The Bee Hive

Lovage and Pancetta Arancini

I made these savory rice balls in May when the lovage leaves were young and tender. The Arancini recipe is taken from Hugh FW's weekly column in the Guardian, but I swapped a few ingredients around, adding the lovage and lemon and pancetta.

Lovage, used as both odour eaters in the Middle Ages and as an aphrodisiac in the 16th Century, has an intense celery like aroma and flavour. It's fabulous stuffed inside a chicken prior to roasting and also great when a small amount of leaves are added to pea and ham soup.

Broad Beans

We've just eaten the first broad beans of the year freshly picked from the our back veggie patch. Damn tasty but the yield seems even lower than usual. Next year I'm taking a leaf out of David Barker's (Wolterton Hall's organic) growing methods and planting the plants close together. My method of generous spacing just makes the low yield even more frustrating as I could have been growing something else in it's place.

Nostalgic Chocolate Chip Biscuits

These biscuits taste just like ones my Mum use to make when we were younger. They are light and crunchy with a buttery taste.

Chocolate + Nut Biscuits

• 70g caster sugar
• 70 demerara sugar
• 125g unsalted butter

Cream together the above ingredients in a bowl.

Add to the creamed ingredients -

• 1 beaten egg
• 60g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
• 60g white chocolate, roughly chopped
• 60g chopped hazelnuts

Mix in -

• 140g plain flour, sieved
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda, sieved

Either roll into sausage, wrap in cling film and fridge or place teaspoons of mixture on to baking tray.
Bake at 170ºc for 10 - 12 mins.

I started writing this on Monday and it's now Saturday. Some people blog effortlessly but my attempts are always thwarted by something or other. I have images stacked up in iPhoto, of subjects I want to eulogize about... one day I'll write about them.

We drove to London on Sunday to visit Simon & Angie at the very successful, 'St Judes in the City' exhibition held at the Bankside Gallery over the past 10 days. Before we hit the river bank, we took a trip to Spitalfields to visit the girls Auntie Miranda at her clothes stall in the market. Just next to Miranda's stall is one of the Leon Restaurants, a chain of eaterys set up by Allegra McEvedy, Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent in 2004.  The food is simple, seasonal, inexpensive, wholesome and tasty and perfect for family outings.

I've been cooking from the Leon book since Christmas when I received it as I gift. The Moroccan Meatballs have been eaten a few times, they're good and dead simple to make.

Here's a quick recipe how to make Meat Balls similar to Leon's:

500g minced lamb
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
lots for freshly ground pepper and sea salt
1 handful of both chopped mint and parsley
1 pitta torn up and soaked in milk
1 good pinch of dried oregano

1. Squeeze the excess milk from the pitta bread and add to a bowl with all of the other ingredients.
2. Using your hands, mix all the ingredients together until well combined.
3. Roll into balls and either char grill as they do at Leon's, fry or bake on silicone sheet in hot oven for 15 minutes.

We eat ours with either a homemade spicy tomato sauce made from: two tins of whole plum tomatoes added to a pan which contains browned sliced garlic cooked in olive oil. Add a cinnamon stick, a pinch of chili flakes, a pinch of sugar, oregano, salt and black pepper. Reduce until thick.

Alternatively, serve with rocket leaves, tzakiki, houmous, pitta bread and baked sliced aubergine.

Last week at Jelly Festival

Jelly Festival

This time last week we were serving food to a steady stream of happy cider drunk punters at Jelly Festival, South Creake, Norfolk. The lead up to the festival was a little stressful. I guess the most stressful thing was not knowing what quantities of food to per-order in anticipation of the hopefully hungry festival goers or, how little to order in case the event was a wet wash out. It was both.

The week prior to the event, Stu with the aid of a workshop full of tools and an eye for typography, started to design a sign for our stall. We were selling BBQ sweetcorn with various flavoured butters, garlic bread, BBQ mushrooms drenched in garlic butter served in a toasted baguette and for pudding, chocolate brownies.

sign making in progress

Days before the Saturday event, I foolishly decided to order 14 cases of sweetcorn. That's 420 cobs. Yikes. I also ordered 40 baguettes and I made 144 servings of Ottolenghi's brownies. What an over ambitious fool I am. Why didn't I believe the weather forecast and why didn't I realise that we could never have manage to sell 420 cobs on the 2 large BBQs even if we were busy from the 12pm start? Still, it was the first time Stu and I had sold food at a stall and also the first time we have ever cooked in the same kitchen/gazebo/field together. We managed to co-ordinate mechanically, and with the help of our dearest friend Rosie who was serving the customers, we did managed to make a slight profit. All thanks to the sunshine though, if the rain hadn't cleared like it did at 3pm, we would have been in miserable, damp and in gloomy debt but instead, we're thinking where and when is the next festival? If we do ever repeat this formula, I don't think I really want to spend Monday morning selling (almost giving away) boxes of sweetcorn to Norwich market stall holders in 'Apprentice' style cut your losses sales-girl mode.

