, or your dad's bar-be-que sauce, most families have recipes which are tweaked to become their own or things which are the taste and smell of home. Although this year has mostly been about branching off into new things, I have also realised that there are some things closer to home which I wanted to learn to make. This seems to be a recipe which my great-grandfather brought home from his travels and, presumably, gave to my great grandmother; it is a much treasured heirloom.

It is also a recipe which I thought might go wrong: all the measurements were imperial; I had to guess at the cooking times, as I knew my thermonuclear oven would char on the time and temperature stated (it was cooked in 30 minutes under the time, so my caution paid off); and I had never made a cake that doesn't contain fat before. What it does contain is sugar and dried fruit which have been soaked overnight in tea, and a flour and some egg which are stirred in in the morning. There is no creaming, no folding, no whisking--it is so simple. It is also the best use for dried fruit I am yet to come across and I have eaten slice after slice slathered in butter this afternoon.

Here I will leave you. I need to work out how to skin some pollock fillets, but that's another story for next week.

The world in ten words

Ok, so, a bit of a break, I was off enjoying a staycation and intimidating myself by reading Julie and Julia, although it didn't really intimidate me as she seemed to spend a lot of time whining and didn't really say that much on the food--more about her tantrums. So I am not going to waffle about my personal problems--you can have a round up of the recipes in 10 words or less--per recipe. (I made another recipe for focaccia, as I realised, having watched The Great British Bake Off that nice as the rosemary one which I made earlier this year it did did not actually produce focaccia, I shan't bore you with details of an uneven crumb structure which should happen.)

Simon Hopkinson's Olive Oil Mash:


Grown up babyfood. Mash shouldn't be puréed. Tasted nice.









Paul Hollywood's Focaccia

Messy--dough everywhere! Eaten before I could photograph. Nom, nom.

Tiramisu Cake (author's own)


A's birthday: sponge, brandy, chocolate ganache. Peculiar candles.

Feeling crabby?

For some time now, I have wanted to tackle a crab. It's one of those foods--along with lobster, raw artichokes and snails--which intimidate me, as I have no frame of reference for how to deal with them. However, I like crab, it's tasty and sustainable, and cheaper than lobster, so when I was last in the supermarket I slid one into my basket. I did have a recipe in mind: September's Olive Magazine not only had a recipe for garlic, black pepper, and butter crab and paratha, but also a guide to how to deal with my six-legged friend.

So, I carefully read the directions and gathered my equipment, which involved a raid on Sam's DIY kit for a hammer. Opening the crab and getting his brown meat out was straightforward enough. But I was slightly worried that, as the hammer was on the large side, the crab's claws would shatter and I would spend the next seven hours trying to separate meat from shell fragments. Not so: while they required quite a whack before they gave out, they then cracked in such a way that getting the meat out was really rather easy, although--and perhaps this is because I have particularly delicate lady hands--I generally found it easier to get the meat out with my fingers than a skewer.  


Olive Magazine omitted to say that there was any point in picking the legs out; fortunately, I also had the packaging from Morrisons, which told me that 'there be meat in them legs', or something like that. Granted there isn't pounds and pounds, but enough that it would be a shame to throw it away, even though it is fiddly to get at. Perhaps this is a symptom of the North--South divide: pampered Southerners will just buy supersized luxury crabs with so much bounty in the claws the legs aren't worth considering, whereas we Northern folk need to pick the legs out and can't bear the concept of waste!

Anyway, the crab meat is fried with lots of butter, garlic, and loads of black pepper, as the oh-so-snappy title of the dish suggests. Making the paratha is a cross between making soda bread and a usual kind of loaf: it needs some resting time, but is made with plain flour and not really kneaded. It is cooked by frying in butter. I could probably have done better here; I thought the dough was a little loose, added a slug of water, and the dough immediately became very heavy and it made heavy bread. As it was hot, cooked through, and covered in butter, though, it wasn't unpleasant to eat. I substituted coriander for the advised wild garlic shoots which were out of season and not stocked by my favourite Northern supermarket. This was a lovely meal, really tasty, and piquant from the pepper. Well done Olive!

On to jam. Again, this was a recipe from September's Olive Magazine. It was supposed to be raspberry flavoured, but I couldn't get any any; however, blackberries have just come into season, so I bought some of those instead, along with some jam sugar. Making jam is not hard; I just thought it would be. My two comments on it are these: I only got two jars full out of 400g of fruit, and seeing as it was blackberry jam, I wish I had gone scrumping to have more fruit; and blackberry jam is a beautiful colour, and has a lovely taste, so I wish there was more. I think I'll spend the bank holiday among the blackberry bushes of Kirkstall (for those of you who know Leeds and are now chortling at the idea of urban berry picking here, there ARE some blackberry bushes).

