Arte Café, Barnes, London SW13
Best Italian pizzas. Ever. 

Just mentioning a fact.

The food of my life

Cooking and baking is my real hobby. I spend most weekends pottering around in the kitchen. It's all usually down to time and energy but I still have so much more to cook in my life. It is probably the best thing I am at doing. I admit a slight passion for cookbooks. I have many and each one inspires me. I have been collecting them since I was twelve. My interest in food has never waned. So a lot of my recipes here will be from books I own and I will always attribute and promote them.

So in this space I do not plan to impress. Indeed, I sort of hope no one ever reads it. It is important to me to document what I cook as the time goes on; a record of my culinary course. It reminds me of places I have lived, and times of my life.

Today's post will be on what I cooked yesterday. A little meat pie that was quite delicious and through the experience of working in a traditional bakery, I picked up a couple of hints. The recipe, I hasten to add, is my own but the method is pure Old Farm Bakery.

At the Bakery, the pie pastry was made on a Monday, which was preparation day. The shop was not open. We used roll pastry for England - from 08.30 until 2.00pm, by which time my wrists were pretty sore. All we did was roll and cut out pie cases and lids to fit individual tin cases. These were then put onto large baking sheets which were then loaded into the deep freezer. The numbers were carefully totted up, according to the week's markets.

So, on a much lesser scale I thought that now we are in cold weather that this might be a good plan for weekday meals for me, when the thought of cooking after a day's work and commuting definitely puts the kybosh on the urge to create a delicious dinner.

Meat pie filling added to frozen pastry cases

filled pies ready for lids

frozen pastry lids defrosted 



final glaze to be added



ready for the oven

slightly under so they can reheat later





lightly golden - when cold I will freeze for use to be just heated up later on

 

2018

Middle eastern food may be the rage but I have always yearned to go there and eat everything possible on offer. But I want to eat like that at home.

I cannot fathom how I am now in November and haven't managed more than one addition this year.
Oh well.

Yesterday I made seeded sourdough, meat pies to freeze, a large meat pie for dinner, stock.

This was a very delicious fridge salad, eaten earlier this year. Reminds me of Middle eastern food.

potato onion pie

I added potatoes and onions to a basic quiche recipe,  aka Simon Hopkinson's potato pie - actually it was almost nothing like it but it was very tasty and a hearty meal.

Actual shortcrust: 60g lard, 120g cold cubed butter, 200g plain flour, one egg yolk, salt. This was blind-baked and filled when the crust was cool.

Cooked, sliced potatoes and onions were layered with some cooked bacon pieces;

an egg and cream mixture, with and salt and pepper filled the pie shell.

After baking, I removed the spring-form pan to reveal a nice raised "quiche" - the cracked pastry had already been filled with egg wash and baked before the filling had gone in.

Love the potato layer look:

Looks like I could have had more filling ...

and again

the starter was very bubbly, and this shows in the bake.

Cooked well all the way through.
Started off with maximum heat in oven.
Water tray at bottom for heat.
Loaves in with spray from water bottle for extra steam.
Turned oven down to gas 7 setting.
20 minutes one side, then turned around for another 30 minutes, including 10 minutes for the underneath which is always soft - have to turn loaf upside down to finish off.

Taste and texture - 8/10. Would like more 'sourness'.
How to achieve this?

After completely cold, cut loaf into good thick slices, wrapped in brown paper, then cling film, then put into zip lock bags for freezer.

Excellent for toast and lemon marmalade.

Bonne Maman lemon marmalade (my current fad)

Thursday: sourdough again

Getting back into making sourdough after a long absence.
Starter taken out of freezer.
This is second loaf made. Better fermentation than first one, but final dough was a bit 'sloppy' ... ?
Retarded overnight for 12 hours.
Took out of fridge and didn't bring up to room temperature as the spring-back indicated it was ready to bake. Used Banneton baskets - (I am beginning to like the long one rather than the round).

Bake: much better. Hot water tray in bottom of high oven, creating steam.
40 minutes at 200 degrees, swapping half way through bake. Turned loaf over for final extra 10 minutes because bottom was soft.

Taste: really nice.

 

 

a cook's diary

Cooking is fundamental to my enjoyment of life. I live to eat and love to cook, learning at my mother's and grandmothers' sides. One grandmother was great at baking scones and the Christmas pudding, the other was great at baking cakes. My mother, on the other hand was a trained cook and knew all the basics and, lucky for me, I learned by osmosis over the years always watching every step she made. Also lucky for me, she knew how to not waste food and leftovers were a great staple in our house.

As I have been cooking since childhood these were at first were my mother's recipes including long-remembered family dishes, which I have now passed onto my own family.

I often forget what delicious food I have made over the years particularly since my family have grown up. So this blog is purely for me - a diary of what I cook with notes of how I made it, what went wrong, what could be improved, plus new dishes I discover from my library of cookbooks which I have never made before. So many books - so many recipes! I do these on the weekends when I have more time.

There's no amazing photography here; nothing clever or on trend.

This is a just diary, and I am just an ordinary home cook.

(Bonne Maman's Seasonal Cookbook: stuffed lamb with redcurrant glaze)