Oaty crumpets

Inspired by the Shipton Mill ‘Focus on Flat or Flatter Breads‘ article this month I thought I’d have a go at making a version of oaty flatbreads.  Having made half a dozen for lunch using our Crepe Machine I still had loads of batter left so I thought I’d have a go at making crumpets.

The recipe is roughly based on the ‘staffordshire oatcakes’ recipe from the river cottage bread book but I did quite a bit of reading about them on the shipton mill website and in Elizabeth David’s ‘English Bread and Yeast Cookery‘ book.

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Ingredients (makes ~16 crumpets)

110g Wholemeal Flour

110g medium oatmeal

110g farine de ble noir (french buckwheat flour)

5g dried yeast

6g salt

250ml warm water

250ml whole milk

Ghee for cooking

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How to make them

1) Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl then add the water and milk, mix well with a whisk then cover and leave for a couple of hours.

2) When the batter is bubbling away heat up a large flat pan (I used our crepe machine which is one of the best bits of kitchen kit we own!) and place the crumpet rings onto the pan to warm up.

3) Put a blob of ghee (or oil) into each ring and spoon the batter in so that it is about 1cm deep.

4) Once the tops have started to set around the edges remove the rings and flip the crumpets over, if you have space you could begin filling the crumpet rings again for the next batch.

5) When the crumpets are golden brown on both sides remove them from the pan and either eat immediately or cool on a cooling rack for toasting later on.

6) eat and enjoy!

(submitted to yeastspotting)

Nearly-veggie burgers!

we had a bunch of veg left from the veg box we get delivered including a little butternut squash so I decided to make something up for dinner.  The recipe kind of evolved as I was making it but it ended up as nearly-veggie burgers (i.e. Veggie burgers with bacon in!) with chips.
Charlie got very confused when we were talking about butternut squash and said “I want some butternut squash to drink”, we gave him some blackcurrant squash instead!
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Ingredients (serves 2)
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1 butternut squash
3 sprigs of thyme
1/2 bulb of garlic
Rapeseed oil
3 potatoes
1 large leek
2 rashers bacon
50g sunflower seeds
1 egg yolk
1/2 head Broccoli
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How to make it
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1) peel the squash, remove the seeds then chop into smallish (~1-2cm) chunks.
2) peel the garlic cloves then place whole cloves in a baking tray with the squash, thyme, salt, pepper and a generous glug of rapeseed oil and put in the oven at 200°C for about half an hour, turning occasionally.
3) wash the potatoes and cut into thick chips, put into a second baking tray with oil, salt & pepper and put into the oven.
4) chop the leek roughly and gently fry in some butter, chop the bacon finely and add to the leeks.
5) toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan over a medium heat until golden brown and just starting to burn.
6) when the squash is cooked put it in a bowl with the leeks & bacon, sunflower seeds and about 1/3 of the potatoes and mash it all together. 
7) When the mixture has cooled mix in the egg yolk then shape into 4 burgers and fry then in a little oil in a large pan.
8) serve with the chips and some steamed broccoli.
9) eat and enjoy!

Easter Simnel Cake

 

 

We had a wonderful first Easter at St Andrews, three very different  services on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday and I got to play the Organ on Easter Sunday morning (which is definitely the one day of the year when you are practically obliged to pull out all the stops, at least for the last verse of Thine Be The Glory!!).

On Easter Saturday we went over to my aunt and uncle’s for lunch and had a lovely time, as we were leaving my cousin started making a Simnel cake (which I absolutely love!) so I cheekily leant over her shoulder and took a photo of the recipe!  I have no idea what book it was from I’m afraid apart from the fact that it was written for cooking in an Aga.  After adapting it slightly I made this on Easter Sunday – it is truly delicious!

Simnel Cake is a traditional Easter fruit cake made with a layer of Marzipan in the centre, a marzipan coating and eleven balls of Marzipan on the top to represent the disciples (minus Judas).

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Ingredients

225g Margarine

150g Demarara Sugar

75g Golden Syrup

4 eggs

225g Self Raising Flour

225g Sultanas

100g Currants

150g Glace Cherries, quartered

Grated Rind of 2 Lemons

2 teaspoons Mixed Spice

500g Marzipan (I have made this in the past but bought it ready made this time)

Apricot jam

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How to make it

1) Mix all the ingredients apart from the marzipan and jam

2) Line the base and sides of a 20cm cake tin with baking paper, ideally use one with a removable bottom as this is not easy to get out of the tin!