The starter: it is now in a clean bowl!

Finally, finally, sourdough bread by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. This, as I mentioned last week, has been on the go for over a week now, as I had to grow a starter (essentially making yeast by using flour, water and a piece of rhubarb (!) to attract natural yeasts and get them to multiply). The starter smells appalling at first, but by the time it's settled down into something usable, it has a mellow fruity aroma, and if you look closely you can see the yeast breathing and releasing bubbles. In order for it to thrive, half of it has to be thrown away and replaced on a daily basis. The bread dough is made in two stages: there's an overnight phase with the starter, and then some water and flour is added to make a 'sponge'. This is mixed with the rest of the flour to make dough, which quite literally can take all day to rise and prove (this is a time-consuming thing to make, even by bread standards!). It was rather heavy, but I'm guessing these things take time; it tasted right, and you couldn't actually build walls with it.

I feel I've achieved a lot in the last week: in tackling picking a crab and making jam I've successfully made two things for which I had no frame of reference whatsover (I'm sure that those of you who remember the weeks when I was cutting the tops of burnt things will excuse this ballyhooing).

Fantine

I was calmly listening to 'Woman's Hour' this week when, to my alarm, a small boy came over the airwaves explaining how he was cooking a hundred recipes in his school holidays as part of a school project. 'No, no, no!' I thought, 'not only am I going to be asked till the end of time whether I'm copying Julie out of Julie & Julia, but now I'm being beaten to my rather modest target by a pre-pubescent! I must up my game!!' To which end: puff pastry.

I went for Lorraine Pascale's puff pastry recipe from Baking Made Easy. Now I know the name of this show belies the fact that this is difficult, but bear with me--what I have learned this week is that puff pastry might not necessarily be hard, but it does take time and patience.

You start by rubbing cold butter into flour and mixing in cold water to make a light dough--easy peasy, when done in the food mixer. After which it needs a rest in the fridge for just under half an hour.

A block of butter ready  to be melded in...

The next stage is filthy, though: it basically entails enrobing almost an entire packet of butter in the refrigerated dough, carefully rolling it into a rectangle, folding it in on itself, rolling out again, and repeating the process. At this point it gets soft, so it has to go back in the fridge again.

The rolling and folding is repeated twice more, before it is rolled out and chilled--yet again--before use. See a kid's attention span would be far too short for all that. Ha!

I'd decided that I wanted to make apple turnovers with the pastry, so I carefully cut up the pastry before I chilled it once more and made the filling from this recipe. Apple turnovers had been on my mind all week: I've been reading Les Miserables for the past fortnight or so, thanks to friend C who emphatically recommended it, and apple turnovers are mentioned in the context of a vulnerable woman being abandoned by a heartless cad whom she loved. Perhaps it was a deep-seated sympathy that made me fancy one--possibly it was because their mention in the book reminded me of my dad bringing them home for a treat when I was little.

Enough whimsy. They ended up being cuboid instead of triangular, as I stupidly cut the pastry into rectangles instead of squares. Once out of the fridge, the pastry becomes very soft really rather quickly--so I was speed stuffing and there was a bit of apple-filling leakage on the way to the oven, but nothing too unsightly. And the pastry worked! It was slightly greasy (which presumably had something to do with all that butter), but I was very pleased as a first attempt. It rose in crispy layers, and cooked underneath. Win.

So, in going all out to beat a nine-year old, I have only cooked one recipe! However, coming up I have jam, crab, and sour dough bread (I am maturing the starter for this at the moment--it smells and looks like baby sick). Over and out.

Pulsing

For the vast deal of my life, the only pulse I liked was haricot beans covered in tomato sauce; all other pulses I had disdain for, considering them to be the blandly served fodder of worthy vegetarians. These days, however, I think nicely seasoned beans or chickpeas are in some ways preferable to meat, their nutritional value certainly beats that of a sausage, and they are much cheaper! Although, as you will see, I have combined the two to great effect this week.

