Tasty Minestrone

I came across this recipe in one of my Italian cookery books -  I have tweaked it a little for British late winter/Spring. It is hearty and tasty and full of good stuff!

1/2 head Celery
2 Onions

3 Carrots

3 cloves Garlic
3 Bay leaves
2 cups Lentils - Puy and red
5Tbs Tomato paste
Salt

Pepper

5L water

1Tbs Dijon Mustard
3Tbs red wine vinegar
Some form of greens, 3 cups - not kale, too tough! Something like spinach, red chard, rocket, endive, chicory, spring greens, (finely shredded) - just rinsed and drained, they will wilt down in the soup.

Sweat your onions till they are starting to colour, add the rest of the aromatics (carrots, celery, garlic, bay) and sweat down till they are softened - not too long, just past the 'crunch' stage
Add the tomato paste and gently fry for 3 mins or so.
Add half the water and bring to a gentle boil.
Add the salt, pepper, Puy lentils.
At this stage, put your pasta on to boil - cool and drain when done.
After 10 minutes, add the red lentils and the rest of the water, this will not be to the consistency you want to eat it at - it will thicken considerably as the red lentils cook.
Simmer for 15 minutes
Add the mustard and vinegar, stir thoroughly, then add the greens and pasta and ensure they are heated through.

Serve with a fresh crusty loaf

Results

After all my trepidation, it actually came out OK.

The loaf rose like a champion, the crust was, well... crusty, the texture was light and airy and chewy but the flavour - disappointing.

The plain white Lidl's bread flour isn't exactly the stuff of gastronomic orgasmitude( ??) and I didn't put enough salt in. One teaspoon of Neptune's' gift wasn't enough to lift it, but all in all, not bad for not following a recipe.

What was good was; the crust - golden brown, crunchy and yet not hard as concrete; the texture - springy and white and stretchy and chewy without wearing out ya gums.

So, for a first effort with sub-standard materials I am very pleased... now down to the shops for some more serious ingredients and a date with my new bread book - Dough by Richard Bertinet, apparently the bible for those who know. I would love to do his 5 day course, but at £800 I'm afraid that her indoors puts that firmly on the 'nice to have, when we are millionaires' list.

Kitchen Machinery

I am like most men in that I like gadgets - as I also like cooking, I have amassed a set of gadgets for use in the kitchen as well.

I am not one for silly little 'labour-saving' gadgets, but I do like my big kitchen machines.

My only specialist gadget is my bread maker. This has proven invaluable over the years, although these days I use it less and less.

Mine is a Russell Hobbs "Breadman Ultimate", which I can thoroughly recommend. As with most of my major kitchen gadgets, I picked it up from Nisbets clearance sales. I think I paid about £85 for it about 5 or so years ago and it has proven to be a very worthwhile purchase.

It has a range of settings from quick white to Pizza Dough and a number in between. It can drop in things like seeds or fruit at pre-programmed times and it can be programmed with your own personalised settings. It makes a good half-kilo-sized loaf in just over an 2 hours, if pushed, so can be pressed into service just before I go down to the shops on a saturday morning and I can rest assured that there will be something to accompany my soup at lunchtime.

I have never used it to its' full potential, however, but for all that, I think it has been a bargain and I certainly don't regret purchasing it.

That being said, I have outgrown it for anything other than its' automatic churn-out-a-loaf abilities.

My next major gadget was a Magimix Cuisine 5200 - in my opinion one of the best, if not the best, kitchen processors available. The 5200 is the largest of the range and is big enough for the most demanding of kitchen jobs and easily able to handle even semi-pro quantities with ease.

I have often surprised myself at the abilities of this handy benchtop device. Everything from chopping ingredients for a soup or salsa to making pastry, kneading dough, chopping breadcrumbs - I have found it to be a really great product.

My latest acquisition is my Kenwood Major KM800 Professional - a Kenwood Chef with a big 6.7L bowl, metal body and metal gears. It does a fantastic job of kneading dough, mixing batters, whisking, making pastry (the best!) and all those jobs you find tedious and tiresome! It isn't as powerful as the non-professional range, which made me wonder... but I guess it is of the "under-stressed to last longer" design school. As there are still Kenwood Chef's from the 1950s for sale in working condition, they seem to know how to make things that last. 

I particularly like that it takes all the attachments for the regular chef's, so Ebay has been a source of many cool extras - like a mincer/sausage stuffer, continuous slicer, continuous juicer.

I did contemplate a KitchenAid, but after reading the reviews comparing it to the Chef, I just had to go with the Chef.

The other gadget that I just couldn't do without is my wand mixer - I have a cheap and nasty Philips, but the great thing with that one was that it had a seperate stainless steel wand, so you can leave the body plugged in, take the wand off - give it a quick rinse and you are back to work again. It is about 5 or so years old and has performed admirably - I think it is the only Philips product I have ever had that gets my seal of approval, mostly they are shoddily made and last about one month past the warranty.

