May 14, 2008 by gastroplod
Excellent article in today’s Guardian. It argues that culinary technique and confidence are more important than following recipes and it’s by Glynn Christian, for heaven’s sake – who knew he was still around? Turns out he’s been Down Under for the last decade and has a new book to promote.
OK, so it’s not the prettiest cover, but this is a man ahead of his time: standing astride the nexus of the culinary & media worlds, boldly going…you get the picture
Here’s the first paragraph:
Get your store cupboard right and it’s like having a piano in your kitchen. You’ll always be able to segue into the right tune just when you want, to turn something cool into a dish that’s hot and jazzy, satin-smooth and sexy or just drop-dead tasty with a twist, a flick, a squeeze or a damn good hand full.
Very beguiling; Nigella had better watch out…
Posted in books, food politics, recipes | Tagged cookery books, Glynn Christian, how to cook without recipes, recipes | 1 Comment »
May 13, 2008 by gastroplod
Mr T reminded me that it’s all very well going on about my fabulous dough discovery but there’s not much point unless I eventually share the secret, so – in good time for summer – here’s a wonderful recipe for:
Olive Oil Dough
(my respectful adaptation of a recipe in
Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François)
650 ml lukewarm water
1-1/2 tablespoons dried yeast (or 50g fresh – I buy mine from Carrefour in France, then freeze)
1-1/2 tablespoons sel gris de Guérande (my favourite, but any coarse salt will do)
1 tablespoon sugar
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1600 ml unbleached all-purpose flour (I don’t know how much this weighs – will get back to you!)
- Pour the water into a lidded (not airtight) food container and sprinkle on the yeast, salt, sugar and olive oil. Give it a swirl to mix.
- Add the flour, stir it in with a wooden spoon until it becomes a fairly homogenous mass with no dry bits.
- Cover (but do not seal) with the lid and leave it at room temperature approximately 2 hours (until the dough has risen and collapsed).
- Either: use immediately, or
- refrigerate in its container, leaving the lid slightly ajar to allow air circulation, and use over the next 12 days.
When you wish to bake your bread (this dough is designed for flatbreads [eg focaccia, fougasse, pizza etc.] so don’t expect a high-rise sandwich loaf):
- oil a medium-sized baking tray or swiss roll tin with olive oil (don’t waste pricey extra virgin here!)
- with wet or olive-oily hands to stop the dough from sticking, scoop out a handful weighing approximately 500g (but don’t get out your scales unless you enjoy making a mess)
- form into a ball and then, as the pizza guys do, use its own weight to gently stretch without tearing: when it is too thin to take the strain without holing place it in the centre of your oiled tray and gently ease it towards the sides and corners. It will relax and expand over the next little while.
- start heating oven to 200C (or as high as it will go if making pizza)
Then what you do with it really depends on what you’re after – dimple with your fingers, strew with chopped rosemary and salt then “drizzle” (yikes – did I really say that?) with a couple of teaspoons of olive oil for classic focaccia; make it into a circle and apply pizza toppings, or for something really exciting, check out the method for a Spanish flavoured fougasse in my chorizo & olive bread post.
Finally, bake your bread for about 20 minutes; because of the oil content you will get a crispy rather than crusty-crunchy crust, and light golden browning. If you wait until it resembles a loaf it will be overdone, and for pizza keep the dough thin; it will need 10-15 minutes or less cooking time. Serve warm or cool; today or tomorrow if it lasts that long.
I was so impressed with this American pair’s basic recipe for artisan bread featured in The Mercury News that I ordered their book via Amazon.co.uk and I’m so glad I did – it’s packed with extra information and lots of recipes for a number of different doughs and their permutations. In the short time since I acquired it I have been inspired repeatedly – this book is a keeper.
Posted in artisan bread, olive oil dough, recipes, slow food | Tagged artisan bread, artisan bread in 5 minutes a day, flat bread, focaccia, fougasse, olive oil, olive oil dough, pizza base, pizza dough | 3 Comments »
May 12, 2008 by gastroplod
Nothing so good as pure old-style, old-school pesto. Particularly when made in the old-fashioned way, with a mortar and pestle and while sitting outdoors with basil’s best friend – summer sunshine – for company.