The first recipe is entirely suitable for any vegetarians out there amongst you: Moroccan aubergine and chick pea salad. This was chosen partially out of necessity (it was cheap), partially because I was astonished at how little I had enjoyed the last dish I made from aubergines (I know they are delicious, and do not actually taste of slippers), and partly because I had a hankering for chick peas (I am aware of how odd that sounds). This is a really good demonstration of chick peas and aubergines at their best, soaking up strong flavours--in this case, cumin, coriander and chilli--and delivering a tasty meal for not much money. Lovely.

Following a weekend which saw the consumption of a lot of rich food, this week Sam and I fancied something a little plainer. Olive Magazine's  recent booklet of £5 suppers supplied us with black bean and chilli soup. I have to put my hands up and say straight away, I couldn't find black beans, so I used their tasty cousin, cannellini beans, as these are also good in soups. This was nothing special, just a hearty bowl of homemade soup. I wouldn't serve it to impress, but that wasn't what I was trying to do; I wanted simple, and it was. Success.


Finally, finally, Boston baked beans with sausages, another one of Olive Magazine's meals for a fiver. I can't see how this is a recipe for two, really, as it's got six sausages, bacon and a load of beans in it. ANYWAY, putting that to one side, it's very good, the mustard in it makes it taste much more grown up than baked beans, and it tastes lovely and smoky, in a sort of barbeque sauce kind of way. I served with olive-oily roast potatoes and A, H and I agreed that it seemed to herald the start of autumn, along with the rain was also lashing down in Kirkstall that night. Oh and by adding an extra can of beans, I made it stretch round four of us--Sam ate when he came home, and I also had some for lunch the next day. It relieves me to see that even the BBC's publishing team couldn't make it look nice though!

I think after this week's successes I shall perhaps turn to being a professional pulse chef, bringing their nutritional wonderment to the masses. On the other hand that might make me into the next Gillian McKeith, and no-one wants another one of those! (Gillian, I know you like suing people, so this is my own subjective opinion and probably wrong. Ahem.)

Birthday Girl

You may remember some weeks ago, I made a gigantic fruitcake for my grandmother's 90th birthday, which I had been maturing in a box and feeding brandy. Well, last week the birthday cake construction continued. On Thursday I made a scaled back (so's it would go in a 15cm cake pan) version of this lemon cake, the idea being it would be the top of a three tier cake (this is the same recipe I made for A's graduation cake a while back).

On Friday, I made a scaled back (to fit a 22cm cake tin, so it wasn't that small) version of this chocolate cake, for the middle tier. I took a full day off work to make it and ice all three cakes and thank goodness I did! This chocolate cake is delicious--however, it takes forever to put together and sugar paste is an ill-behaved substance that needs so much coaxing to look nice! By the end of the day my kitchen looked like a herd of baby elephants had been rampaging through it, I was covered in chocolate, and unable to string an interesting sentence together.

However, few things smell as good a baking chocolate cake, so it wasn't all bad--in fact, I definitely enjoyed myself, and sampling the batter was an amazing bonus (although I am, sadly, allergic to chocolate).

In One Piece...

And here it is, fresh out of the oven and cooling on the window sill, looking as though butter wouldn't melt...








Shortly afterwards, in a glorious victory of optimism over common sense, I, pressed for time, thought it was cool--it'd had two hours by the open window--cut it when it was still a little warm and soft, and ended up with a structurally dubious cake. This led me to abandon the stacking plan and just make three differently decorated cakes, which actually worked fine. (Never have I been so grateful for a flower cutter.) Grandma liked the fruitcake, and fortunately the brandy in the cake did not get her tipsy and my cousin CD methodically ate two slices of chocolate cake in front of me to show how good it was (she is 8). I must thank cousin R for help in displaying them (the fresh flowers would never have occurred to to me) and a couple of wise friends who advised me what to do when the fruitcake looked as though it might be more booze than cake. Grandma, it was a pleasure to do for you, and I'll need at least fortnight off to make what I have planned for your hundredth birthday!

Stuff it!

Thus far my forays into baked pasta have been limited to the odd pasta bake (you know the sort of thing: tomatoey sauce, cheddar on top) and macaroni cheese. This week I decided to get sophisticated and make stuffed and baked ricotta shells. Times are currently hard in Kirkstall (in part owing to my handbag-buying habit), and this recipe featured in the seven meals for £35 section in Olive. I picked this recipe as courgettes were a main ingredient and the gentleman of the house likes them very much, and I thought it'd make a good photo for the blog.