our stall

Warm honeyed figs

My Lidls bargain of the day - a box of Israeli green figs, perfectly ripe and very cheap. For 20 figs, the box cost less that a fiver - not bad. I hadn't dropped in for fruit and veg so to wasn't paying attention to the goods on offer, but a lovely elderly man proudly showed me his about-to-be-purchased box of figs, saying that this will tide him over until he starts to climb a fig tree for perfectly ripe figs on Elm Hill. He then shared his favourite way of eating them, he said that they are delicious fried with butter.

I've just tried his suggestion, adding to the butter; honey, a cinnamon stick and a squeeze of lemon. I then dolloped on a heap of Greek yogurt and drizzle of honey. I liked them a lot.

Play and Freeze

Make ice-cream with no mess, no electricity but possibly a broken toe....

Apart from the almost injuries, Play and Freeze is brilliant and a must have for anyone with a team of energetic helpers and ice-cream lovers. Fi, clever ol' Fi, turned up to the campsite with an early birthday gift of ice, rock salt, cream, vanilla sugar and chocolate chips and a large cube wrapped in paper - the Play and Freeze.

We've tried a few flavours, so far raspberries, cream and Greek yogurt is really good. I've been making a banana cake lately which requires the bananas to be cooked in a butterscotch sauce. I can't stop thinking about how tasty caramelised bananas would be when added with cream and Greek yogurt to the ice-cream ball. For now, here's how we made raspberry ripple.

Firstly, add ice-cubes and rock salt to one end.

To the end end, add cream...raspberries, Greek yogurt, vanilla sugar and milk

Then roll it, kick it (gently) drag it, fight over it for ten whole minutes, stirring it a few times.

then eat it.

bad cooking day

Both girls are asleep. Bliss. There is no Cbleedin-beebies on the TV only I have just realised I have been happily singing a long to the irritating Cbeebies programmes on Radio 7. Arhhhh. It worries me that when I turn on the TV, the channel I instantly punch into the hand controls is 617 (yes, you've guessed it, CBeebies). And now here I am indulging in some guilt free Internet activity whilst singing along Balamory. Time for some music...

I'm having a bad cooking day today. The chocolate crispies I made with Evie earlier went all grainy and I've just melted 200g of quality chocolate, heated a good glug of double cream with cardamom and orange peel to infuse, with the intention of making truffles for Easter gifts. Only the bloody stuff has 'seized' (also gone grainy) and there is no way of recovering it. I'm always so careful never to get any moisture in chocolate but I guess that is what has happened. Damn and blast it.

So not to waste my thick and disastrous truffle mix, I thought I'd try and fudge it into some kind of brownie concoction. I added eggs, caster sugar and ground almonds and some more melted butter and poured it into a shallow cake tin. It's now baked and looks alright, if a little oily (I don't think I combined the mixture very well, my enthusiasm for the chocolate gloop was fading fast).

Taste verdict - Matilda has scoffed a huge piece and is now bouncing of the walls and Stu likes the cardamom. All has not been wasted.

sourdough

Two weeks ago, I came home from work to find the oven that we bought over a year ago no longer in our bedroom but finally in it's place in the kitchen. I have a 70cm wide oven and a ceramic hob with touch sensitive controls. I love it and the difference the oven has made to my bread is quite excellent.  It rises so much more and cooks without it colouring unevenly. I can also watch it bake through the clean glass window instead of using my nose to guess when things are ready. I also love the fact the thermostat doesn't lie - which is quite odd and I can open the door with a handle instead of my fingers wedged in between the door and the oven. Basically I love it. The first thing I baked was a sourdough loaf....

It's amazing what you can achieve from fermenting potatoes, water and flour, time and patience. As I have mentioned  previously, I'm quite into making sourdough and am loving it and am ever so slightly obsessed with making it. Not one sourdough loaf seems to be the same, yet each loaf seems to taste pretty good. The flavour and texture I'm achieving is great but I can't get that proper looking loaf, you know the loaf that sits in deli windows, covered in flour with artful slashes across the top? But I will keep trying until I do.

I think to achieve that rustic look, you may need proper 'Bakers' equipment which I'm not using. Bakers use proving baskets, floured linen, bakers peel, baking stone and a spray bottle with water to get some humidity in to the oven. Stretching the skin/membrane of the dough as you shape it is also very important to achieve that rustic look. I often manage to tear the bubbly delicate skin as I’m forming the shape of the loaf, which then reveals the layers and structure of the dough underneath. I quite like this look once baked, I think it adds to its charm.

