Friday, 10 December 2010

The most amazing Breadmaking Christmas party

We all know the usual pre-Christmas restaurant outing/outrage. Desperate office boys and girls around London huddle around overpacked restaurants, eat restrictive bland 3-course menus with 2 choices of main, 2 of starter and (if you're lucky at all) 2 choices of dessert. Add to that the embarrassment of having to quickly wolf down everything so you can be out of there before the minus two hours of the booking are finished (and your double-decker has turned again into a butternut squash). And what about having to pay anything from £35 to £extortionate, upfront when you make the booking, AND getting charged full price if one unlucky sod happens to fall ill in the snowstorm? There you go…now you've got your typical London Christmas party. And "due to extreme popularity, we are only able to accommodate your group for a Christmas dinner on the 19th of November". Don't tell me you haven't heard this one! Christmas is Christmas, and whether you like it or not, a dinner in November does-not-a-Christmas-party-constitute, in anyone's (and much less a foreigner's) book.

Hence, this time my international colleagues and I went for an alternative Christmas dinner. One where you get your hands dirty (and sticky!), one that requires at least one full body apron per person, no loose hairs and future wonderment on how flour has managed to end up everywhere (including the inside of your underwear!). What I'm talking about is an evening spent making bread (and eating it) in the e5 Bakehouse. Ben McKinnon's love child is a lovely bakery squished under one of the London Fields train station arches, which dishes out yummy organic loaves. The master feature is the wood fire oven that Ben and his sister designed and built from scratch, using information found on the internet and reclaimed materials. Despite being mismatched, it's extremely pretty, sitting there and puffing fire like a gentle ancient dragon.



We ended up in the bakery after my friend Natalia (who lives nearby and met Ben when she was passing by and smelt the bread, leading to a small coffee-making day collaboration) thought it would be a good alternative idea and a great chance to avoid the usual pre-holiday restaurant rat-race. And what a fantastic idea it was. After we confirmed numbers, Ben kindly booked us in to come and make some great ciabatta breads on a freezing Thursday evening. Thinking that we would be eating only the bread, we brought along some nuts, olives, cold meats and LOTS of cheese and wine to go with it. However we were in for a surprise...(or two!)



We started with Ben showing us around and passing on the recipe for the ciabattas, and while we got messy measuring water, flour and leaven he showed us the next steps, which involved a lot of waiting for the dough to rest, and not as much kneading as I actually expected. After an initial mixing and resting we folded the dough by lifting it off the edges of the bowl with a spatula, from the outside towards the centre, something that was repeated again two times after intervening rests and cheese-and-cracker-nibbling.



After the few times of folding and resting were over, we transferred the dough into a well-floured surface, where we stretched it, and finally decorated it with rosemary, olives or sundried tomatoes, and - following the example of the Italians in the team - drizzled it with olive oil and spread a few salt flakes on top.

Then we moved on to the long table that Ben's girlfriend had cutely decorated with tea lights and where all our cheesing and wining was previously performed, and heard something about "dinner". Thinking that was the bread we had just baked, we were shocked to discover that the guys had even made some vegetarian lasagne for us which were followed by dreamy mince pies (I had been eyeing those earlier when they were patiently sitting in the bakery shelves, but I had no clue some of them were meant for us!)



After being totally filled up to the brim with food, we finished off with some freshly brewed coffee from Square Mile that Natalia had brought with her and went off into the frost with our little bags stuffed with leftover ciabatta and some of the signature Borodinsky rye bread that Ben had also made for us and which we "styled" into the bread tins.



An amazing night overall, and an amazing bakery, go in and get a loaf any time you're around Hackney, or visit the Bakery's facebook page to stay updated on future events and baking classes, which take place usually on Saturdays.

Arch 402, Mentmore Terrace
London, E8 3PH
E5 Bakehouse on Urbanspoon

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Update: 10 March 2011

I was really stunned and delighted to see last night that Ben's bread featured in the BBC's Great British Food Revival. Michel Roux Junior even exclaimed that his bread "turned him on"! I don't think even I expected such quick progress when I wished Ben "even more good luck in the New Year", but he definitely deserves it and I'm really glad to know his bread keeps on selling out.

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Monday, 15 November 2010

Gooey chocolate and almond cookies

Ah...cookies. My life-long weakness. Ever since I was a kid, I've lived on cookies, any kind of cookies. Apologies to the severely British, but I can not call them "biscuits". Biscuits in my severely sugar-damaged bread are something salty, not sweet. Like a cracker kind of thing. Sort of.



