Eve's Pudding

 (From BBC Good Food)

For 4 people:

3 - 4 large apples

100g butter

70g sultanas

50g dark brown sugar

2 large eggs

dash of vanilla essence

100g SR flour

1. Peel, core and slice apples. Put in the base of a casserole dish with the raisins.
2. Cream together butter and sugar, add vanilla.
3. Beat in the eggs.
4. Mix in the SR flour to make a sponge batter.
5. Drop the batter over the apple and bake at 170 degrees fan for around 40 - 45 minutes.
6. Serve with custard.

Large Sour Dough Loaf

 

You need to have active starter ready to go for this. If you don't, you need to feed up the starter and allow enough time for it to get active. I always have starter in the fridge and it can be fed and active enough in about 8 hours. From active starter to ready to eat loaf you need around 18 hours.

Feed up your starter. You'll need 140g of lively for the recipe and enough to feed up for the next loaf (at least 10g, preferably 25g or so). If you start this early enough in the morning, you can prepare the loaf the same day and put it in the fridge overnight to bake the next morning. Otherwise prep the starter the evening/overnight of day 1, then prep the loaf day 2 and leave it overnight to bake on day 3.

Sour Dough

140g lively starter

580 g flour (strong white or mixture of strong white and malted)

380g lukewarm water

8 - 10g salt

Day 1 

7am Feed 60g starter with 60g organic rye flour and 60g lukewarm water in a large jar. Stir, mark with a rubber band and leave to bubble up and double in size. 

4pm Mix the dough ingredients, leaving remaining starter in the jar. Either put it in the fridge or if you want to make another loaf the next day leave it out and feed it up. You can feed it up and leave it out for a couple of hours before putting it in the fridge to keep it nice and lively.

4.30pm Fold the dough on sprayed wet surface 12 - 15 folds

6.30pm 2nd fold (6 -8 folds), on wet surface

8.30pm 3rd fold (6 -8 folds) on wet surface

9.30pm Fold the dough on floured surface, around 6 folds and put in proofing basket upside down. Put in fridge overnight, uncovered.

Day 2

Take out of the fridge about half an hour to an hour before baking. If not risen much, leave a bit longer at room temperature or in airing cupboard. (It won't have puffed up that much, and will puff up in oven).

Preheat oven to 220 degrees C with lidded Dutch oven inside. 

Turn the loaf into the Dutch oven, replace the lid and bake for 20 minutes.

Remove the lid, reduce temperature to 190 degrees C and bake for a further 20 minutes.

Leave to cool before cutting.

Quick Sour Dough and Yeast Loaf

 We've been trying out lots of sour dough recipes recently. Some of them are a huge faff. Others slightly less. I like the Bake with Jack recipe here https://www.bakewithjack.co.uk/blog-1/2018/7/5/sourdough-loaf-for-beginners, but I also wanted a recipe that doesn't need as much attention through the day and doesn't need an overnight proove. This one is loosely based on this King Arthur Flour baguette recipe.https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/sourdough-baguettes-recipe. It is quicker than other sour dough recipes and it does have a little instant dried yeast in it to help speed it along. I'm experimenting with less and less yeast and will try leaving it out all together. You do get a slightly less open crumb from this one, but it is still really good.

You will need a lively sour dough starter to make this. Check out Bake with Jack for how to do that. I got some sour dough starter from my son Tom. I keep its descendants in the fridge (and have an insurance one in the freezer). I get it out of the fridge the afternoon before I want the loaf and feed it up ready to use the next day. Take 30g starter, add 60g organic strong flour and 60g room temperature water, stir and leave in a warm place. A few hours later feed again with 100g each of flour and water, leaving it again in a warm place overnight and checking that it is bubbling well, preferably doubling in size by the morning. Once you've got a bubbly lively starter that's doubled in size, you can be eating this loaf in about 4 hours with minimal faffing during that time.

For a roughly 900g loaf:

320g lively sour dough starter

190g lukewarm water

400g strong bread flour (all white, or a mix of white, wholemeal or granary)

2 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp instant dried yeast

Method

1. Mix all the ingredients together with a rubber spatula. The dough should be quite wet.

2. Knead in a stand mixer for 7 minutes.

2a. Optional step, but I think it improves the texture of the bread: Turn the dough onto a wet work surface and stretch and fold it (see Bake with Jack video to get folding technique). 

3. Put the dough into an oiled bowl, cover and leave in a warm place.

3a. Again optional step, but as above you get a better texture. Repeat the fold after about 60 minutes, leaving it to rest for another half hour.

