Death and Taxes

Never have these two concepts been so prominent in my life. I think I should mention right now that I do not understand money, in the slightest, neither do I understand taxes. And in all fairness, I have no desire to learn any more than how to prevent myself getting ripped off by the tax man, and effectively budgeting for my week's worth of food and general life expenditures. Apart from acknowledging this week's general money happenings over the pond (and the past few days' happenings in London), this post is not about the whole Occupy Wall Street scenario, though I do very much stand with the 99%...obviously. I am quite surprised, however, that it has taken this long for people to get this passionate about the income divide in the US, but I am glad that it has happened, maybe it'll spark some world wide coverage of the horrific divides in many other countries around the world too.

Thanks Vader/V

I won't go too much into it right now because frankly, I don't really want to burden my blog with so much seriousness, it is a place of sanctuary and love. So I send love to all the people who are supporting social and economic equality and the eradication of large corporations' excessive greed; but that's all for here...and back on to food!

Even though I have been incredibly lazy with my planning of late, I happened to have been unintentionally good with my money. After realising that my food extravagance needed to be reigned in while i'm saving up, I decided to think about how far my ingredients were going, more so than usual anyway. Whilst my cravings for baking have had to begin hibernating for the Winter like a small, crazy bear, I thought to myself how this time of year is the perfect time to start budgeting. The obvious reason is that Christmas is beginning to drop into people's minds and the inevitable budgeting problems that arise from it are making people take a significant step back. Those sensible people amongst us can sit and smugly think of how organised they've been and all the money they've saved throughout the year. And those who aren't so sensible, me definitely included, can sit in the corner and worry how they will afford Christmas presents, food and trying to achieve something charitable and spread the love around the holidays.

So today I pitch the idea to you of making a home-made Christmas, or at least consider a partial one. I know this has been done to death but it'll save you a tonne of money on expensive gift boxes for people you barely know, and everybody appreciates something home made. This time of year is a good time to start thinking about and making your stuff, chutney is awesome because you can use all the excess of apples that are still hanging around thanks to the decent weather we've had. Fruit cake is never to early making, stew it in orange juice, brandy, Cointreau, Disaronno, ginger ale, tea, whatever you fancy really. It's just a thought, if you fancy it, and don't mind the little bit of extra effort go for it! I'm lucky enough to have an extremely talented artist for a sister (her eBay and Folksy shop) who is pairing up with me to help make some gift baskets for presents this year. Me making Christmassy food and Corrina making the beautiful garlands and baubles.

I hope she doesn't mind me using this picture, I sneaked a picture on my way to work because they looked so pretty!

But anyway. The thought is there for now for you to mull over. And here is my proposition for doing something charitable for the holidays. I will send cake to any who want some for Christmas, as a charitable gesture. This kind of only applies to those in the UK because of customs in other countries. If you leave a name and email address in a comment at the bottom of this  post, I shall send you a piece of spiced ginger Christmas cake, just to say thank you for reading and a Merry Christmas.


For those who are groaning at the thought of Christmas in October, I apologise. I know there's much to come before then. For instance this week, beginning today, is baking week. Hurrah! I feel like I post a lot of sweet recipes on here, and although I would quite like to live on nought but cake, it's probably not a reasonable way to live, and would probably be quite boring after a while. So, in light of this fact, i'm going to post a savoury bake-related recipe.

Irish Wheaten Bread
1 reasonable sized round loaf, or 10-20 rolls, depending on the size you fancy.
350g wholemeal flour
100g strong white flour
350ml buttermilk (OR 350ml whole milk and the juice of 1 lemon)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
50g - 100g oats, plus more for sprinkling

- Preheat the oven to 220C and grease a baking sheet.
- Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, sugar and salt. Then add the oats. If you love oaty bread, add 100g, if you just want a little bit add 50g, but remember that you might need to add a little more or a little less buttermilk.
- If you can get buttermilk, add it in now, if you have milk and lemon juice, put about 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and stir it into the milk, and leave for a few seconds for it to sour a little.
- Add it in stages until the mixture is bound together, you might not need to use all of it, dependent on how many oats you included.
- Form into a round ball or cut and form into rolls, cut a cross on top and sprinkle with oats.
- If you're baking a big loaf, 30-40 minutes is a good guideline, depending on how crusty you like it (I like mine super crusty!), if you're making rolls, 15-20 minutes should be more than enough.
- Serve with a good bit of Irish stew or some Autumn soup. And it makes your house smell awesome!