Anyway, back to cookies. I buy them. I eat them. Every day. Around 11:30 to 12:00, all my colleagues will testify it's cookie-munching time. If I miss them one day, I get grumpy. Can be any kind of cookies, but chocolate chip ones are a definite favourite. By "can be any kind of cookies" I mostly mean cookies with some form of chocolate in or around them. If I had to define the perfect one, then...hmmm...it would probably be the chocolate covered speculoos. Simply majestic. Anyways, needless to say, I also make them. I've tried many kinds, but never these ones, as I generally don't like chocolate too much (just a little bit) but these are just the right amount of gooeyness and cheweiness, they stay like this for quite a few days, and they're enough to share with friends (which all my friends will verify is NOT something I usually do with cookies. With cakes maybe. NOT with cookies).



In Greece the typical breakfast is a coffee and a cigarette, or - if you're not a smoker - a coffee and a cookie or a pastry of some kind. Seriously. When Greek people marvel at the fact that I can eat a full English/Mexican/Asian breakfast with cooked things in it, that are not sweet but salty, this is the reason why, because it's extremely atypical to find anything non-sweet in a Greek breakfast. On the other hand, the American "milk and cookies" at night thing, that we don't have. Cookies are for breakfast, or for elevenses, not for dinner or post-dinner. How weird we Greeks are...



Gooey chocolate and almond cookies
Source: Inspired by 17 and baking

Makes about 40 cookies

  • ½ cup ground almonds
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 150g 70% dark chocolate, chopped
  • 2 ½ cups flour
  • 2 tbsp cocoa powder
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • ¾ tsp salt
  • 1 ½ cups light brown sugar
  • 8 tbsp softened butter
  • 2 eggs
  • ¼ cup whole milk
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • ¾ cups icing sugar

Mix the almonds with the sugar. Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie or in the microwave and set aside. Sift the flour together with the cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Mix the butter with the brown sugar at high speed with an electric mixer until well-combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, and continue mixing until they are fully incorporated. Fold in the melted chocolate and add the milk and vanilla. Finally slowly add the flour mixture and mix until all is combined.

Shape the dough into a ball, cover with cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours (preferably overnight).

When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 180°C. Put the icing sugar in a big bowl and scoop out little heaped tablespoonfuls of dough, roll them into a ball and coat them with the sugar. Transfer to a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, leaving at least 5cm breathing space between each cookie ball. Bake the cookies for 15 minutes, until they are cracked but not completely firm. Cool them on wire racks.

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Saturday, 16 October 2010

Caramelised apple cinnamon cake

Ah... Autumn. The cold is seriously setting in now, due to an unexpected boyfriend cold yesterday we threw out the window our resolution to NOT turn the heating on in the house until November started, and here I am looking at gloominess outside being all cuddly and warm inside. Usually the onset of winter brings me down a notch, but this year for some reason I have made so many plans and so many interesting things are coming up, that I'm still happy as a bunny and really looking forward to the future. So much, that I didn't think hard about putting a neologism I created as a facebook update, and then had to face endless speculation, excitement and finally disappointment from friends who thought that me being "futureexpectant" meant that I was pregnant. I have to admit, if I had thought a bit harder I might have seen the connotations there, but I can assure you, I definitely am not pregnant, neither do I have the time to be at the moment!



What I finally had the time to make was an autumn-fitting cake on one of the few Friday nights that I have managed to leave work on time. After rushing out to catch the next train and forgetting to buy half the ingredients I needed, I got off one stop early, managed to find the stuff I needed in a corner shop, walk back home through the "scenic" route (which can be even more scenic and nice in this time of year), bake the cake, make homemade pizza for dinner with some leftover wonderful Italian cheeses (mozzarella, fontina and provola) I had picked up in Greenwich Market last Sunday and be in bed by 23:00. Record time! And I even managed to fit in an episode of Fringe between all that too!



