Plaited Loaf

This one was a bit of fun - an attempt at Paul Hollywood's 8 strand plait, as featured in his 'How to Bake' book. The dough is just a standard white bread dough (using 600g strong white bread flour). Once the dough has risen to at least double its original size it is knocked back, then split into 8 equal portions (I found each piece weighed 126g - it's worth being quite precise).

Not too little, not too much!

Next, the balls of dough are rolled out into strands of around 40cm in length:

Bread or sausage?

Next, the plaiting begins! The trick, I think, is keeping it quite tight and making sure the strands remain nice and thin.

Bread or octopus?

Eventually you reach the end of the strands, and at this point I find it's usually a good idea to hold the shaped dough up and get someone to take a photo of you looking smug:

I made this.

The dough is then left to prove for about an hour, while it nearly doubles in size.

Time to 'prove' your worth, dough!

Finally, the dough is baked at about 220C for about 30mins, with a baking tray of boiling water in the bottom of the oven to help delay the formation of the crust, and thus help it rise further. I found my oven browned the crust pretty satisfactorily after about 15 mins, so I turned it down to 180C for the remainder of baking. As with all bread, a hollow sound when tapped on the bottom is a fairly good indicator that it is cooked, although if you're in any doubt then an extra 5 minutes will do it no harm.

When the bread has cooled sufficiently, the final step is to have another smug photo taken with the finished product:

Did I mention that I made this?

Every bit as important as looking good, it tastes great too. Good quality flour and a good slow rise are two of the key things when making a loaf (and, coincidentally, these are two things that are so often neglected in commercially produced bread). Furthermore, it slices into a pleasing cloud-shaped cross-section - certainly cheers me up in the morning!

Marmalade Making

I spent last weekend peeling, chopping, squeezing, boiling and decanting. The result was 11 jars of homemade marmalade, and quite delicious it is too! I had never made marmalade before, and there were no shortage of recipes to choose from - it seems that marmalade recipes are, quite rightly, a great source of pride to their authors, having been honed and refined every January, year after year. Everyone seems to more or less agree on the proportions - 1 part Seville oranges, 2 parts water, 2 parts sugar and about 1 lemon per kg of oranges. It's the method that causes disagreement - to cut the orange peel chunky or to shred it finely? To soak overnight or boil the oranges whole? To set the preserve to a firm jelly or leave it a little runny? It's a minefield for a marmalade novice like myself, but after a certain amount of research I decided to follow Nigel Slater's Recipe from his 'Kitchen Diaries II', along with occasionally consulting Dan Lepard's in-depth discussion of the method and science of marmalade making.

Seville oranges, the bitter variety that we need for marmalade, are in season during January and early February. It's worth seeking out organic, unwaxed fruit (not hard to find - Waitrose stock them, and I'm sure any decent greengrocer will too) as you are going to be using the peel as well as the pulp. I got particularly lucky when I bought mine - the cashier decided that because they were knobbly and green-tinged they must be a bit dodgy, and try as I might to explain that they were a special type of orange she insisted on giving me a discount on them. If you insist! Golden granulated sugar seems to be the sugar of choice, with some people adding a little black treacle at the end of cooking to produce a characterstic dark coloured preserve. You don't need jam sugar with added pectin, because the oranges (specifically the pith and pips) naturally contain enough pectin to set the marmalade.

Anyway, the method involved first peeling your oranges (10 of them) and lemons (2 of them):

Then chopping up the peel to your desired thickness. This is probably the most labour-intensive part of the process - it took me over half an hour to chop up all the peel, but it does fill the kitchen with wonderful citrus scents.

Chop chop!

The peel then goes in a bowl (or two bowls if, like me, you don't own a bowl big enough) along with 2.5 litres of water, the squeezed juice from the fruits, the pulp (chopped) and the pips (tied up in a muslin bag). This gets left to soak for 24 hours, to release the pectin from the pith and pips.

