Chilli and rye sourdough bread

Thailand was magical as ever. Days spent doing my favourite things: swimming outside; reading cookbooks in a hammock; eating fresh, healthy Thai food and bargain hunting in markets... Immersing ourselves in a different world. On my return, one of the first things I did was make bread. Once you have some sourdough, you see, you are held ransom to it, knowing that it has only a certain number of days before it's no good and I was already a day over. Luckily, I'd left the sourdough in a hyperactive fridge, so it was fine.

Since I was anxious not to loose my dough, I overcame my jetlag and made the bread, combining all the ingredients down there and stirring in the sourdough combined with warm water and adding more water as needed to create that desired peanut butter texture. I put it in a greased and floured tin, covered it and left it for 10 hours on top of the radiator, before baking it this morning (1 hour, 170 degrees C). We ate it with spiced scrambled eggs (ground paprika and coriander to be precise). It's a spicy bread, therefore you need to offset the chilli to create that winning balance. If you would like to make this bread and you live in the UK I would be more than happy to send you some of my sourdough. Remember to always save a couple of tablespoons of your dough for the future. 

Ingredients:

350g rye flour
1-2 tablespoons sourdough

1 tablespoon plain flour

1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon linseeds

1 tablespoon oats

3 tablespoons wheat germ

3 dried red chillies, chopped finely

Warm water

Spelt and rye onion bread

My mum has three brothers and they all love to cook. Last week I was in Poland working on an important project. To celebrate my sending everything off on time, my godfather Wojtek (my mum's youngest brother) came round and taught me this way of making proper bread. We made one spelt and one rye one then, whereas this time I combined the two flours and left out the plain flour. This has made it even healthier and taste-wise, it worked beautifully. It's not too heavy at all, if that's what you're wondering.

Wojtek gave me some fermented dough, which I managed to smuggle through security in my hand luggage on the way back to London. In order to make "proper"  bread, you see, we need to use this rather than yeast. The only way you can get it is if you know someone that already has some spare and they give you a bit to use in your dough. Then every time you make bread (it needs to contain a lot of rye flour to make good leaven), you take 2 tablespoons of dough,  put it in a jar and allow it to ferment for a week in the fridge, you then need to make bread again the following week. It's quite a process even though the actual bread making is incredibly simple: Combine all the dry ingredients down there. Fry the onions in some oil, until they're golden like this:

Add the warm water to the fermented dough jar, shake it as vigorously as you can (my weak wrist action appeared to be a source of great amusement to my mentor) and pour that into the dry ingredients. Mix it in, then keep adding more water and stirring until you get the consistency of thick batter... Something like peanut butter maybe... Transfer that into the baking tray, which has been buttered and floured. Now allow to rest for 10 hours in a warm place. On a radiator perhaps? After exactly 10 hours, bake at about 150 degrees C, for 1 hour.

If you live in the UK (I'm sorry I realise that most of my readers are actually in the US), then do let me know if you fancy making some, because I'd be more than happy to send you some of my fermented dough and pass on the bread love.

Ingredients:

200g rye flour
200g spelt flour
2 tablespoons fermented dough
1 mug of warm water (aprox)
1 onion, chopped 
1 tablespoon sunflower oil
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon linseeds
1 tablespoon oats
3 tablespoons wheatgerm

Butter for greasing tray

Coconut and oat breakfast scones

Everyone loves scones. I always forget how much I do until I inadvertently try one, then I'm just all over them. Can't stop. The shop-bought ones are fluffy admittedly, but often unhealthy, laden with sugar and fats, so when I realized I was going to be having a scone love affair (replacing the now tired cinnamon bagels I've been eating all Winter) I quickly made some reasonably healthy ones. They may not be as fluffy as their shop-bought brothers, but home-made scones have their own wholesome charm, especially when warm, and you can add your favourite ingredient to the mix, which for me, at this moment in time, is coconut