This dish is economical: as our store is well stocked, I was able to buy everything we needed for £6.07 (including a re-stock of olive oil). I did make some alterations to this recipe--I thought that a tomato sauce consisting of just tinned tomatoes, a clove of garlic and oil was miserable, so I chucked in a pinch of sugar, some balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper (obviously) and stirred through some basil that was hanging about. (Olive could suggest all of the above, bar the basil: there isn't anything there that might not be in one's store.) ANYWAY, this is not a fast dish to make, as grating three courgettes takes a while--however, it is a nice comforting dish, and the pasta stays firm, although the filling could perhaps do with a little less lemon. And I think it photographs very well for the blog.

Next on the list for this week is an accidentally delicious cake. I'd seen a feature in Olive, in the July issue, on Matcha green tea powder, and there was an accompanying recipe for a green tea loaf. I don't like green tea as a drink, but I thought that a note of green tea in a loaf might make a nice sophisticated dessert for a dinner party--in the way that fish sauce is foul but can make a dish delicious. The only Matcha powder I could find in Leeds city centre cost £25 from Harvey Nichols. Such is my dedication to this blog I was looking at it and thinking about buying, when it was removed from my hands and I was removed from the store by Sam who couldn't believe I was even countenancing it. (Neither can I, with hindsight.) Anyway my solution to the tea problem was to make some strong green tea and add that to the loaf mix whilst also dying the cake green to get the required visual effect.

The green tea was utterly undetectable. There's no other way of putting it. However, as the cake had almonds in it, I thought it would go well with caramel, and I just happened to have a can of dulche de leche in. I served it in large chunks with a bowl of dulche de leche on the table. In the words of one of our guests, W, it was green for no reason, but it was delicious.

Now onto the recipe I tweeted my way through this morning: lemon sorbet. This will be served as a desert to follow a raclette party tonight. Much as I love raclette, it doesn't leave much room--or desire--for a pudding, but I thought that a sorbet might be nice to clear palates and make us all feel a bit less dirty after all the cheese. I've had a teaspoon of it for sampling purposes and it is delicious, very refreshing. I think it'll work a treat tonight.

Summer slippers

I'm ever so sorry, there was an impromptu publication break this week. Better late than never, though, here is your round up.

Last Monday saw the return of mackerel to this kitchen--and indeed, the smell, which lingers somewhat in a flat, even with an extractor fan and an open window. Anyhow, my Green party voting liberal as you like hippy parent, has for reasons known only to herself, started taking the Daily Torygraph (at least it isn't Murdoch owned). However, I shall lay off the teasing for a while as she posted me Jamie Oliver's Summer Seafood booklet which has lately come free with the Telegraph, and I picked out crispy skinned mackerel with an Asian style dressing. The fish is served on a bed of rice and is topped with mint and coriander (which I thought was nuts till I tried it) and has a sticky, spicy, honey and soy dressing. The crispy skin comes from dry frying the fish skin side down in an extremely hot pan. This was one of my favourite dishes so far--really light, perfect for summer, and made using sustainable fish. 

This week I had the absolute honour of watching A graduate from his Phd. My two contributions to the day were doing an extra loud scream for him, with friend N, as he was handed this most prestigious of qualifications, and, more credibly, making him a graduation cake, and so making my first foray into sugar craft. I haven't used a recipe for a lemon cake in years--I usually just chuck some juice and zest into a sponge mixture, so wanting to improve my technique, I made this recipe for lemon cake. I scaled it back by a third. It was quite a lot of effort, but worth it for the occasion! And the sponge was very nice, though I say so myself--it had a huge citrus hit. Now, my intention for the icing was to make a beautiful skyscape to represent A's freedom and future. However, sugar craft is harder than I thought, so what I ended up with looked like the background to a child's cartoon; perhaps it's not too disgraceful for a first attempt, though. 

And finally, stuffed aubergines, from the August issue of Olive. These came from the 30 minute supper section. Now, I love aubergines, they are my favourite vegetable; Sam thinks they are as enjoyable to eat as slippers. I'd never done aubergines stuffed with cheese, or under the grill and not in the oven. The goats cheese and tomato filling was really tasty. However, I grudgingly agree with my other half, on this occasion, that aubergines when grilled in halves are somewhat slipper like to eat (I gave up halfway through my second half), they are best roasted slowly in the oven, without a shadow of a doubt.

More next week, it'll probably be made with the products of bin diving as I have spent all of my wages on a handbag.

Friday night treats

So I promised when I posted on Sunday I'd email and say how the summer pudding turned out. Well  here it is in the bowl...

And here it is, in one piece, out of the bowl (admittedly, I made an error when I expected the juices to soak against gravity and dye the bread at the top, or bottom when it's turned out.