The next day, the peel, pulp, pips and water get transferred to a pan and boiled for about 2 hours until the peel is soft enough to squish between two fingers. After that, the bag of pips is removed, the sugar is added and the mixture is boiled (skimming off any froth that bubbles up) for 15-45 mins until set (this is tested by putting a tablespoon of the mixture on a saucer and chilling in the fridge for a few mins - if it forms a skin it's ready. Alternatively, use a sugar themometer - the setting point is 105C). When the marmalade boils it does tend to froth up, so you must have a big enough pan so that it won't bubble up over the sides, burning your hands and ruining your hob - I decided my stockpot wasn't quite big enough so I made the marmalade in two batches, straining the peel (but reserving the liquid) after the initial 2 hours of boiling, weighing out the peel and liquid into half quantities. Bit of a faff, so perhaps a big preserving pan might be a good investment in future! Once the marmalade has reached setting point, it's a good idea to leave it for 10 mins so that the peel is evenly distributed throughout the preserve.

Marmalade comes up to the boil

Finally, the marmalade is decanted into sterilised jars, and left to cool. After that, all you have to do is look forward to breakfast the next morning!

Done!

North East Food Heroes: NEOG

As part of a new monthly feature I'm going to focus on some of my favourite places to buy, eat and shop for food in the North East. I think we've got some amazing producers in this region, and as I hope I'm demonstrating in this blog, it's possible to eat extremely well even on a fairly low budget.

So, without further ado, my first 'North East Food Hero' is NEOG (North East Organic Growers)!

NEOG run a weekly organic veg bag scheme from their farm in Bomarsund, Northumberland. We have been receiving a weekly veg bag from them since June 2012, and even through an appallingly wet summer the quality and variety of veg has been terrific. They grow what they can themselves, and source the rest from a network of other organic farms, primarily local, with the occasional import during the less fruitful months (sourced as close as possible, and never air freighted). Veg bags are delivered weekly to a number of different links across the region (we pick ours up at St Thomas' Church in Newcastle city centre on a Wednesday). Buying our veg direct from growers helps to keep costs down (we pay £11 for a large bag, which provides the two of us with the vast majority of our weekly veg requirements). It also means we're often getting fresher veg than the supermarket could ever offer - carrots that left the ground hours rather than days ago, and sweet tasting freshly cut greens. 

The contents of our NEOG bag in early September

Having no control over what veg we get week to week might seem restricting, but in fact we have found it quite liberating - cooking with whatever the season provides helps us avoid the inevitable banality of mindlessly putting the same things in our shopping basket week after week. It forces us to be imaginative in the kitchen, consulting the cookbooks and throwing unusual combinations together. It also gives us, in the risk of sounding a little hippy-dippy, a sense of being in tune with the seasons - when we eat asparagus we know spring is here, when we eat courgettes we know that summer is in full swing, and when parsnips turn up in our bag we know the frosts have set in. Far from restricting our diet, it gives us ultimately more variety, with our way of eating changing from month to month.

NEOG also offer side orders of things like fruit, honey, organic eggs (we get bananas and lemons as part of our weekly order) at very reasonable prices. We've even had some of their gooseberries, which were delicious! If all this sounds like something you might be interested in then check out their website for information on how to start a trial. For me, they are true food heroes - organic vegetables, cheaper and fresher than you can buy in the supermarket, grown by people who care. What's not to like?!

Ricotta & Sundried Tomato Ravioli

Making use of another Christmas present here - my new ravioli press! I've been making occasional batches of fresh pasta for the past year using a pasta roller. The process takes a while, but it's very good fun working the pasta dough through the roller as it gets thinner and thinner. I still use a lot of dried pasta, but when I have the time it's very satisfying to make my own, and cut it to whatever shape/thickness I want. The basic recipe for pasta dough is very simple, involving only two ingredients - flour (tipo 00) and egg. Roughly 100g flour to one egg (multiplied as required), kneaded, rested and then rolled out. For ravioli, you want quite a thin pasta sheet - rolled out to setting 8 on your machine - as it will be doubled up when you assemble them. If you don't make your own pasta, then I'm sure you could still have good results if you buy sheets of fresh pasta to make ravioli with. Provided, of course, that you have a ravioli press!