Soak the coconut in the coconut milk for a couple of hours, use just enough to moisten the coconut, as we don't want too much moisture. Sift the flour and baking soda into a bowl (we want to add as much fluffiness as we can), add the sugar and the butter, cubed and softened. Work the mixture between the fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs - this usually takes about 10min. Add the coconut and egg, which will make the mixture very sticky. Blend it in as much as you can, then add the oats to soak up the excess moisture. If it is still too sticky then add a bit more flour while rolling it out on to a worktop. Roll it out until it's around 2-3cm thick and use a cutter, or a glass, to cut round shapes out of it, 5-7cm in diameter. Place on a greased baking tray and into a preheated oven (180 degrees C) for around 30min. I used coconut oil to grease the tray, and also to slather the still warm scones, then devoured them with an obligatory cuppa

Ingredients

150g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
150g light brown or coconut sugar
150g salted, soft butter
100g dessicated coconut, soaked in coconut milk
1 egg
100g oats

"Superfood" healthy french toast

There are few foods in this world that are quite as sexy as French toast drizzled in honey. Yet the dangerous voluptuousness of the classic recipe has made it a once-in-a-blue-moon treat. So imagine my glee at discovering that French toast can be made healthy without loosing its sex appeal. The replacements were simple: wholemeal bread instead of white, coconut oil instead of butter. Then to up the flavour stakes: plenty of cinnamon and vanilla, and a pleasant maltiness added by my superfood of the moment, maca powder

Beat the eggs with a fork on a large plate; add the cinnamon, maca powder and vanilla essence and keep beating until smooth. Halve the bread, and dip each bit in the eggy mixture, covering both sides well, before frying in hot coconut oil. When golden and crispy on both sides, remove from heat. Drizzle in honey and sprinkle with a tad more cinnamon before serving. For 1 slice of bread you will need 1 egg, 1/4 teaspoon each of cinnamon, good quality vanilla essence and maca powder
 

Cucumber salad for a rustic bluebell barbeque

I'm going to start by saying something jaw-droppingly controversial: I don't think the weather has been that bad this Spring. There, I said it. OK, it's been massively changeable, we've had rain, we've had sun, and now I've actually caught a cold... but actually when it really mattered, for me at least, it's been nice. Please note that both Bank Holidays have been lovely, with rain either side. During the last one, I decided to have a small barbeque among the bluebells in my garden. I baked bread buns made from a Danish rye flour, mixed with fluffy white flour, bought meat from Ginger Pig, including that sausage spiral down here, and little, multi-coloured peppers that we grilled along with slices of hallumi cheese

And finally, I made an unusual version of the Polish "mizeria' salad, which was pretty great, even if I do say so myself

You slice the (peeled) cucumber paper thin, and cover in salt. After 10min squeeze out any excess water. Chop the onion very finely also and add to the cucumber slices. Blend the sour cream with the chopped dill and pour over the cucumbers. Mix together delicately but thoroughly (you may have noticed that there is an art to this). Crumble a block of feta on top. This salad is good with all meats or just crusty bread, tzaziki-style

We bathed in the sunshine, marveled at the bluebells, drank sangria as usual and stuffed our faces with charred meats, saying how "rustic" it all was and how very sophisticated. Then Mike asked me for a napkin and I handed him the bogroll. Not quite there yet then...

Ingredients

2 Cucumbers
1 red onion
250ml sour cream
Handful chopped fresh dill
Black of feta (250g)
Sea salt

Bake yourself a man - A German sweet bread recipe

Last weekend my friend, Astrid, held her annual Christmas baking session. We made many varieties of cookie while drinking Prosecco and mulled wine, including all these ones, but today I want to tell you about beautiful Miriam's little men. This is yet another German Christmas tradition, and this particular recipe has been passed down through friendships and generations. As both myself and Miriam are fresh out of relationships the dough making was kind of like therapy. At one point I even found myself shaking my dough and telling it to grow up. And within 45min, it did!

