You don't need a sourdough starter to make bread!

You don’t even need yeast.  One of the threads on social media at the moment is people sharing information (bragging) about their sourdough starters.  I have only recently started baking with yeast let alone cultivating a sourdough starter.  We eat very little bread so I couldn’t be bothered to keep the darn thing alive.  In lockdown I might even start talking to it…..

But you can still have bread.  Here is Bella’s (Mother-in-law) yogurt bread: it is surprisingly easy and very good.  For many years it was the only bread I ever baked (and ever so healthy!).

500g whole-wheat flour                

1 teaspoon salt

1 heaped teaspoon bicarbonate of soda                 

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 500 ml carton plain yogurt

Optional – about 50g of seeds – sunflower or mixed – to taste.

Heat oven to 180C

Put flour into a large bowl.  Add salt, bicarb and sugar and mix well. Add yogurt and mix together – you can start with a spoon but will need to use your hands to incorporate everything.  Place into a lined 500g tin and bake for 1 – 1 ¼ hours.

This makes a fairly dense loaf but it keeps and toasts quite well.

I am tired of my cooking….

I don’t think I have ever cooked so often. Number One Husband knows that I married him for better or for worse but not for breakfast.  Normally not for lunch either.  This meal is known in our house as “scrabble”.  Roughly speaking, open the fridge door, stand and gaze at the contents, assemble a meal from what is there, no cooking required: yogurt, cheese, salad and sandwiches figure often.

Yesterday I needed to eat something cooked by someone else. Very luckily we live near an excellent fish restaurant and as Deliveroo is working we had fish and chips. Please add a big tip if you are using Deliveroo – because they are delivering the food and standing back from the doorstep, people are not tipping.

Back to more comfort food: this was a favourite when our children were young – it is simple, easy to make, ingredients mostly in the store cupboard or freezer and most children love pasta. The quantities are approximate.  The cheddar slices are unusual but work very well 

Macaroni and beef

1 tab oil                                  

2 medium onions, chopped

1 garlic clove 

400 g tinned tomatoes

2 tab tomato puree

1 teas paprika

½ teas each oregano and basil  

500 g minced beef

75 g cheddar cheese slices

200 g cooked macaroni (about 75g raw)

(seasoning to taste – other herbs or more or less)

Heat oven to 180°C.  Fry onions and garlic until soft, add beef and fry for five minutes until just coloured.  Add all the other ingredients except for the cheese and bring to the boil. Place in a deep casserole and cover with the cheese slices.  Bake for 20 minutes.  

It freezes and reheats well so if there is anything left over it can be portioned out and frozen. Reheat very thoroughly. We do the same with leftover pasta and meat sauce – enough for one or two portions at a time.  Best with fusilli, penne etc – not spaghetti.

Last gasp of freedom.....

 

Three weeks ago we attended our last group social event. We didn’t take public transport and drove into the City, paying the congestion charge and parking - the Covid-19 writing was already on the wall. 

The Master Needlemaker organised a visit to the Drapers Hall in the City of London.  We had a fascinating tour of the Hall and a delicious lunch with fellow Liverymen, always a joy, always entertaining and always the warm glow of fellowship. It was a fitting last gasp of freedom – yes, I know that is a bit over-dramatic but sometimes it feels like it!!

The Drapers Company is one of the early Livery Companies, or Guilds of the City of London. It was founded in the fourteenth century and The present Hall, situated in Throgmorton Street, was bought from King Henry VIII in 1543. What was particularly interesting to me is that this had been the house of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex and Chief Minister to Henry, but had been forfeited to the King on Cromwell's execution in July 1540.

This was very timely for me as I am currently listening to an audiobook of The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel – a continuation of her brilliant Wolf Hall series. This is the period when Thomas Cromwell was living in this house and it makes many references to the house, the garden and the location.  It is nearly 900 pages and about two days of solid listening so entirely appropriate for the current situation.  The reader is delightful and I love it.