And here is a slice of it, all ready to eat! It was very nice, the bread was lovely and gooey and the sharpness of the fruit cut through the curry takeaway which we ate to celebrate the finale of The Apprentice. (I am still happy that Tom won.) Next time, though, I think I'll add a smidge more sugar.

Finally, a picture of the maturing fruitcake, which is smells fantastic. I'd also like to add that my thumbnail is not dirty, I just caught some crumbs on it when I turned the cake over! I'm most hygienic at all times in the kitchen.

A less than triumphant return

Welcome back to tales of my culinary experimentations. I had implied, when I decided to have a blog break, that there might be changes to the blog, but actually what I needed was a week eating my favourite pasta dishes and flapjacks (not together) to re-energise myself to complete the 111 recipes.

Having rid myself of pastry as a culinary enemy, via making all sorts of variations of it for this project, I seem to have met another nemesis (fans of the film Unbreakable will be aware every hero needs a nemesis): wholemeal bread. I made another attempt at it last Sunday. In truth, I both wanted to make myself a successful loaf of non-white bread and rid myself of the kamut flour which I bought in January and now had precisely no idea what to do with. It promised me a creamy wholemeal loaf. It delivered a lumpen chunk of bread, which behaved like soda bread in that it was obvious it wouldn't be nice when it cooled. And I followed the instructions on the back of the pack to the letter. It doesn't matter, it was very nice as an accompaniment to soup, and I now have some much needed room in a baking cupboard which is groaning under the weight of flours, sugars and preserved fruit. I am sure that I will have another go at bread using non-white flour, and succeed.

Now to fro-yo, as Sam tells me I am not allowed to call it. I don't buy The Times, I haven't for over 18 months, but I caught a glimpse of a special on frozen yoghurt which seemed to suggest it had only recently been invented--I vividly remember it being available in Teeside Park cinema, not known for its cutting-edge cuisine, in the early 2000s. However, let's not stray into the hideousness of News Corp and their irrelevant publications, and say I wanted to use my ice-cream maker, but did not want the cream and egg yolks of the ice-cream recipe I made a couple of months ago. So I attempted frozen yoghurt, from this website. I really wish that this were a success story. I do. I wanted a delicious snack with no fat. The truth is I have made a solid lump of yoghurt ice which won't scoop, snap, carve, or yield to hammering. Fail.

I made the frozen yoghurt to go with a summer pudding. The summer pudding is currently maturing in the fridge and shows no sign whatever of being a failure--the bread is pink and the fruit smelled and tasted very nice when I put it in. I got the recipe from Woman's Hour, a programme whose podcasts I often listen to whilst I do my dry-as-a-camel's-arse day job. The chef pointed out the real seasonality of redcurrants, which leads to their reasonably brief appearance in shops, at which point I coveted both summer pudding and redcurrants, so took the opportunity of guests coming tonight to make one. I shall let you know if it slides out of the bowl in one piece tomorrow.

So, that's all folks, for this week, save to update you that Grandma's cake is maturing beautifully and I have nearly crammed in a half bottle of brandy during its 'feeding' sessions. Same time next week. *Goes shopping for cream to go with the summer pudding.

Winging it

So I promised to report all flops and failures as well as the romping successes. Well, one has snuck in this week--see if you can spot it. All of the dishes have a running theme this week: I didn't have a recipe for any of them. I know, I know it says on the top of this blog that I'll be trying out recipes, but if you think I am so anal as to keep strictly within semantics so rigidly you must either never have met me, or this is your first time here--if so, welcome. ANYWAY, these were all things I hadn't made or cooked before.

Sam and I were going out on Saturday night, poverty had decreed that this week we would try and live on our stores for a bit (we were well-stocked), and what we had in the house was sausages and potatoes. However, sausages and potatoes are not the foods for the warmest day we had had in WEEKS. So I created a hot sausage and potato salad. I did start Googling recipes for this, but really...it's a salad: the point is you put in bits you like and think will go well together, then eat. Now I am rather cautious about feeding Sam salads. Not because he will dash it to the floor, tell me salad is the food of girls, and enquire where his manly pie is, but I worry that it won't fill him up, and I'll see him apologetically hunter-gathering in the kitchen for digestives. I thought, though, a salad that contained both sausages and potatoes might do the trick. And it did: I just served sliced grilled sausage with new potatoes on a bed of spinach and baby plum tomatoes, in a mustardy, vinegary dressing. I can't think why I hadn't done this before: I am not an unadventurous cook. I think this is the best way to eat sausages and not feel filthy afterwards!