4. Shape the dough into your chosen form (if you haven't done the extra folds, this will be about 90 minutes after you kneaded it; you'll need to gently deflate the dough and gently shape it) - I put it into a well-floured round proving basket, but you could just put it in a loaf tin for a sandwich loaf, or you could shape it into baguettes.

5. Leave to proove for another 90 minutes to 2 hours, preheating the oven towards the end of the prooving time. You want the dough to have risen, although not necessarily to have doubled in size. It should look slightly puffy and be about a third bigger than before.

6. For a nice crusty loaf, heat a large Dutch oven (Le Creuset) in the oven set as hot as it will go (around 230 C). When it is up to temperature, carefully transfer the loaf into the Dutch oven (I struggle with this, as it's hard to get the wet dough not to stick to the basket. I turn it out onto a floured bendy silicon chopping bard and try and slide it into the Dutch oven without burning myself. It usually manages to flip over on one side and I lose the nice round shape, but it still tastes great). Replace the lid and bake for 20 minutes with the lid on. Remove the lid and bake for a further 15 - 20 minutes. Turn out to cool on a rack.

Example timing:

Day before - feed up the starter in the afternoon, give it another feed before bed and leave in a warm place

8am - Mix and knead the dough/fold if folding

9.30am - Fold again if folding

10am - Gently shape and place in prooving basket or loaf tin

11am - 11.30am Preheat oven and Dutch oven with lid

11.30am - 12pm Bake the loaf

12.30 - 1pm Eat the loaf!

Bibimbap

 

A Korean classic that we ate regularly when we lived in Korea. The best ones are Dolsot Bibimbap, where they use a super hot stone bowl to put the rice and veggies in - it gives the rice a nice almost burnt crispy crunchiness and keeps everything hot. But it works in a normal bowl.

For two generous portions:

200g short grain rice /sushi rice

1 medium courgette

2 large carrots

200g fresh spinach

100g mushroom

200g beansprouts

2 cloves garlic

1 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted for 5 minutes or so in a hot oven or in a dry frying pan - don't let them burn

sesame oil

soy sauce

2 eggs

Other proteins of choice eg salmon, beef mince fried with a little garlic and soy, marinated fried or baked tofu, chicken thigh marinated in hot sauce/soy and oven cooked. You only need a small amount per bowl.

For the kochujang sauce (you may need more, depending on how much people like):

1 tbsp kochujang

1 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp maple syrup

small clove garlic, crushed

dash rice wine vinegar

water to thin slightly

1. Prepare all the veggies - cut the courgette lengthways in quarters, then into thin slices. Put in a colander and sprinkle with coarse salt, then set aside for 15 minutes.
2. Peel and cut the carrots into matchsticks.
3. Wash, dry and thinly slice the mushrooms.
4. Wash the spinach and beansprouts.
5. You can use different veggies, depending on what is available. Swiss chard is good as is onion. I have also saved time by frying it all together like a stir fry, in vegetable oil and sesame oil, then adding soy sauce and more sesame oil to taste. Not authentic, but when it's all mixed up anyway it tastes the same.
6. Prepare and cook the rice: rinse it several times in cold water, then leave to soak in cold water for about 30 minutes. Drain and put in a heavy based saucepan with a tight-fitting lid  (preferably non-stick to help when cleaning up). Pour in 250ml cold water (125ml of water for every 100g rice), then bring to the boil with the lid on. Reduce the heat and cook for 10 minutes, importantly not removing the lid at all, then take it off  the heat and leave it for another 10 minutes, again without removing the lid. Alternatively use a rice cooker - I wish I had one.
7. Rinse and drain the courgettes. Bring a large pan of water to the boil, then blanch the courgettes for 1 minute. Remove from the water with a slotted spoon, drain them in a colander, then toss them with a dash of sesame oil and soy sauce.
8. Bring the pan of water back to the boil, drop in the beansprouts and cook them for about 3 minutes. Drain and toss them in a little sesame and soy sauce.
9. Cook the carrots for about 1 and half minutes in the microwave with a tablespoon of water. Drain them and toss them in the same sesame soy sauce mix.
10. Fry the mushrooms a little sunflower oil, adding some crushed garlic if you like.
11. Tip the mushrooms into a dish, then put the spinach in the frying pan and let it wilt over a low heat until it looks cooked - press it in a sieve to get the excess liquid out, then toss in sesame and soy sauce.
12. It doesn't matter if the veggies are at room temperature - the rice should be hot though.
13. Fry the eggs.
14. Assemble the bibimbap - put the rice into warmed bowls, top with the fried egg, then arrange the veggies around the edge. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds. 
15. Stir together the ingredients for the kochujang sauce - allow each person to put as much of it as they like into their bowl, depending on how spicy they like it. Give it all a good stir and devour.