Sometimes when I walk through the City or attend events there I can’t quite believe that I am walking the same streets as Cromwell and many others before and since.  There is something quite awe-inspiring about it and the Civic City will survive our current situation – it has survived great fires, plagues and wars. I am sure that the financial City will also spring back – it too has survived much.  

I attach a view of the much reduced garden since Cromwell’s time and one of the beautiful rooms. If I am not misremembering that glass office block is on what was part of the garden - and is now no doubt contributing to their considerable charitable funds.  

Comfort food…..

Our comfort foods often derive from childhood.  Mine certainly do, with a few more added. Chopped liver is an essential part of our Jewish Holiday celebrations but I rarely make it otherwise. However special situations call for special measures. This is taken from a blog I wrote a few years ago – with a recipe this time.

My mother died nearly forty years ago after a long and difficult illness.  She lived with us the last few years of her life and I greeted her death with very mixed emotions: sadness at our loss but relief that she was no longer in pain.

No matter how ill she was she always insisted on making the chopped liver for Passover and New Year and to break the Fast on the Day of Atonement.  There was no recipe, she made it as her mother had made it – and although I helped her I never consciously took much notice. Even when we all knew that her life was limited I didn’t take notice – perhaps it was my form of denial. 

There are strange moments when grief strikes you unexpectedly.  The first Jewish holiday after her death was Passover. There is no thought that has to go into the menu planning– it is the same year after year and of course there is chopped liver. I suddenly realised that this now fell to me to make - would I be able to take over this minor task but somehow central role that my mother had played over many years? It is part of handing down traditions through the generations. I sat down and wept. 

Of course it isn’t difficult, especially with modern kitchen gadgets to do the chopping.  It is chicken or goose fat, chicken livers, onions and hard-boiled eggs.  Then decorated with more chopped hard boiled eggs, whites and yolks separated and put in stripes and garnished with parsley.

There is still no fixed recipe but I will have a go having just made some:

2 – 3 tablespoons of chicken fat or vegetable oil 

about 600 grams of chicken livers

3 medium sized onions

3 eggs 

salt and pepper

Chop the onions coarsely and fry in the fat until translucent. Turn up and heat and sear the chicken livers and then reduce the heat and let them cook until done. It is important that they lose all pinkness.

While they are cooling hard-boil the eggs, cool and peel

Put all into a food processor and pulse until there are no big lumps left but the mixture is quite coarse.  Taste and add seasoning.  

The photo below (Number One Daughter’s contribution to a communal Seder in different times) is of our traditional decoration.  Not today!

Good advice, misinformation, jokes and memes – the internet.

I included “memes” and thought I would check what it actually means: apparently “Meme” was coined by the (often controversial) evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. ... The Greek word “mimeme” he derives “meme” from comes from the Ancient Greek word, meaning “that which is imitated” / “something imitated” / “something copied”.

You learn something every day.  

Between crap so called advice (yes we have toilet paper thank you) the internet is flooded with jokes, photos and, memes.

Between Government advice, which in the UK is measured, evidence based and doesn’t pull its punches and wall-to-wall media coverage of all the awful things that are happening you must make time to connect with friends (thank you internet) and laugh.  

The most recent message I saw did make me laugh – wish I had thought of this when my children were small. “If you want to have a break tell your children that you are going to nap for half an hour and then you are all going to clean the house”.

There used to be a saying – their house is so clean you could eat off the floor. I never saw the point – fortunately I have never needed to eat off the floor. I have a fairly laissez faire attitude to house work.  Number One daughter once said that her friends liked coming to our house because it was a mess.  A cousin once told me that her abiding memory of staying at our house was Sunday morning with the newspapers all over the floor.  

Console yourself – if I stay in my pj’s, don’t put on make-up or make the bed – in Afrikaans – wie sal weet?  Who will know?

PS This does not apply to the kitchen and toilets that I do keep clean – even the floor! The latest hand-washing advice was wasted on me – wash, wash and wash again, especially in the kitchen. Cross contamination from raw meat and poultry to cooked foods can be lethal. Ah for those halcyon days when we used to go out to eat – the Food Standards Agency recommends you check the “Scores on the Doors” three out of five means that their hygiene leaves something to be desired anything below that is salmonella city.