Now for the failure. This blog is a sort of shit sandwich--as in the uncouth term for being in the office and having your less-good feedback embedded in the better stuff--I am doing this to hope that this one slips in here between two things that really work so you'll forget about it. So this week's flop was an artichoke. I've long been a fan of these on top of pizzas and eaten with a fork straight out of a jar, and I was curious to see what a freshly cooked one would taste like, so when I saw them on sale in a branch of a certain Northern chain of supermarkets, I bought one; it cost £3, but nevermind, I thought, it is gigantic.

Not so: after I had removed stalk, scary-looking outer leaves and choke (horrid fluffy looking stuff which sticks painfully in the throat if eaten), and blunted a knife and generally made a mess, I was left with the teeny tiny heart, which I rubbed with lemon juice in an attempt to stop it browning. I then boiled and boiled for just over half an hour as advised by friends and the patronising woman on this video. Having fished out the brown mess I poured over some dressing and served. It was mushy down the bottom, and tough round the sides. I came as close as I have done to producing something utterly inedible. Even Sam, who is a gent at all times, deemed it a failure and looked relieved when I followed it with a soup he likes.

Anyway, I want to divert your attention from that failed attempt at cooking vaguely unusual vegetables and tell you about my marvellous frappucino cake. The last time I had anything to do with coffee cake I was still living at home, and made it with something called coffee essence which came from an ancient bottle of my mothers--and tasted NOTHING like coffee. So I brewed some strong coffee and made a three-egg cake batter (replacing half the butter with vegetable oil--in part for health reasons, in part due to a lack of butter) and sloshed about two tablespoons of coffee in. It did rise in rather an odd way (producing a slightly off-centre dome) but I suspect this was down to using self-raising flour as much as anything.

To give it the feel of a frappucino coffee, I split the cake and put a layer of caramel in--I do have a penchant for summer coffee drinks, and I thought this would do quite well to emulate them. I then finished it off by plastering it with a thin layer of butter-cream, again with some proper coffee in it. It was very nice, though I say so myself, moist, coffee-tasting and completely made by the layer of caramel.

So it's goodbye for a couple of weeks now: I want to go away, refresh what I'm doing here, and come back with something good to read!

Easy days

So after last week's day-long cake extravaganza for a cake that isn't even finished yet -- I was sloshing brandy over it this very morning -- this week has seen some dishes which require little effort.

This year has given me the ability to make delicious home bread, which I had to keep reminding myself of when I made Delia Smith's quick and easy wholemeal loaf. Well, yes, it was quick and easy, but I think that may have been the problem. There is no kneading in this recipe. This should have been a warning, as kneading stretches the gluten in the flour and allows bread to rise and become generally soft and nice. However, like so many home-cooks in this country, I believed Delia would never trick me or lie, so when she said don't knead it, I didn't. In fairness the piece I had warm was fine. However, the next day I made sandwiches out of it, and I swear I burnt approximately as many calories chewing it as are in a slice of dense brown bread. And look at the picture in the link: mine looked EXACTLY like hers. Pah. (Her recipe for apple charlotte is still a winner though.)

I love Jamie Oliver. I can't cook a 30 minute meal in 30 minutes, and some of his early books have slightly odd amounts of ingredients, but I have enjoyed everything of his which I have ever made. And so, running mistrustfully from Delia, I opened Happy Days with the Naked Chef for solace. Sam and I had the great joy of a Friday night dinner with AC, CB, A and J, and we wanted to show off. Sam did his award-winning risotto for a starter and chicken stuffed with all sorts of nice things for a main, and I was in charge, first of all, of side dishes; the cookbook has a recipe for runner beans with tomato sauce.

I don't like runner beans very much, so I used green beans. Also I prefer the Silver Spoon's method of of making a tomato sauce, which involves adding crushed garlic, a pinch of salt and sugar, in my case a splash of balsamic, and a tin of tomatoes to a pan, putting the lid on, and leaving it over a low heat--don't touch, stir or anything for 15 mins. Then give it a stir to break them up, and then give them another 15 minutes, still with the lid on. This method means the tomatoes lose their tinned flavour and take on an intensely garlicky flavour. Splash the sauce over the beans, which you will have steamed with lots of olive oil. This recipe typifies why I love quite a few of Jamie's recipes, especially from the Naked Chef/Ministry of Food era: his recipes work very nicely as they are, but also adapt beautifully to personal tastes.

