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.