First, you break up the fresh yeast in the lukewarm milk. Apparently, finding fresh yeast is not easy in the UK, our one came from Planet Organic. You combine the flour with the sugar and salt, and break the softened butter into this, working it into the mixture with your fingers. Once that's completely combined, start adding the milk (with the yeast thoroughly stirred in), and creating the dough. You need to really work it at this stage. Even when the dough is ready, the work continues for at least another ten minutes: "Beat it up" I was told, while it's creator went out for a cigarette. Finally, you cover the dough with a wet towel and place somewhere warm, to grow. After about 45min-1hour, separate it into equal chunks and make whatever takes your fancy. Traditionally it's men, but we also made women, snowmen, stars and children, the rest we plaited. If you are sticking to the traditional concept, make the head first and the body needs to be made out of just one chunk. Then stick the head on and bake for about 45min on a medium heat. The result is something like fresh, melt-in-your-mouth brioche, delicious with the lychee tea we drank at Astrid's house, and coffee the next morning, at my house. Next time, I may try adding the almonds too, though I think I'll leave the raisins out as they are prone to burning and shrivelling. No one needs that

Ingredients

1kg flour
40gr fresh yeast
125g sugar
1 tblsp salt
500ml lukewarm milk
100gr butter
(150g almonds or raisins, optional)

Manhattan Tophat

I love unusual cookbooks and this one that my friend gave me tops the weirdness charts

It's put together by SPACE studios and each recipe is from a different artist. It goes from hugely surreal recipes like Worm Sandwich, Cornish Pebbles on a bed of Concrete Fool, and Humble Pie, to little gems such as Elvis Presley's Fried Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich, Mrs. Obuabang's Fried Plantain and Manhattan Tophat, which I decided to make myself today, for brunch

All that I would add to the instructions, up there, is that you want to use a knob of butter for frying, salt over everything, and a bit of tabasco on the egg while it's frying

Crack the egg into a cup first, to avoid any trouble. I used quite a small piece of bread so the egg leaked out underneath - I cut the messy bits off, as aesthetics are of primary importance here

And here he is

Doesn't he look smart?

Conclusion: An extremely satisfying way to eat a fried egg with bread

A very special beans on toast

What an amazing, wild Saturday night I had last weekend. And, boy did I pay for it. In short, lets just say that it's been a long week, and there was only one thing for it - beans on toast. I believe this to be one of life's undervalued little gems. It's healthy, comforting and with oh-so-many variations. I made a great one today, with cherry tomatoes, my mum's meatballs, parmesan and peri-peri-sauce. I fried the little tomatoes in olive oil until they sizzled, then added the tin of baked beans. The meatballs I cut into fine strips and dry fried for a few minutes, before adding to the rest. I finished it off with grated parmesan and peri-peri for the extra kick. Other great combos include garlic, chillies and coriander, and crispy bacon and onion bits

Being a bit of a bitch this week has it's advantages - I have sorted out many issues, which normally I lack the energy, will and heart to even think about. For example, I made an insurance company that was asking me for £300, apologize and give me money instead (in case you are wondering how it's done - you simply keep cool and friendly while calmly raising the stakes every time you hear something you don't like). I guess it's good to come out of my bubble sometimes and see the world for what it really is. But a week is enough, thank you

A cold day and a hot bread and butter pudding (without raisins)

I'm not really a "pudding person". Perhaps this is because I struggle with self control at times. However, at this time of year, cold Sundays are crying out for a warming traditional English pud. And bread and butter is an old classic (it was invented in the 17th Century, you know). So I made it for lunch. Jamie thought this was really odd, as a pudding should be had for actual pudding apparently, but why would I want to eat a massive pudding after eating a massive dinner? That just doesn't make any sense to me, so bread and butter pudding for lunch it was. There are many variations of bread and butter pudding, this is my own version - it does not contain raisins, because my experimental breakfast (see The Breakfast Experiment) has categorically put me off the little blighters.

Ingredients

Loaf of brioche

Butter

3 eggs

50 grams caster sugar

1/2 pint of milk

200ml whipping cream

rind of 1 orange

teaspoon good vanilla essence

Mixed spice 

First, I heat the oven to 150  degrees celsius. I started off by slicing the brioche, buttering on both sides and cutting into two again, and lining a buttered dish with it, making sure there were no gaps, kind of like a jigsaw

The second layer was very thin slices layered on top of this

Then it's time to make the custard - I beat the eggs in one bowl, and the milk, whipping cream, sugar, orange zest and vanilla essence in another. I then combined the two and beat them together for ages, before pouring over the bread... and sprinkling with the mixed spice

Then into the oven it goes for 25mins - when it comes out, it is soft and creamy in the middle and brown on the outside. Cut into slices and eat immediately!

And then eat again cold later!