I hadn't tried this cake before, but it resembled one that I really love making, which has less apples and more of a crumbly top, and I was a bit sceptical about how this one would turn out, but it was immediately approved by the sniffling boyfriend, so I'm assuming if someone with virtually no taste buds would promptly scoff it, then it must be good enough to be worth a post! The apples on the inside made it very moist, and it tastes great warmed up with some vanilla ice cream (I keep writing this for pretty much every cake I post, but is there really anything in the world that DOESN'T taste good warmed up with vanilla ice cream on the side? Nope. Thought so. OK, this one would taste great with some cinnamon ice-cream, if I had had the time to make some. Any good recipes out there? If you find one, give me a shout!). I adapted the recipe a bit and added cinnamon in the cake, and topped it with some icing sugar and NOMU Sweet rub, which is a mix of sugar, cinnamon and sweet spices from a great little South African company. I tried it once years ago, and I've been ordering it online ever since, as I can't do without it, in cakes, pancakes, even on top of hot chocolate!



Caramelised apple cinnamon cake
Source: Adapted from Tesco Real Food

Serves 12

  • 4 apples
  • juice of ½ a lemon
  • 275g golden granulated sugar
  • 5 eggs
  • 100g butter, melted
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 215g plain flour
  • ¾ tsp baking powder
  • 2 tsp cinnamon powder
  • 100g ground almonds
  • 1 tbsp icing sugar
  • 1 tbsp NOMU Sweet rub (or a mix of sugar, cinnamon and mixed spice)

Grease a 23cm spring form cake tin and line the base with greaseproof paper. Peel the apples, cut them into ½cm-thick slices and mix them in a large bowl with the lemon juice, 1 tsp of the cinnamon powder and 50g of the sugar. Scatter another 50g of sugar over the base of the tin, and top with enough apple slices to cover the base, overlapping the slices slightly to make a nice circular shape.

Preheat oven to 180°C. Beat the eggs, melted butter, remaining 175g of sugar, salt and vanilla extract together until combined. Sift the flour, baking powder and remaining 1 tsp of cinnamon over the mixture and add the ground almonds. Mix in the remaining apple slices with their liquid and fold together quickly. Pour into the tin and bake for 50 minutes, checking the cake after the first 30 minutes to make sure it's not getting "suntanned". If it is, bake it covered with foil for the next 20 minutes.

When it's totally cooled, turn the tin upside down onto a plate so that the base is on the top and sprinkle with icing sugar and then NOMU Sweet rub, or the mix of sweet spices and sugar.

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Wednesday, 29 September 2010

Spiced honey duck with caramelised sweet potatoes

Mmmm...duuuuuck... Thus spoke my boyfriend at the idea of buying some breasts of this favourite of ours to cook at home. Little did we know that unexpected commitments would come up, disasters would strike (like the day I came back home from work, licking my lips with the idea of duck on my mind, only to find that there was no electricity in the whole neighbourhood. Needless to say, takeaway pizza just wasn't the same and the most infuriating thing was that the electricity DID come back two hours later, the moment I was blindly and fiddlingly trying to open the pizza box), the days would pass and the duck would be still lying in the fridge.

 


 
Nevertheless, after an almost week-long odyssey we finally both managed to be at home, and feeling experimental, I decided to try a different recipe this time. I've made duck many times before, always using sweet sauces as I love it this way (my all time favourite used to be this tamarind duck I could get in a lovely Thai restaurant in Norwich called The Sugar Hut... ah, I miss that so!) and I stuck to the sweet principle this time as well, but with some extra spice. My boyfriend was extra helpful and experimental alongside me this time, when he dug out half a monster sweet potato that we had left over in the fridge (from making a batch of these coffee cupcakes for a charity coffee morning at work, in case you're wondering!) and suggested that we make roast sweet potatoes to go with the duck. Yes, sweet potatoes with sweet duck.

 


 
However, it worked beautifully, and I was really impressed, so much that this is now definitely my favourite recipe for duck, and I'm sure I'll repeat it again and again. The sweet potatoes were not too sweet (as I thought they would end up being) and although I could have made them into a purée, I like the bite and the chargriled edges (plus saves me some time puréeing and washing the extra utensils!).

 


 
Spiced honey duck with caramelised sweet potatoes
Source: Severely adapted from John Burton Race

Serves 2

  • 2 duck breasts
  • 1 medium sweet potato
  • 4 tbsp runny honey
  • 1 tsp coriander seeds
  • ½ tsp ginger powder
  • ½ tsp Chinese five spice powder
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp maple syrup
  • ¼ tsp chilli powder
  • ¼ tsp cinnamon
  • ¼ tsp nutmeg
  • sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Peel the sweet potato, chop it into cubes and toss with the olive oil, maple syrup, chilli powder, cinnamon and nutmeg in a tray. Season with a bit of salt and pepper and bake for 35-40 minutes until soft and caramelised, frequently mixing the potatoes around so they don't stick.