Because the basil leaves are not cut as they would be in a food processor they preserve so much more of their aromatic oils; similarly the garlic eludes its usual sulphurous fate and the pine nuts retain their delightful savoury mealiness.
And as if that weren’t good enough news, considering the time and hassle it takes to assemble, dissemble, scoop-out-without-wasting, clean and finally put away a food processor, a mortar and pestle is downright quicker, greener, altogether simpler … and infinitely more satisfying.
I ♥ my mortar & pestle!
pesto recipe
- a fistful of pine nuts
- 3 or 4 or 5 small cloves of wet (young) garlic
- a large bunch of fresh basil
- about 50g fresh parmesan (or pecorino romano if you have it)
- a few slugs of extra virgin olive oil
Pound the pine nuts and garlic together in your mortar until they form a paste, then strip the basil leaves from their stalks (chop or tie these together and use in a tomato sauce) and add them in small handfuls. Keep pounding and grinding, adding more leaves as they pulverize down. When all the leaves are used and you have a rough paste, grate in the parmesan and then let down (thin) this now thick compound with olive oil, glug by glug and stirring the while, to your desired consistency.
Satisfying stirred into linguine or spaghetti: the coarse texture clings to the pasta, providing substance and savour
Delectable atop a slice of artisan bread – lovely rough consistency
Decant into a jar and keep in the fridge for a taste of summer, whatever the weather does
Posted in herbs, ingredients, recipes, slow food, Summer, terrific tools | Tagged basil, basil pesto, dips, linguine sauce, mortar and pestle, pasta sauce, pesto, pine nuts, slow food, spreads, Summer, wet garlic | 2 Comments »
May 10, 2008 by gastroplod
So with the hot weather holding, the olive oil dough persisting and some slightly sinewy chorizo from Lidl haunting the ‘fridge, what better to make than chorizo and olive bread for a tasty lunch?
Just grab a handful of dough from the big batch container (first having floured one’s hands), tidy it by folding under into a ball, press onto an oiled tin and gently stretch to flatten. Take your slices of chorizo (wide and thin, not the chunky cooking sort) and overlap them in a line down the centre of your dough rectangle. Sprinkle a few stoned olives down each side and then bring up the sides of dough to meet across and form a swaddling blanket for the filling.
Not very pretty, is it? If your dough is as floppy as mine it will stretch and thin to reveal the odd olive but no matter. The idea is a riff on the Provençal fougasse – the variations are limitless once you take that on board – so instead of herbes de Provence, strew the top with a little orange zest, crumbled chilli and roughly crushed fennel seed to go with the Spanish flavours of the chorizo (this delicious trio also aid digestibility as it’s a fairly oily affair). Bake in a hot oven for 20-30 minutes, cool slightly and serve in slices with a sharp salad if you have one (last night’s chicory in orange juice in this case!) or wrap and take to work or a picnic.
Oh dear, it’s all gone now. We liked it so much I made another but that’s gone too. Watch this space for the next batch of olive oil dough!
Posted in artisan bread, olive oil dough, packed lunch, picnic, recipes | Tagged artisan bread, artisan bread in 5 minutes a day, chorizo, focaccia, fougasse, gastronews, Lidl, olive oil, olive oil bread, olive oil dough, packed lunch, picnic food, work lunch | Leave a Comment »
May 10, 2008 by gastroplod
If you’re at all interested in olives you may be aware of the continual reminders to buy them unstoned for good flavour. I used to take such advice with a pinch of salt, but that was in the bad old days before I acquired this magnificent beast: a sturdy olive stoner. Solidly built, sprung at the pivot, it made short work of pitting a jar of Kalamatas the other day and reminded me of how glad I am to have it. Stoning cherries should be a piece of cake also. £5.35 at Mottram’s on The Pantiles (I’ll let you know when their website is up – in the meantime check this blogpost for a decent description).
Mottram’s
35-37 The Pantiles
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
01892 538915
Posted in terrific tools | Tagged chefs tools, cherry pitter, kalamata, kitchen equipment, kitchen gadgets, olive stoner, olives | 5 Comments »
May 9, 2008 by gastroplod
Remember my original loaf? Well, to match the summer weather of late I made a batch of olive oil dough and created this marvelous taleggio and grilled vegetable roulade for Mr T’s team meeting. Good thing we nibbled some beforehand as there were no leftovers.