This recipe is for Angie. Good luck and get obsessed!

Feeding the starter prior to using it:

If you have 200g starter – and if it’s from me, it’s the’ mother starter’, it is more liquid than
a starter taken from a pre-salted kneaded batch.

Keep starter in a large glass jar, Kilner jars are ideal.
Take starter out of fridge and bring to room temperature. I usually give it 4-6 hours but it depends on your room temperature.

Add:
100g organic strong white flour  (sometimes I add 50g rye/50g white)
100g lukewarm filtered or bottled water. Use hot water from boiled kettle.
Mix with a wooden spoon.

Leave for another 6 hours.

Repeat above feed. Leave for another 6 hours.

Example Times:

Remove from fridge midday
First feed 4pm
Second feed 10pm.

• Start mixing the dough in the morning.
• The starter should be bubbly, thick and smell yeasty, fresh and slightly of apples.
• Take 250g starter and mix with 750g organic strong white flour. And 450 – 500ml of lukewarm water. The amount of liquid will depend on the flour using and also the consistency of the starter.
• Knead until you have combined flour and dough, it should take no more than 5 minutes. I use the bread machine on the dough setting and stop it once it has all combined and has a rough surface. Push your finger into the dough, it should be soft and springy and a little sticky.

• 

  Rest for 20 minutes for the gluten to develop.
• Meanwhile, warm a large bowl in the oven on a very low temperature.
• After the rest, the dough will have developed a stringing elasticity.



• Turn on bread machine if using, and use the dough setting and add:

1tbsp olive oil
15g Maldon sea salt.

• Knead for 15 minutes.
• Tip dough into warmed oiled bowl. Cover with oiled cling-film and leave to prove for 3 hours in a warm, draft free place.
• Once the dough has risen, very gently knock back the dough as you tip into on to a floured work surface.
• Without kneading, divide the dough into 2 or 3 pieces. It will be soft, warm, pliable dough and a little sticky.
• Then gently tuck the dough under, to form a round shape.
• Repeat this process for each piece of dough then sprinkle the dough with flour and smooth over.
• Make sure you leave space between each piece.
• Cover with a floured cloth and leave on the surface to rest for 20 minutes.



• Taking each piece of dough, again gently form a ball shape by tucking the skin under the loaf, this is the point when it often tears.
• Sprinkle again with flour.
• Place ball on to silicone matt or baking parchment and cover with plastic to stop a skin forming.
• Leave for final proofing for about 2-3 hours. Use indentation test*** to check if it's ready for baking (see below)
• At some point towards the end of the proving time, preheat oven to 220 ºc placing the baking stone and tray in the oven too
• Spray oven with water and very gently place bread in hot tray. Bake for 25-30 mins. You may need to turn it. To achieve a dry crust, keep the oven door open for last five minutes. It's cook when the bottom of the loaf sounds hallow when tapped.
  

***Indentation Test
To check the dough has proved enough, gently press your finger into the dough. If the dough springs back leaving no indentation, then it needs to be left to prove for longer.
If the dough springs back and leaves a slight indentation in the loaf, then it’s ready.
If the dough doesn’t spring back, quickly get it in the oven with knocking it, as this will disturb the gases that make it rise.

ciabatta

I'm really in to baking bread at the moment. Ciabatta and sourdough are my latest floury forays, as well as the standard, thrice weekly batches of wholemeal loaves.

The process of making ciabatta is quite lengthy and I have had a few bad attempts now, but that means I am begining to start to understand bread making and recognise when textures are right and wrong (or so I think).

A few weeks back, I made my best batch of ciabatta to date. Making it is such a great process, quite different to other breads because of the different stages you have get the dough, to achieve the typical airy, holey texture of a ciabatta. The dough feels very tactile and alive, gently pressing the dough to expel the gases feels wonderful beneath floury finger tips.

To make my bread, I use a bread machine to do the kneading. I have never baked a loaf in the machine, the idea of a odd shaped loaf with a hole in the bottom doesn't appeal. I always use the 45 minute pizza dough setting to get the dough ready for the proving stage in a suitable tin or tray. It saves time and is far less messy than if I was kneading on our narrow work surface, plus it avoids the temptation of four small helpful hands throwing flour about.

The results from the bread machine are great, especially when making a 'wet dough' bread like ciabatta.  The recipe I have used is from the excellent book, Baker by Dean Brettschneider, a  collection of recipes from Australian and Zealand professionals.