Oaty goodness
Easy peasy, it takes very little effort, they taste lovely and very filling. It's quite a dense bread, because there's no kneading, thus no gluten strands are stretched creating the bounciness of normal bread. But this sort of bread is wonderfully comforting on an Autumn eve with a warm bowl of soup and a good spread of butter. 
I wouldn't want to disappoint those who do enjoy a sweet something at the end of the day, so here's a lovely recipe courtesy of the National Baking Week website which pairs nicely with the earthy bread, and a cup o' tea of course. There is a reason there are certain types of sugar, you really can't skip on the muscavado sugar, it's what makes your cookies chewy!


Chewy Macadamia Nut Cookies
About 16 cookies, depending on size.
170g soft butter
340g dark muscavado sugar
1tsp good quality vanilla extract (not essence!)
2 medium free range eggs
375g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
100g chopped macadamia nuts.

- Preheat to 180C/Gas mark 4 and lightly oil a baking sheet. 
- Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla together. And when they're light and fluffy, add the eggs one by one until a batter is formed.
- Add the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon together and mix until smooth. Stir in the macademia nuts.
- Wrap in cling film and put in the fridge to firm up.
- Shape the dough into 1" balls and place well spaced apart on a baking sheet. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown. 
- Take off the baking sheet and cool on a wire rack. 

Enjoy with a brew.

For this week, I will post five more recipes to celebrate the seven days of Baking Week. So keep an eye out for more loveliness.


Peace.
JR

Baking For Victory

I bet there are a number of people reading this (look at me getting all cocky that people actually read this!) that have been watching "The Great British Bake Off" on BBC 2. If you haven't, you really should. Mary Berry is an absolute legend. But every Tuesday night it makes me want to try something new, the week before last it was pork pies that floated before my eyes like pastry sheep, counting my way to sleep, last week it was cheesecake, and this week I sat dribbling into my tea, watching these random contestants make some pretty epic croissants.

Parisienne Croissants

To say the amount of times me and my family have driven to France, and the amount of croissants I have consumed over the years, I really do not know very much about them. Other than it means 'crescent' in French and that if it made it from the bakery back to my tent with more than just a few crumbs and a buttery sheen on my upper lip, it was a minor miracle. So I went about researching, naturally. I found the basics from the British Bake off - thankyou very much - that the pastries were actually based upon kipferls, created in Vienna in the 1680's to spite the naughty invading Turks. There was an infiltration, of sorts, upon the city late one evening in Vienna; a group of Turkish soldiers were trying to dig under the walls trying to invade the city, when a group of bakers heard the whole kerfuffle and went to the Austrian defenders. Ain't that just peachy? To add insult to injury, they decided to attack the Turks in their own little way by creating a lovely little pastry in the shape of the Ottoman flag, just to gloat. I think I quite like their bare-faced audacity.

Some funky Ottoman flags; the first is the official flag of the Ottoman empire  from 1453 - 1844, the second is the flag of an Ottoman admiral from 1453 - 1793, the third is the flag of the Ottoman navy from 1453 - 1793.

It's nice that the French bakers that adapted it decided to invent a whole new name, you know, translating the same word, crescent, from the German kipferl, to the French croissant, inventive, guys. That is a mere brush of the surface of the history but it's nice to know the basics. It's also worth mentioning that Pierre Hermé makes absolutely amazing croissants, he is just a bit of a pastry legend really. I mentioned his awesomeness briefly in Celadon Sweets, as well as being a macaron genius, he is equally as capable on the pastry front. How jealous I am! I did think though, after seeing that the ratio of yeast dough to butter when making croissants is 1:1, I think i'd feel a little sick by the time they'd actually cooked. 1 lb of butter to 1 lb of dough. And that doesn't count the significant globs of butter I used to whack on afterwards, I dread to think how much in ingested, oh the delicious artery clogging goodness!

One day I will get around to making them, but the very idea of folding, and waiting while it proofs, and more folding and waiting, then folding and waiting some more, it makes me a little tired just thinking about it. Oh how laborious the art of laminating pastry! I know it would be worth it and all, but I just keep thinking how disjointed I would feel knowing that it'll never be as good as the ones you get from a French bakery at 6am on a beautiful Summer morn. But knowing me i'll do it anyway, so watch this space for some sort of attempt of croissants, you guys can either laugh at my feeble attempts and my eventual emotional crisis (crises more like), or to find a decent recipe, win win I suppose.

On a side note whilst on the topic of baking, British Baking Week is coming up in a few weeks and though I missed it last year due to a significant lack of funding, I urge those of you who enjoy cake to try and make your own, and I will make along with you. It doesn't have to be complicated, and it can be really fun even to those who are most opposed to cooking. 17th - 23rd October. Remember!