3) Pour half the mixture into the cake tin.

4) Roll a third of the marzipan into a disc the size of the tin and place on top of the mixture.

5) Pour the rest of the mixture on top of the marzipan.

6) Cut a disc of baking paper the size of the tin and place on top of the cake mix then put it in the oven at 130°C for 4-5 hours (I had it in for four hours then turned the oven off and let it cool down in the oven – the original Aga recipe said up to 10 hours in the simmering oven)

7) Remove the cake from the tin and lightly cover the top and sides with apricot jam.

8) Set aside a third of the remaining marzipan then roll the rest into a disc large enough to cover the cake (as you can see I didn’t quite roll it large enough!).  Put it on top then smooth it down the sides.  Roll the rest of the marzipan into eleven balls and place them round the edge of the cake, securing them with a little water.

9) Grill the top lightly to achieve the distinctive Simnel Cake look.

10) Eat and enjoy!

Maundy Thursday reflections

This was written for our Maundy Thursday service this evening.

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I wonder how many meals you can remember? Cast your mind back to meals which stand out in your memory. Maybe you had a fancy meal at a really nice restaurant, maybe you once had a meal in a truly beautiful location, maybe you had a meal with a special group of friends, maybe you remember a first, or perhaps last, meal with a loved one.

Food connects us. It connects us with people, with places, with friends, with strangers. Jesus used food to connect with people as well. Think of the feeding of the five thousand, the dinner with all sorts of misfits at Zaccheus’ house, the barbecue on the beach after the resurrection. Jesus knew how important food is in connecting with people.

At the last supper Jesus knew this was the last time he would eat with these twelve friends and he knew he wanted to make it special. So he took the bread, the everyday bread they would have had with every meal, and said “every time you eat this, remember me”. And, to reinforce the point, he took the wine and again said “every time you drink this, remember me”.

He knew what he, and they, would be going through over the coming days and he knew that afterwards they would think back to this meal, this moment, and remember all that he had said and done. And in the years to come his friends would tell their friends, who would tell their friends, who would tell their friends, until two thousand years later we too gather to remember that meal. To remember that time and place and all that Jesus said and did.

So lets share this bread and wine together and remember those special meals which we have shared and cast our minds back to that meal all those years ago, remembering what Jesus went on to do for us.

Palm Sunday – a retelling

Last week our pastoral group led the Thursday evening communion service at college and we explored how Jesus subverted the expectations people had of what the Messiah would do.  One of the ways we did this was by retelling three of the stories from Holy week to show how people might have expected Jesus to act.  The idea was partially inspired by The Orthodox Heretic by Pete Rollins.  I rewrote the Palm Sunday story, based on Matthew 21:1-9

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As he approached Jerusalem the Messiah sent two of his servants ahead, saying “Go into the town ahead of you and you will find a royal chariot and a pair of fine stallions. You will bring them to me. If anyone questions your intentions, you know what to do.”

This took place to fulfil what had been written:
“He who would conquer worlds must come with power,
With chariot and horse comes victory’s hour”

The servants did as the Messiah ordered. They brought the chariot and polished it until it gleamed like the midday sun. A large crowd was summoned from the city and were ordered to line the route with their cloaks. They were then ordered to cut down the branches from the trees, which would ordinarily have provided them with shade, to fan the Messiah as he passed.

The crowds, led by the Messiah’s guards, were chanting:
See, the glorious hero comes!
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums.
Have no mercy, mighty king
victorious one, all conquering!

Maundy Thursday service

I think Maundy Thursday is one of my favourite days in the Church year.  It offers a chance to look afresh at something that is at the core of our weekly worship –  the Last Supper.  The story is so familiar as we retell it almost every week in communion but sometimes that familiarity can mean we don’t engage with it as much as we should.  Maundy Thursday gives an opportunity to dwell more deeply on that familiar story and allow it to speak to us anew.

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I have been privileged to be able to lead several Maundy Thursday services over the past few years and each one has been special in a different way.  This year we are celebrating our first Easter at St Andrews, Avonmouth, the church we are placed in while I am at theological college, and I am really excited about leading the Maundy Thursday service this Thursday.