Serves 2

For the Ravioli:

150g fresh pasta, thinly rolled out

100g ricotta cheese

50g sundried tomatoes, finely chopped

1 egg, beaten

parmesan

parsley, finely chopped

salt and black pepper

For the Sauce:

1 small glass of white wine

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

50g green olives

20g sundried tomatoes

2 tbsp double cream

parmesan

salt and black pepper

1) Arrange the pasta sheet on the ravioli press according to instructions. In a bowl, combine the ingredients for the filling, only adding as much egg as you need to bind it all together. Spoon the mixture into the ravioli, filling them completely to avoid any air bubbles forming.

2) Place the other half of the pasta sheet on top and roll over it with a rolling pin to seal. Turn the ravioli out.

3) Get a large pan of salted water boiling rapidly. Meanwhile, sweat the onion in a little oil until soft but not browned, add the garlic and fry for a minute then add the wine along with the olives, sundried tomatoes, a good sprinkle of grated parmesan and some salt and pepper. Allow the wine to bubble and reduce, then add the cream and heat through for a minute or so. Cook the ravioli in the boiling water - they should pop up to the surface after a minute or so. Cook them for a further couple of minutes then remove from the water and let them steam dry. If the sauce is too thick, add a little of the cooking water, then serve with a grating of parmesan and a grinding of black pepper.

Home-Baked, Stone-Baked Pizzas

It was an extremely successful Christmas as far as kitchen equipment goes - amongst other things we now have a mixer, a mincer, a ravioli press, a proper carving knife and, perhaps most exciting of all, a baking stone (from http://hobbshousebakery.co.uk/) for all my bread baking exploits! A baking stone essentially gives you that stone baked effect in a normal oven. It absorbs heat much better than a baking tray and therefore gives the dough more of a lift when it goes into the oven, allowing it to rise more as the air pockets expand. All of this means that as well as great loaves, I can now make proper pizzas with a crispy, blistered base:

Couple of stone baked white bloomers

Just like Mama used to make....

To make 2 pizzas I use:

125g Strong White Bread Flour

125g Plain White Bread Flour

3g Fast-action Dried Yeast

5g Salt

160ml Water

1 tbsp Olive Oil

In a bowl, combine the flours, yeast and salt, keeping the yeast and salt on seperate sides of the bowl. Add the water and mix with one hand until the dough starts to come together. Tip it out onto a clean surface, add the oil and knead for 5-10mins until smooth and stretchy. Form it into a round. Clean the bowl out, lightly oil it, place the dough in it and cover with clingfilm. Leave to rise for 1-3 hours. If you have a baking stone, preheat your oven to maximum well before you intend to bake, with the stone on the shelf in the top of the oven.

Ready for the oven!

Once risen, tip the dough out onto the surface, deflate it with your fingers and divide into two equal portions. Form each into a ball then roll them out to roughly 1-2mm thickness. Coat them well with semolina or polenta and place on a wooden board or a rimless baking sheet. Add your toppings (don't overcrowd it) and transfer either to your baking stone (the transfer can be a little tricky - make sure the pizza isn't too big for the stone, and that the base is well coated so that it won't stick to your board) or to a preheated baking tray. Bake for up to 10 mins - keep an eye on it, you'll know when it's done.

A word on toppings:

• For a tomato base you can use tomato puree, but I think you get a much better depth of flavour if you fry a little garlic and thyme in olive oil, add a tin of plum tomatoes, mash them with a fork, add a bay leaf, salt and pepper, and a pinch of sugar and reduce down for 30 mins until you have a deliciously tomato-ey paste.
• If you're using veg such as aubergine, courgette, pepper then it's nice to roast them for about 30 mins first - that way you get a nice caramelisation, and they lose a lot of their water content, meaning you don't get a soggy base.
• When you've arranged your toppings, a little drizzle of olive oil will help get everything nice and charred.
• I went for a classic Mediterranean style roast veg and buffalo mozzerella topping on this occasion, but sometimes it's good to think outside of the box - try some seasonal veg like kale or beetroot, or some local cheese - blue works great, as does goat's cheese.