The last thing I have in my kitchen that I couldn't do without is my Gaggia Baby espresso machine. If you know coffee, you will know Gaggia and will know why it is on my list of kitchen must-have's.

Bread

Having set out my first blog post, it is time to get to work!

I watched a documentary the other day about Tom Herbert and his quest to make the perfect loaf, I was taken by his statement: "Bread is flour, water, salt and yeast - and time. "

I think we often forget that in these days of non-fermented factory loaves - it is such a simple food but by altering the ratio of ingredients, the technique we can create products as diverse as a brioche tarte, a pain-a-chocolat, a pita bread or a rustic household loaf.

So, to bread.

I am starting out, as so many people do with what I have in the cupboards. In this case, a packed of Allinsons dried yeast - hopefully not out of date, some strong bread flour from Lidl - after all, if you cant make it cheap, why make it at all?, water from our tap and some salt of dodgy provenance.

Not for me the heady delights of fresh Parisian yeast, organic rye flour, spring water and sea salt, oh no! I want to see what can be rustled up in a tiny kitchen with the stuff we all could have hanging around.

First, the yeast. Allinsons dried - one heaped teaspoon into 350ml of warm tap water. add 1/4 teaspoon of sugar and whisk it all together. Let it sit for 10-20 mins and check whether it is alive!

Success - although muted. Not having the 'as advertised' 1-2cm of froth, but it definitely smells of yeast and has a blob of something growing on the top - so here goes.

500 grams of 'bread flour' into the Kenwood along with a teaspoon of salt and the frothed up 350ml of warm yeasty brew - now, turn it to medium slow and let the machine have it's way with the dough for 10 minutes or so... and voila! A silky mass of dough at the bottom of the bowl.

At this stage the dough is warm from the kneading, sticky and springy to the touch. But I'm noteven half-way there yet.

So far I have worked the dough to make it elastic, allowing it to stretch out the gluten which will give us a chewy, textured product and allow the gasses from the fermenting yeast to make the dough 'airy' - or I will end up (as I have before) with a brick.

Now I need to let the dough relax and ferment, to let the yeast work it's magic by turning the sugars in the flour into gasses, which will double the size of the dough.

This can take from an hour to 15-20 hours, depending on the warmth, yeast and flour used, etc. There are no rules. You will, like me, get to know your flour, kitchen and yeast and so will have a fairly good idea of how long it takes to get from shiny ball to puffed up marshmallow stage.

So now, all I can do is wait.

Why a blog?

I have been thinking of a blog for quite a while, both to stretch myself from a writing perspective and as an attempt to document what I am hoping is going to be a new vocational direction for me.

I have been doing some creative writing for some time now, not to any great effect, but it is enjoyable and I find it helps me to organise myself.

I have always cooked for as long as I can remember. My mother was always inclusive with us in the kitchen as children and my father even got his hands dirty on occasion - a very rare, but tasty, event.

Growing up in the mid 60's in S.E. Asia and always being a bit adventurous (or hungry!) I have never been constrained by familiarity. Whether is was swapping sandwiches at school or swapping recipes with my friend's mothers I have never been one for timidity in the kitchen!

From my mother I have gotten a British traditionalist streak where the aim is to produce enough tasty, filling and healthy food to supply a small army - or a family of three, whichever comes first. Pies, casseroles, soups, stews, roasts and other such traditional English fare were the mainstay of my early culinary attempts.

When I went flatting, there were the usual Kiwi student delicacies - curried sausages, spag bol, lasagne, macaroni cheese, 'schnitzel' (please don't confuse with that wonderful Austrian dish...) and rissoles. This was colonial cooking at it's most basic. But as I grew in my kitchen forays and as I became more familiar with my ingredients and techniques, I have always tried to push the boat out as far as conventionality has gone.

With a move to Europe I came of age, in a culinary sense, and realised how provincial New Zealand really was when it came to food. Sure there are fine-dining restaurants in NZ, the equal of any other country, but what people cook at home is fairly traditional British stuff. With role models like Alison Holst and the Edmonds Cookbook to guide us, how could we go wrong ? :)

Suffice it to say, spending half a year working in a French Restaurant and multiple trips to France, Netherlands, Germany opened my eyes to the immense variety of food and food techniques that are out there.

I am comfortable with sauces and meats, reductions and glazes, vegetables, purees and such, butchery, forcemeats, herbs, spices, ingredients and materials. But I have neglected the 'other' side of the culinary coin - baking.
To that end, I have enrolled at Leiths to do one of their one-day masterclasses in pastry and I hope to enrol in Bertonet's for one of their two-day bread and viennoiserie courses.

This blog is my attempt to document my growth as a baker.