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This year we will be moving slowly through the story, pausing to reflect on five aspects:

Preparing for the story (preparations) – Luke 22:7-13

Entering the story (footwashing) - John 13:3-5, 12-17

Exploring the story (bread and wine) - Luke 22:14-20

Expanding the story (Holy Spirit) - John 14:15-17a, 25-27

Leaving the story (Going out) - Matthew 26:30

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Each aspect will include the reading, a short reflection, a response/action and after each one we will sing this Taize chant together:

Stay with us o Lord Jesus Christ, night will soon fall
Then stay with us o Lord Jesus Christ, light in our darkness

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Service sheet

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I can’t wait!

One a penny, two a penny…

…hot cross buns!

I’ve wanted to try making hot cross buns for a couple of years now but never quite got round to it before Easter and it seems a bit wrong to make them after Easter for some reason.  However in Dan Lepard’s always excellent ‘how to bake‘ column in the Guardian this week he had a recipe for…you guessed it…Hot Cross Buns!(click for recipe) It seemed like a good opportunity to try them out.

As is often the case with Dan’s recipes they had a couple of interesting ingredients thrown into the mix – in this case cider and double cream.  As the recipe only called for 150ml of cider and the Co-op only sold 500ml bottles, I selflessly had to drink the rest of the bottle while I was making them – it’s a hard life!

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Ingredients (makes 12 buns)

The ingredients list for Dan’s Hot Cross Bun Recipe can be found here

Notes:

• I used a mixture of sultanas and raisins for the mixed fruit. Next time I think I will rehydrate them by soaking them in a little water, this will stop them from drawing water out of the dough and should help the finished buns keep a little longer.
• I found there was far too much of the mixture for the crosses, I will probably halve it next time.
• Conversely I found that there was not enough glaze (probably says more about my sweet tooth than anything else), I ended up making another batch of glaze.
• I used flour from Shipton Mill and yeast from Doves Farm.

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How to make them:

1) Mix the ingredients for the ferment (yeast, wholemeal flour and cider), mix well then leave to ferment for about half an hour.

2) Whisk together the cream, eggs, honey and mixed spice in a small saucepan, warm gently to just above room temperature on a very low heat stirring all the time – you do not want it to cook!  This is just to give the dough a bit of warmth so that the yeast gets a bit of a boost as the alcohol and the spices will slow it down.

3) Mix together the flour, cornflour and salt in a separate bowl.

4) Add the cream/egg/honey/spice mix to the ferment, stir well.  Add the flour mix and the dried fruit and mix it all together, scraping in any flour from the side of the bowl.  Leave to rest for 10 minutes – you can refill your glass of cider if you need to at this point!

5) Scrape the dough out onto a worktop and knead gently for a couple of minutes.  When I did this raisins kept popping out all over the place – just stick them back in and keep going!  Form the dough back into a ball and put it back in the bowl.  Cover and leave somewhere warm to rise for an hour (I put it in the airing cupboard but an oven on very low can work very well too).

6) Once the dough has risen for an hour tip it back out onto the worktop and flatten it down with your fingertips to squeeze out all the air bubbles.

7) Divide the dough into 12 roughly even pieces, shape each piece into a ball and place the balls on a lined baking tray to rise.

8) Leave these to rise until they have noticeably increased in size (I left them about 45 minutes).  Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200°C.

9) When the buns have risen mix the ingredients for the cross (plain flour, sunflower oil, water) and spoon into a piping bag.

10) With a very sharp knife lightly score a cross into the surface of each bun then pipe the cross mixture onto these cuts, don’t worry too much about neatness, they will even out in the oven.

11) Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until golden brown, turning if you need to ensure they are evenly cooked.

12) Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack.

13) When they have cooled a little (but not completely), mix together the ingredients for the glaze (water, sugar, mixed spice), heat in a pan until it starts to go syrupy.  using a pastry brush coat the buns with the glaze.  (alternatively you could dissolve some apricot jam in a little water, warm it through and use as a glaze instead).

14) Eat and enjoy!