Aubergine and Red Pepper, pre-roasted

Roast 'Middle White' Pork Belly

Pork belly is, undoubtedly, one of my favourite cuts of meat. When cooked properly, it offers us crispy, salty crackling, meltingly tender meat and a delicious layer of fat. However, as is always the case with meat, we must chose what we buy carefully. The quality of pork available to us in this country varies considerably – at worst we have pork imported from the EU, reared in conditions that would be illegal in this country (sows confined in stalls, unable to even turn around). That’s not to say that the standards in the UK are consistently higher – our cheap UK pork comes from pigs who are still reared intensively indoors on wooden slats, without even any straw for bedding. We’re talking about social animals of a similar level of intelligence to dogs here – pigs love rooting around in mud, and they like having their own space from time to time. Frustration in our intensively reared pigs often leads to them biting each other’s tails, and as a result it is common for piglets to have their teeth clipped and tails docked without anasthetic. All of this simply because we refuse to pay a few extra pennies for our bacon? Not for me thanks.

There is, of course, an alternative. The main labels to look out for if you want to buy pork from pigs that have had a happy life (and regardless of what you think about the ethics, there is no doubt that slow growing, traditionally reared pork tastes much better) are free range and organic. ‘Outdoor-bred’ and ‘outdoor-reared’ pork varies in welfare standards – the pigs still spend a large portion of their lives indoors, sometimes in less than desirable conditions. If you can, it is worth searching out a local producer of rare breed pork – these pigs are traditional breeds, shunned by commercial agriculture post-WWII when production intensified because they grow slowly, and don’t deal well with a life indoors. Without exception these rare breeds (Middle White, Gloucester Old Spot, Saddleback and more) taste amazing. They have more fat, which gives the meat flavour and keeps it moist during cooking. Happily, while it is fattier, it tends to contain more mono-unsaturated fat and less saturated fat than intensively farmed pork so is also a healthier option. A great number of small producers across the country are now specialising in rare breed pork – we get our middle white pork and bacon at our local farmers market (http://ravensworthgrangefarm.co.uk/). If you have a producer near you then I urge you to support them – without these producers the breeds would eventually die out which would be a great, great loss. Yes, it costs a little more than cheap supermarket pork but who cares? Eat less, and eat better quality.

Anyway, back to the roast pork belly:

Really easy to cook – make sure the skin is dry, and score it with a sharp knife (or get the butcher to do it). Rub plenty of salt into the skin, and a few aromatics if you fancy (crushed fennel seeds, coriander seeds, caraway…. etc.). Preheat your oven to maximum and roast the pork for about 20 mins until the skin crackles, then turn it right down to 160C and roast for a further 2 hours or so until the meat is very tender. I threw a loads of root veg, and a few segments of lemon and orange under the pork for the last hour of cooking. Rest the meat for at least 15 minutes once it comes out of the oven. Serve with the roasted roots and anything else you fancy. The meat should be so juicy that you don’t really need a gravy. Makes great leftovers for sandwiches, stir frys, salads etc.

In other news, a trip to the farmers market this morning yielded a pheasant, a woodcock, roe venison strip loin, 2 pigeon breasts, 2 guinea fowl breasts, 2 middle white pork chops, 2 packs of middle white bacon, middle white chipolatas and 4 pig kidneys. Should keep us going for a month or so!

A Salad of Jerusalem Artichokes, Cabbage, Mushrooms and Hazelnuts

A nice winter salad this one – Jerusalem artichokes arrived in our veg bag this week, and a bit of googling tells us that they are not, in fact, an artichoke, nor are they from Jerusalem – they’re a member of the sunflower family. The knobbly tubers are similar to potatoes, but much harder to peel because they’re so god-damn knobbly. Quite an unique taste – sweet and distinctively nutty, in the kitchen they behave much like potatoes. You can boil ‘em, roast ‘em, gratinate ‘em, mash ‘em and probably even make chips with ‘em. I opted for the par-boil and roast option (along with a few fat cloves of garlic), roasting for about half an hour til they turned a bit crispy and caramelised. Team them up with some lightly boiled savoy cabbage, some slowly sautéed onion and mushroom, some toasted hazelnuts (half of them bashed until they crumble), a good dressing of olive oil and apple balsamic, and a warm slice of buttered toast and you have a light, unusual, and really rather classy supper.

The only thing to bare in mind here is that jerusalem artichokes, while delicious, rival even swede and baked beans with their ability to make you fart. Not necessarily a problem in my book, but if you’re expecting company then perhaps they’re not the veg of choice…..