As Sam and I were showing off on Friday, there obviously had to be a pudding, and I found the answer to this in this month's Olive: Lulu Grimes's hazelnut tart with mascarpone and strawberries, (surely a better name than listing half the ingredients is possible!). It looked simultaneously not too much effort and show-offy enough for a dinner party. The hazelnuts go in the pastry, but I substituted ground almonds to no ill effect. The only effort in this recipe was making the pastry. And, for the first time in my life, I didn't find making pastry a hassle: my cooking is improving. Once the case had adequately cooled, I filled it with a filling of mascarpone, whipped cream, orange juice and zest (obviously these ingredients are carefully mixed) and then topped with macerated strawberries. Essentially, it is posh strawberries and cream in pastry--but there's nothing wrong with that when it looks so good, and there was not a scrap left.

The biggest cake you ever did see.

I read an article in the Guardian on Monday about how asparagus is about to go back out of season, and so naturally, this made me want some. I decided to give this recipe for asparagus with a tomato and feta salsa a shot as we had all the other ingredients in the fridge, and I do love feta cheese--I have deluded myself into thinking that it's healthy, even though I can taste all that salt! I decided to go for a fusion meal and make kofta to go with the asparagus, as they are a real favourite of mine. I'm afraid I haven't been clever enough to save the link to the recipe, essentially, however, it was mix lamb mince with some onion, cumin and mint, squidge round some skewers till kofta shaped, then brush with oil and cook for 15 minutes in a frying or griddle pan.

At the end of Monday, I was very glad I'd made this supper, it made the rest of the coming week feel a lot better. Nice food is always cheering. The asparagus side dish was light and the salsa was tangy and sharp and salty with feta. The kebabs weren't quite spicy enough, and could probably have done with some chilli (I don't think I have ever said that before) but they were tasty enough to keep me happy. I served with pitta bread, but forgot to photograph till I'd handed Sam his plate, so please excuse his thighs.

The faux North African theme continued on Wednesday, when A and H put in a most welcome appearance for the Apprentice (how did Jim get away with it this week, by the way!). I decided to make Olive magazine's harissa chicken and herby couscous. I can't possibly count another way to cook couscous towards my total, but I'm taking the chicken. I'm afraid it's not on the internet, just in the magazine. The recipe said wings, but I used thighs (I think I have mentioned before that I am not convinced that the meat on wings is worth the effort of gauging and scraping required to get it off the bones). Now these aren't marinated,  but grilled for 15 mins (turn halfway through) and then tossed in a coating of orange and lemon juice and zest, cumin seeds, maple syrup and harissa paste (see definitely not authentic!) and then grilled for another 15 minutes. 

I'd have never thought of adding the coating halfway through, but this way the sugar didn't burn and the acid in the fruit didn't destroy the chicken. This was an utter success; H gave it a 10 out of 10 (and then she suggested a rating system for blog dishes, but I don't think that my ego could take it!). The chicken was sticky and tasty and good, and this was a lovely light summer meal.

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So, from North Africa to North America and banoffee pie. Now this is my favourite pudding, but I have never made it before. We had some ripening bananas (overripe because I have decided I no longer like them for a snack) so I thought it was time to have a go at it. To save on calories, I made mini ones, as in the words of Marjorie from little Britain, 'if you cut it in half, it's half the calories, so you can have twice as much'. Anyway, I whizzed up six digestive biscuits in my food mixer till they were fine crumbs and then stirred in a couple of knobs of butter, I pushed this into three ramekins, and then sadly had to throw some out, so if you do this, only use four biscuits. They then went in the fridge for half an hour. I then spread Waitrose caramel sauce over the bottom, Carnation Caramel would do the same thing, and put some sliced banana on top of the caramel, and topped with whipped cream--150ml will be enough. I may sound arrogant, but they were delectable and so easy they are so going into my repertoire. 

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And finally.... A cake so huge it only fits in my oven by a hair's breadth. More than this, it is only one tier of the monster birthday cake I am making for my Grandma and cousin K (K, if you're reading this, your layer will only be marginally smaller and be incredibly chocolately). Grandma wanted fruitcake, I have never made fruitcake, till this afternoon, and I have never made a cake so large, or served anything in tiers. Anyway, I used this recipe and mixed it in the (thoroughly scrubbed, scoured and de-germed) washing up bowl, as the only receptacle large enough to take it. It took two hours to weigh, mix and deposit in my enormous lined tin (how tedious is lining tins? And this one needed a double lining inside and out). Oh and incidentally, if anyone you know requires a celebration cake, I'm hoping to make that my job in the medium future, and will be offering knock down rates for a while...