More recipes tomorrow – too busy baking. 

Recipes in the time of Corona

As I have said before, I never baked much until I retired and now find it quite therapeutic.  I felt so stressed yesterday that I ransacked the store cupboard and baked most of the day.  We have a neighbourhood WhatsApp group so left boxes of biscuits at the front doors this morning – rang the bell and ran away…….

The challenge of collecting family recipes is documenting things which are created from memory and when the instructions are vague to say the least. The only cake I ever baked for years was a fruitcake. Susan was my mother’s cook and I never saw her look at a recipe.  She never measured anything either – just put ingredients in until it looked correct. She was an excellent cook. 

The fruitcake was wonderful. I asked her if I could have the recipe and then stood with her in the kitchen trying to weigh every handful before it went in the bowl. My addition was piercing the baked cake with a tester and basting it with brandy. I have used brandy, rum and whisky at different times – not all together!

If you don’t have fruitcake mix you can make your own with chopped candied orange and lemon peel as well as a few raisins.

Susan’s Dark Fruit Cake

Place in a saucepan on the stove:

250 ml water                       250 g butter

500 fruit cake mix               140 g sugar

100 g cherries                      3 teas cocoa

75 g broken pecans             1 teas ginger

1 teas cinnamon                  100 ml brandy

Boil for about 15 minutes or until dark and syrupy, stirring frequently.  Cool.

Add 3 eggs one by one beating well

Sift together:

350 g plain flour with 2 level teaspoons bicarbonate of soda and mix in a third at a time.

Place in a 2lb loaf tin lined with baking paper (can be a round or square tin) and put in a 230°C oven then immediately reducing it to 130°C and bake for 2.5 hours.  Cool in pan for a few minutes.  Remove and prick with a cake tester and baste with ½ cup brandy.  Turn and repeat. It can be eaten when cool or wrapped up in foil and stored for a while - don't know how long - usually eaten in a week!

Socially distancing becomes more distant – so let’s bake

As of tonight the UK is almost in lockdown. I say almost because we can go out for food shopping, as seldom as possible; for medical reasons and once a day for exercise, all the time remaining at least six feet away from others. No groups of more than two people unless you are all living in the same household. We have been doing this anyway for two weeks but it was still chilling to hear the Prime Minister say it.

So let’s bake!  And at the same time you can give the children a science lesson. What is the effect of adding salt to water that is brought to the boil?  What is the effect of adding salt to ice in water?  I remember doing this very early on in science class never thinking I would need it in cooking!

This is a traditional South African dish: it can be bought in any South African supermarket (at least when I was living there) and will totally destroy your diet and your teeth – but it is worth it. Koeksuster literally translated means “cake sister” because the two pieces of dough are twined together (like my sister and me!)

A lovely man called Karl de Jager gave the recipe to my mother. He was of Afrikaans heritage so this would have been a family recipe - and a dress designer – he made my wedding dress.  This is usually made with a yeast dough but this works just as well. 

Koeksusters

Syrup

800 g sugar                                         600 ml water

2 teas ginger

couple of tablespoons rum/brandy

Boil until thick and syrupy and then chill in a bowl. Place the bowl in a larger bowl half filled with salted water with ice in it to keep cold.

450 g plain flour                   4 teas baking powder

½ teas salt                            60 g butter

2 – 3 eggs, beaten                milk – about 200 ml

Mix all dry ingredients and rub in butter until like crumbs.  Add eggs and as much milk as is necessary.  The dough should be stiff but pliable and easy to roll out.  Roll out quite thinly and cut into strips and plait.  Drop a few at a time into hot vegetable oil until they are golden and float to the surface, turn if necessary. I usually test a couple of pieces to make sure that the temperature is right.

Plunge one or two at a time into the icy syrup for a few moments.  Leave on a plate to dry.

This was the last batch I made for visiting grandchildren.