Crush the coriander seeds in a pestle and mortar (or put in a strong plastic bag and bash with a rolling pin or tin can). Mix in the ginger, Chinese five spice and some freshly ground black pepper.

Clean the duck breasts and score the skin in a diamond pattern with a sharp knife. Season with a little salt. Place the duck skin side down in a very hot pan, reduce the heat to medium and cook for 5 minutes. Pour the fat out of the pan and turn the duck over, cooking it until it is nicely browned.

Reduce the heat and sprinkle the spice mix over the skin of the duck breasts. Drizzle the honey over them and continue cooking, basting them constantly with the melting honey until nicely glazed. Turn the breasts over and when they're ready remove them from the pan and keep warm.

Serve the sweet potatoes topped with the sliced duck and drizzle with the rest of the spiced honey.

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Sunday, 26 September 2010

Pear and chocolate frangipane tart

It's official. The winter is here. And yet, somehow I feel like I've been saying this since weeks ago. But then again, weeks ago I didn't have to get the "autumn" coat out, neither did I think for a second that I would feel like turning the heating on already (when last year I only turned it on in November!). So yes, something's definitely going on right now. You can call it Autumn, but I'll call it Winter.


For someone who comes from a country with two seasons (Summer=hot hot hot and Winter= mildly cold + snow once every 10 years) living in a place where there is such a strong distinction between summer, autumn, winter and spring is refreshing to say the least. Never had I seen autumn leaf colours in Greece (there's it's one day here, tomorrow on the floor, no in-between stage!) and never had I realised that there are things that just "go" with autumn.


Like this pear frangipane tart. I discovered this a year ago, and it's become one of my favourite feel-good desserts to make when I'm down, or when it's cold outside (which is usually one and the same!). The fact that you serve it warm makes it even more appropriate, nothing better to warm you up inside than something warm that...goes inside your mouth! It's also become one of my boyfriend's favourite desserts, so I get a lot of special requests. Yes, it takes a while to make, but oh...how much it's worth it!



Pear and chocolate frangipane tart
Source: Valentine Warner in Olive magazine (November 2009)

Serves 8

For the pastry

  • 250g plain flour
  • 150g butter, fridge cold and cut into small cubes
  • 1 tbsp golden caster sugar
  • 1 egg, beaten

For the filling

  • 3 firm conference pears
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • 100g 70% dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces
  • 50g good quality milk chocolate, chopped into small pieces
  • 175g softened butter
  • 175g caster sugar
  • 125g ground almonds
  • 75g plain flour
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp baking powder
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • ¼ tsp vanilla extract
  • 15g flaked almonds

To make the pastry put the flour, butter and sugar in a food processor and blend until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the eggs, blend again and turn off when the dough forms a ball. Roll out the pastry between two big sheets of cling film so it doesn't stick (I learnt this trick from Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets, and although I can't stand the guy and his cockiness, at least I got something useful out of the show!).

Line a deep fluted 25cm tart tin with the pastry, by carefully peeling one sheet of cling film and gently lowering the pastry into the tin (or the other way around, putting the tin upside down on the pastry and carefully turning the whole thing around, so that the dough falls into the tin). Place on a baking tray, prick the base with a fork and put in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Line the pastry case with crumpled baking parchment and fill with baking beans. Bake like this for 22 minutes, then remove the beans and paper and return to the oven for a further 5 minutes, or until the base is dry. Remove from the oven and leave aside to cool.

Reduce the oven temperature to 160°C. Peel and cut the pears into quarters. Remove the cores and put the pear quarters into a bowl with the lemon juice, tossing them so they are all covered, so they won't turn brown.

In a mixer blend the butter and sugar until pale and soft. Add the ground almonds, flour, salt, baking powder, eggs and vanilla. Blend well, take the mixer out and stir in the chocolate pieces with a spatula.

Spread the almond mixture evenly over the cooled pastry case, arrange the pear quarters on their sides in a circle around the tart, pressing gently into the almond mix, narrow ends towards the centre.

Bake on the tray in the centre of the oven or 30 minutes. Sprinkle the flaked almonds over and return to the oven for a further 35-40 minutes, or until the pears are tender and the frangipane filling is well-risen and golden brown. Leave to stand for 15 minutes before lifting from the tin. I love this served warm, if you have leftovers you can reheat it in the microwave later on, and serve with some good quality vanilla ice-cream, it's delicious when the chocolate bits are gooey and melt in your mouth.

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