As it will spend the next few weeks maturing, I'm afraid I can't give a verdict on the taste, all I can say is that it smells like a nice fruitcake, and I am watching it like a hawk to ensure it won't need any carbon scalping off. This cake has been the most satisfying, but most labour intensive thing I've made (I mean that physically too--my arm ached so much, I thought it might fall off). However, love that is totally without condition is rare in life, I think most people can consider themselves lucky if they need to use both hands to count those who love them without requesting anything in return, and Grandma has loved and looked after 13 grandchildren in precisely this way, and I hope I'm making outsize cakes for her for years to come.

Offally bad

Please excuse the terrible pun, but I feel I deserve my dodgy jokes even more than usual this week! In the name of trying to make new things, I decided to try cooking things I don't like. I hadn't eaten liver in years, and the last time I did I was in a situation where I really felt I couldn't refuse, and I did at least manage to smother it in gravy. Anyhow, I thought, with the recent renaissance in cheaper cuts of meat and offal, and my rapidly expanding eating horizons maybe now was the time to give it another chance. (A spell as a smoker has also killed of several of my tastebuds, so I was in hope that I wouldn't be able to taste it.) Anyway, armed with this recipe for chicken liver salad with mustard pears and shallot rings from Gordon Ramsay, which had lots of nice sounding bits to go with the organ (can I just say at this point, I wanted to make pate, which I know I do like, but the gentleman I live with vetoed this strategy), I decided to try it again.

I should say at this point, that I am not sure I cooked it correctly, I thought it looked a little bloody after the recommended minute of cooking, so I gave them a bit longer in the pan, and they still didn't look nice. The mustard pears were easy to make, tasted nice, like a pickle, and making them before I started on the shallot rings and liver was a good idea. The shallot rings shall definitely be making another appearance in this kitchen, they were amazing: crispy and sweet. I attempted to assemble the components in such a way to make the liver look appetising. I tried to eat it, I really did, but I couldn't get beyond a small piece. It still just tastes like something which should not be eaten. And as its primary function in life is to remove toxins, I stand by my correct opinion that liver is for dog rewards, not my Cath Kidston crockery. The second photo is of our plates, Sam made a much better job of eating liver than I did (he usually does make a better job of eating than I do).

So to my next, er treat. Most people who know me well, know that I hate jelly.I find the way it wobbles unnerving, I dislike its texture, in particular the way it collapses in the mouth without any chewing. The last time I can recall eating it was when, during a spell as a vegetarian, a relative made me a trifle with jelly in it as she was concerned that my animal free diet was leaving me malnourished!

Anyway, I thought to myself, now could be the time, jellies have got a lot more sophisticated of late. I found this recipe for summer berry and lime jellies from James Martin. Perhaps with fresh fruit, I could learn to love the wobble! I say perhaps, and could, because I haven't tried them yet. Hang on a minute.... It's good! I can report that having my own private ramekin of delicately flavoured and coloured not-excessively-set, filled-with-summer-fruit jelly is very lovely indeed.

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Not being a complete masochist, I decided I would also make something I knew I would like: iced buns, or 'sticky buns' as we say in Yorkshire. Once, when out with best-friend-now-in-Australia F we bought a couple of iced buns and I vividly recalled her saying that they were a crap treat. I think this is a very fair assessment: there is no chocolate, no fruit, no jam, custard or cream, but those fluffy bready buns with a stripe of icing are a treat nonetheless, and I had all the ingredients for this lemony variation on them in the house, so I thought I'd have a go. They were nice and simple to make--the usual knead a bit, wait a bit, knock back, divide up and wait a bit more, that you get with bready things.

I know my oven is a flaming inferno. However, I would still like to moan about the cooking times on this recipe. My buns were on the point of being overdone after 9 minutes--if I'd left them for the lower end of the cooking time, I'd still be sobbing over a pile of ashes! As it is they have a somewhat deep hue, but are perfectly nice. The icing also requires rather more sugar than the recipe says, and, even after adding more, it was still rather runny. But they were good sticky buns, excellent fodder for me and A to have with tea and a few episodes of Ab Fab.

Au revoir for this week, and adios to liver for good. I have no idea which direction the blog is heading in next week, so it'll be a surprise for everyone concerned.