Wulf's Web-Den

Yesterday I made another batch of bread with a mixture of malthouse (wholemeal with grains) and white bread flour. I was using a 50/50 mixture so used the technique of creating a starter with the malthouse flour, yeast and water, which can sit for hours gently developing before the white flour is added and the rest of the process begins. Without this stage, the bread can turn out rather dense with the high proportion of darker flour.

As I came to add the white flour, I noticed a tub of blueberries that was in need of finishing off so added those to the mixture. That gives me blueberry bread — a touch of sweetness and colour adding an unusual twist to the loaves. It might even be worth buying blueberries specially for the purpose!.

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blueberries

bread

house244

Yesterday we were glad to have Jim and Mary round and help them as they cooked up a huge batch of marmalade. All it took was seville oranges, sugar, a bit of water, plenty of jars and lots of time.

Apparently it should really be allowed to sit for a couple of weeks but I opened the first jar of our shared this morning and was very impressed — a pefect blend of sweet and tart in a glossy orange spread.

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marmalade

house244

One of my housemates is lactose intolerant, which means we have a lot less dairy based foods than Jane and I had been used to. When you start thinking about which recipes have milk or butter or cheese or other things touched with cow-juice, it becomes apparent what a difference this makes.

The other day, I fancied some fudge and looked up a recipe, only to be reminded that it needs milk and butter. Not deterred, I decided to experiment and, last night, got round to attempting lactose free fudge. I based my recipe on the one Nigella Lawson gives in How to be a Domestic Goddess but with 500g of caster sugar balanced with 50g of goats butter and 100ml of soya milk. You boil them together until you can put a drop of mixture in cold water and it starts to hold its shape.

I had wondered if the changed ingredients would affect the flavour but, after tasting, I would say not noticeably. 500g of sugar will cover a multitude of culinary sins!

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fudge

lactose free

house244

I love it when 25 January rolls around. That date signifies Burns Night and a good excuse to enjoy haggis, neeps and tatties. The only trouble is that Jane is not that fond of haggis and a plate of mashed swede and mashed potatoes on their own doesn't make for a particularly exciting meal.

This year, cooking the feast for ten at house244 and anticipating that others may find the idea of haggis too offal to stomach, I am experimenting with an alaternative. My mock-haggis features kidney beans for some protein along with finely chopped mushrooms, aubergine, onion and garlic for flavour.

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haggis

burns night

house244

I did some experimentation recently to figure out how to make condensed milk. Having picked up the concept that it is essentially milk and sugar boiled together, I took equal amounts of both (by volume) and heated them in a pan.

Waiting until the sugar had dissolved or until the liquid started boiling yielded a thin, sweet result. Allowing the mixture to stay at a rolling boil for a little while gave some thickness but still a bit thin. It was turning the temperature down a bit so the liquid was gently bubbling and stirring until it started to become clearly viscous that gave the result I was after.

The resulting "condensate" got thicker still as it set, so it looks like it is important to stop before it reaches the final intended consistency. My next step in this experiment will be to make some condensed milk and see how it works in a recipe that calls for the stuff.

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condensed milk

recipe

One of my old-faithful dessert recipes is bustrengo, an Italian variant on bread pudding that I learned from Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Italy book. You can find his version on his website but I have my own twist on it.

I start with three bowls and some sort of baking tray lined with greaseproof paper (or well-buttered). I used to use a large circular pizza tray but have used a rectangular roasting dish the last couple of times. In the first bowl, I mix dry ingredients: 100g polenta, 200g plain flour, 100g stale breadcrumbs, 100g sugar (caster sugar or some sort of brown sugar), up to a teaspoon of cinnamon and a pinch or two of salt. It needs to be a large bowl because it is used for all the mixing. The second bowl gets wet ingredients: 3 large eggs (beaten), 500ml full fat milk, 100g honey (runny is easier to mix but set works with more stirring) and 50g olive oil. The third bowl gets the fruit: 100g chopped dried figs, 100g raisins / sultanas, 500g apples (peeled, cored and roughly chopped up - I normally start with about 600g fruit to account for wastage) and the zest of a lemon or two (you can also include some orange zest).

The wet ingredients are poured in and mixed with the dry and then the fruit is added to the bowl and also mixed in. Pour this into the prepared container and bake for about 3/4 hour at 180°C. Check with a knife to see if it is cooked — it may need more time (and it may need covering with foil if the top is getting too brown).

It seems a very reliable mix and is pretty easy to put together (preparing the apples is the most arduous part). I'll be interested to hear how you get on if you try it.

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jamie oliver

I mentioned on Sunday that I was pleased with the feast I had presented the night before but then I was too busy or too sick to feel like writing much more. However, I did briefly want to return to the tea sorbet concept.

Served up in small mugs, this made a refreshing dessert after a rich main course. In particular, it met my particular requirement of delighting Steve Bevans, the visiting missiologist we've been honoured to have as our guest for the last three months. One of his discoveries during his time here was rooibos tea and the rooibos sorbet was a deliberate attempt to find a way to work this into the meal. I also served an Earl Grey sorbet (the oil of bergamot flavour was delicious in the frozen dish) and a honey and lemon one (my experiment with "normal" tea was okay but tasted over-brewed).

I cannot tell you exactly how much sweetening I used in each as, in the end, I decided to do it by taste. Even changing the liquid / sugar ratio to 2:1 resulted in an overly sweet result. Instead, I just added sugar until I reached a sweetness I thought would work well for dessert (and, with the lemon, largely relied on the honey for sweetness).

I need to do further experiments on whether sugar really does make a difference but the results so far suggest that you get a perfectly decent result just by tasting.

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tea

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