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A Prayer for Good Friday:

Eternal God,
in the cross of Jesus
we see the cost of our sin
and the depth of your love:
in humble hope and fear
may we place at his feet
all that we have and all that we are,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen

Spicy goat stew

I popped into the butchers this morning on the way back from college to get some meat for tea and they had some goat which is something I’ve never cooked before so I thought I’d give it a go!  After a brief chat with the very helpful butcher about what flavours go with it and different ways to cook it I brought some home to cook.  The best way to cook goat meat is very slowly for as long as you can!  I made it at about 2pm and left it in the oven at 140°C until we ate it at about 7pm – it was amazing!  We had some lovely friends come round for tea unexpectedly and this just about fed four (I couldn’t bring myself to tell them it was goat…)

Ingredients (Serves 3/4)

600g goat shoulder, cut into approximately 2-3cm cubes

3 green chillies with seeds in, chopped roughly

400g tin tomatoes

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped roughly

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp hot paprika

1 tsp turmeric

seeds of 4 cardamom pods, crushed

generous pinch of salt

500ml veg stock

50g dried apricots, halved

2 carrots, cut into large chunks

2 star anise

squeeze of lime juice

How to make it:

1) In a heavy duty ovenproof pan with a lid (I used a round Le Creuset pan) brown the diced meat in a little vegetable oil.

2) Meanwhile mix the rest of the ingredients, apart from the stock, apricots, carrots, star anise and lime juice, in a mixer until fairly smooth.

3) Once the meat is nicely browned add the spicy tomato mixture, stock, apricots, carrots and star anise, stir well and bring to the boil.

4) Once the stew is boiling put the lid on and place in a preheated oven at 140°C for at least 3 hours (I cooked it for about 4 1/2).

5) It is ready to eat when the goat is no longer stringy but melts in your mouth.  The lime juice can be used to take away some of the heat if you have gone overboard on the chillies!

6) Serve with rice and/or nice crusty bread

7) eat and enjoy!

Chicken, fennel and apricot tagine with swede and parmesan chips

I’m afraid I didn’t take any photos of this as I couldn’t find the camera and we were too hungry to waste time looking for it!  The recipe was inspired by, but ultimately bore little resemblance to, a recipe by Jamie Oliver.

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Ingredients (serves 3/4)

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For the marinade:

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground ginger

salt

pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

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For the Tagine:

2 large Chicken breasts, cut into small cubes

1 small leek, sliced

1 fennel bulb, cut into wedges (save the fronds for decoration!)

3 baby aubergines, cut into chunks

4 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced

150g dried apricots, halved

500ml chicken stock

squeeze of lemon juice

salt and pepper

1/2 a stick of Chorizo, finely diced

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For the chips:

1 swede, peeled, washed and cut into ~5x1x1cm fingers (don’t worry about them being too even)

glug of olive oil

50g parmesan

freshly ground pepper

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How to make it

1) mix together the marinade ingredients, add the chicken and leave in the fridge for as long as you can to let the flavours infuse (I gave it half an hour but the longer the better).

2) heat a generous glug of olive oil in a heavy Le Creuset type pan, add the marinaded chicken and brown it off.

3) add the leek, fennel, aubergine and garlic and cook gently for 5 minutes, stirring regularly.

4) when all the vegetables have softened add the apricots, stock, lemon juice, salt and pepper and simmer gently for about half an hour with the lid on.

5) While the tagine is simmering, put the swede into a baking tray, add the oil, parmesan and pepper and mix well, place in a preheated oven at 180°C for half an hour, turning regularly (I turned them every 10 minutes and it probably wasn’t enough, at least at the start).

6) When everything is ready fry the chorizo briefly to crisp it up a bit.

7) Put the tagine in bowls, sprinkle the chorizo over it, stack the swede chips on top and decorate with the fennel fronds if you have saved them.

8) Eat and enjoy!

why spend money…

Pulla (Finnish coffeebread)

My tutor at College, Eeva John, has just left to begin a new role with the Church of England.  She is from Finland originally and so for her farewell party tomorrow I have made Pulla which is a traditional Finnish sweetbread, similar to Brioche but with main difference being the addition of cardamom which adds a beautiful extra dimension to the bread.  The recipe I have used is adapted from one here, which is an adaptation from this book so it’s a few steps away from a truly traditional recipe but last time I made it Eeva seemed to think it tasted pretty authentic!

Ingredients (makes 2 loaves)

550g strong white flour

8g dried yeast (or 15g fresh yeast)

6g salt

100g caster sugar

crushed seeds of 8 cardamom pods

240ml warm milk

2 eggs (room temperature)

60g unsalted butter

+ egg/milk wash

How to make it (warning – this could take up to four hours so don’t start too late!)