It’s a ball of dough rolled around some cubed taleggio and thawed grilled vegetable mix from Waitrose, brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with Maldon salt flakes. Oh, and then it’s baked at high temperature for a half hour or so. A big success – simple, quick, healthy and delicious sliced for picnics … and team meetings.
Posted in artisan bread, olive oil dough, packed lunch, picnic, recipes | Tagged artisan bread, artisan bread in 5 minutes a day, gastronews, grilled vegetables, olive oil dough, picnic food, recipe, roulade, taleggio, Waitrose | 3 Comments »
May 9, 2008 by gastroplod
Sometimes it’s hard to tell which end is speaking
There should be stringent laws, licensing laws, to make sure produce is only used in season and season only
Does anybody actually know how to legislate seasonality, especially with all this climate change going on?
Can we assume that Petrus, the Boxwood Café, maze and all the other gaffs in his empire serve seasonal produce exclusively?
And if it’s true that Britain has become
a nation of lazy eaters who followed trends and fads rather than substance
is not the celebrity chef culture, which he exploits mercilessly to be one of its biggest beneficiaries, at least partly to blame?
Don’t get me wrong, I know what he’s driving at, and I do agree with him in principle and over the sorry turn Delia has taken, and about plastic bags, but does he have to be so bombastic? Perhaps his bookings are down…oh! no! well waddayaknow; he has a new series of The F word starting up next week.
Now, if he started a campaign against bad language and bullying we’d really be talking.
Posted in food politics, restaurants | Tagged celebrity chefs, Gordon Ramsay, seasonal produce, seasonality, The F Word | Leave a Comment »
May 8, 2008 by gastroplod
It’s so good to see sensible food philosophy gaining credibility; witness the publicity given to the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) “The Food We Waste” report published today. I overheard an interview on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning and I see The Independent online has covered it, so let’s hope a few more people are persuaded to boycott the BOGOF, for a start.
The siren song of buy-one-get-one-free is so seductive you need nerves of steel to resist it, but unless set to buy that many anyway, I have learnt to avoid those deals like the plague and only buy a lot of stuff when the unit price is low. That way it’s me, not the supermarket, who decides how much I buy, lug home, store, consume – and DON’T throw away! BOGOFs are rarely the bargain they seem.
So, marketing managers, how about appealing to a higher sensibility than greed?
Posted in food politics, shopping, slow food | Tagged BOGOF, food waste, WRAP | 1 Comment »
May 5, 2008 by gastroplod
Ah, bliss! A beautiful bank holiday weekend. Down in the South East we have it good; while the rest of the land experience rain we enjoy the sunshine. And now it’s sunny and warm we can haul the patio furniture from under its tarpaulin, chill a bottle of Corsican rosé – a pale, mass-produced vin de pays de l’Ile de Beauté evocative of summer lunches in Old Nice
and nibble on a simple chickpea salad
and some sardine bruschetta (using the artisan bread, natch – see previous post).
Posted in ingredients, Summer | Tagged al fresco, artisan bread, bank holiday, bruschetta, chickpea salad, rose wine, sardines, socca, Vieux Nice | Leave a Comment »
April 29, 2008 by gastroplod
Poilâne‘s got competition! Welcome to a new era of seriously wonderful home-baked artisan bread made in minimal time, with minimal effort and minimal mess.
Seeing is believing, the eating is even better but I’m not sure I want to share the secret just yet. In the meantime I’ll enjoy showing off my (minimal) efforts until either word reaches the shores of Blighty or I can’t hold it in any more. And yes, I made this myself and what’s more, in a naff Neff oven. Really.
Here’s a video of the authors providing the exact method and quantities in 4 minutes flat.
Brilliantly simple & simply brilliant – so I bought the book.
http://www.startribune.com/video/11967361.html
Posted in artisan bread | Tagged artisan bread, artisan bread in 5 minutes a day, baking, Poilane | 3 Comments »
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