Thankyou very much NBW website for your cheesy representational picture

On to the next mini portion. This week in the UK has been unseasonably warm (17C this evening!) which is quite unheard of here. It is quite difficult to think of changing Summer-style food onto Autumnal comfort food in this heat I must admit. But I know as soon as the rain begins and quenches the 'heatwave' - I leave it in quote marks because it probably seems insignificant to anyone reading from a country closer to the equator - I will want soups and stews in a heartbeat, oh how fickle I am. So to prepare myself, I have found the first thing I am going to make when the weather decides to get it's chill on.

Fassoulada
Greek Haricot Bean Soup

500g Haricot Beans
1 large brown onion, roughly chopped
3 carrots, sliced thinly
3 sticks of celery, peeled and chopped
3 tomatoes (or a can of peeled chopped tomatoes)
2 tblsp tomato puree
2 bay leaves
1 tblsp dried oregano (or 2 handfuls of fresh)
1 tsp dried parsley (or a handful of fresh)


This is super easy to make!


- Drain the beans and wash, put in a saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil, skimming off any froth.
- Add everything else and simmer for an hour and a half (if using fresh herbs by the way leave them until about ten minutes before the end of cooking)
- Cool is slightly, season lots with some proper salt and pepper and serve up.

Nice and simple, nice and healthy and everything too. If you fancy something a little more substantial, serve with cheese toasts (any strong cheese will do, cheddar, parmesan or even blue cheeses will do), keep 'em crispy lads and ladettes.

Right, for now my lovelies, I am to bed. There is a program about dinosaur films on BBC 4, and I have a serious weakness for Jurassic Park and a bit o' 'zilla. Onwards to the social worries mirrored through the medium of film!

Peace
JR

National Baking Week 2010

Is finally coming to an end for 2010! Unfortunately, I don't think I made quite as much of an effort as I perhaps could/should have. Funds are very low and I couldn't splash out on the ingredients I perhaps would have liked to. So I've had to make it out of ingredients I already have, which was a suprisingly substantial variety.

National Baking Week is all about encouraging people to start baking their own treats, whether it's just to learn a new skill, or to update some passed down recipes, it's always an awesome time to start getting your scales and muffin trays out. 

In the cooking community it's almost a mini festival in itself, forums exploding with recipes, family tips and tricks to make your baking the best and most rewarding it can be. It sounds so very bourgeois, but it's actually quite exciting, oh how adult of me! 

Nevertheless it's been fun, any spare moment i've had it's been spent either reading about recipes or new places I can find to get unusual ingredients. Great for the soul...not so great, however, for my dissertation reading, of which i've done not nearly enough. Saturday morning spent watching Saturday Kitchen, followed by Nigella introduced me to not only an amazing recipe for Grasshopper pie (thankyou Nigella, you goddess!), but inspiration to make an entire range of cocktail-based cupcakes. That bourbon biscuit bases...I literally could not help myself imagining bourbon cupcakes with creamy, minty, chocolatey icing. It's going to be immense!

I've found out some great little pointers to help me with future baking, example, tossing fruit or chocolate chips in plain flour before adding to cakes or muffins stop them sinking to the bottom, or to make your cakes rise enough, they have to go from adding the final baking powder (or the liquid to your dry ingredients) to the oven in under a minute...which is quite difficult. Or to not open the oven door for the first half of cooking time, because it will interfere with the rising of the cake. 

Simple things like that can make you give up on baking and think you're rubbish, but they are easily resolved and can give you confidence to try again. Baking your own stuff can save you a tonne of money once you've bought the basics (baking tins, scales, spatulas etc) and it tastes so much better. Running the risk of sounding like an advert, i'll carry on to the recipe of the week for me.

To honour National Baking Week, I'll keep the theme alive...

Scones (Courtesy of James Martin)

225g Self Raising flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

25g Caster sugar

50g Unsalted butter

150ml milk

1 egg, beaten (for brushing on top)

Pinch of salt

- Oven at 220C degrees/Gas mark 7

- Sift flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl, stir in sugar, add butter and rub quickly into the flour, until a fine breadcrumb consistency forms.

- Add the milk, slowly, working into a smooth dough. Leave to rest for 5-10 minutes before rolling

- Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until about 2cm thick-ish. Cut with a standard pastry cutter, and don't twist when cutting, it'll make them rise wonky.

- Once cut, brush with the beaten egg (for a shiny glaze) or dust with flour (for a matt finish) and place the scones on a greased baking tray, then bake for 10-12 minutes until golden brown.

- Cool slightly and serve with clotted cream, jam, butter, or whatever you like!

Honestly, this recipe is the only one I ever use when making scones, simply, because they are lush, and i've never needed to use another. If you're proud of your successes from National Baking Week, tell everyone about it in the comment box below!

Peace

JR