1) Sieve the flour into a large bowl and add the yeast, salt, sugar and cardamom, mix well.

2) Warm the milk in a saucepan and add the butter, stir gently until the butter melts.

3) Add the milk/butter and the eggs to the dry ingredients and mix well, you should end up with quite a sticky dough.

4) Knead the dough for a good 15 minutes until the texture changes and it becomes smooth and less sticky.  For a good tutorial from Richard Bertinet on kneading wet dough see this video from the Guardian.  Your best friend when it comes to wet dough is a dough scraper which you can get for next to nothing from Amazon and will make a world of difference!  Try not to add flour, even if it seems too sticky – remember the golden rule in baking: wetter is better!

5) Once the dough is well kneaded form it into a ball and place it back into the bowl, cover, I use an inverted (and clean!) bin bag, and leave to rise for an hour or so until it has grown significantly.

6) Once it has risen gently turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and press it down with your fingertips to deflate it.

7) Divide the dough into 2 pieces and then divide each piece into 4 further pieces (you need 4 pieces per loaf).

8) Roll each piece into a long sausage, squeezing out any air bubbles the billow up as you go.  The aim is to get the sausages as long as they will go but they should all be roughly the same length so it is advisable to roll the smallest piece of dough first.

9) Now we come to the (slightly) more complicated part! (this technique is taken from here) lay the strands out with two going each way to form a sort of cross.  The strands should alternate with one going over/under and the other going under/over (see picture)

10) Now for each pair of strands tuck the one that comes out over the top underneath the one that comes out underneath (again see picture for clearer explanation!).

11) Again you have a sort of cross, repeat step 10 with each pair of strands.

12) Keep repeating step 10 until all the strands have been used up and the dough is relatively circular.

13) Gather the edges up into the middle to form a sort of ball, squeeze the ends of the strands together in the middle then flip the ball over and place on a sheet of baking paper (I thoroughly recommend non-stick baking sheets for this).

14) Cover with an upturned mixing bowl and leave to rise for about an hour.

15) Brush lightly with an egg and milk wash then bake in an oven at 180°C for approximately 40 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

16) Eat and enjoy!

Hedgehog potatoes!

I fired up the Pizza oven for the first time this year today, just to give it a good burn before the temperature drops again but once I’d got it up to temperature (350°C!) it seemed a shame not to cook anything in it!  as it was nearly lunchtime I thought I’d try something I’d seen on Pinterest a few days ago – Hasselback Potatoes.

These are a Scandinavian (Swedish possibly?) way of Baking potatoes and look brilliant (in real life anyway, not so sure about my photography skills!).  Charlie thought they looked like hedgehogs so we renamed them ‘Hedgehog Potatoes’.

Obviously you can cook them in a normal oven but seeing as though I had the pizza oven fired up I thought I’d see what they were like in that.  Once it had settled down the temperature was hovering around 300-315°C but in a normal oven you can just turn it up as hot as it will go.

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Ingredients (served 2 adults and 1 child)

5 medium baking potatoes (2 each for us, 1 for Charlie)

6 or 7 cloves of garlic

a glug of extra virgin olive oil

a sprinkle of sea salt

5 blobs of butter (I used unsalted but mainly because that is what we had in the fridge!)

Freshly ground pepper

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5 squares of tin foil each big enough to wrap up a potato

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How to cook them

1) Preheat the oven as hot as it will go.

2) Slice each potato about three quarters of the way through at roughly 5mm intervals (you can do it thinner if you’re feeling precise!).  The potato should hold together and look a bit like a concertina.

3) Slice the garlic into thin slivers and tuck a slice into each slit in the potatoes.

4) place each potato in the centre of a tin foil square, drizzle over the olive oil and sprinkle a bit of sea salt  on each potato.

5) Scrunch up the foil to seal in the potato and place in the hot oven for about 30 minutes.

6) Take the potatoes out of the oven and open up the foil so you can see the majority of the potato but so that it is still holding it together.  Place a blob of butter on the top of each potato and grind some pepper on top.

7) Place back in the oven (with the foil still open) for a further 10 minutes until they have browned slightly on top.

8) Enjoy! We ate ours with cheese but you could have them just on their own or with whatever you would normally have with a jacket potato.

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Do let me know if you try these, I think they’re amazing!