Goodness, I can’t believe it’s been so long since my last post! With a busy few weeks on the paid-work front and a visit from the delectable Mr M’s parents one weekend, things have been getting away from me. I have managed to do quite a lot of cooking, but it’s been crammed into the weekends, so there hasn’t been time to write about it too. It’s a shame, because there were many things I wanted to share, but time has passed and I am getting forgetful. Here, then, I’ve jotted down a summary of the things I’ve enjoyed making the most over the past month.
I mainly cook savoury dishes, so for change, and as a treat for my in-laws, I made some little chocolate chip cupcakes. I say ‘cupcakes’, but aren’t they fairy cakes? This long-serving, traditional British name seems to have been usurped, but under whichever name, they were super easy and quick to bake. I used a straightforward Victoria sponge mix – equal weights of fat, sugar and flour, and half the number of eggs as ounces (in this case, four, four, four, two, which makes 12–14 cakes). I spent the whole time basking in fond childhood memories of weekend baking with Mom or friends, and particularly of scraping the cake-mix bowl. I decorated the cakes with butter icing, although I balked at the potential sickliness of making it almost as thick as the cakes are deep, as seems to be the wont of commercial bakers these days. Even with restraint, there was plenty of icing.
The bread maker came into its own again to make the dough for white bread rolls. I have used it brown bread rolls before with very good results, but I think the white rolls turned out even better. They very were light with a really good, quite open texture. I tweaked the manufacturer’s recipe a bit (less sugar and skimmed-milk powder) as we have found the white loaves made in the machine a tad sweet, and the balance seemed improved. I think this change might have helped the texture as well. The rolls also kept quite well, but were great toasted when started to get a little stale.
Visitors for the weekend constituted the perfect excuse for me to make my legendary lasagne. I don’t blow my own trumpet that much but my lasagne has been greatly appreciated by all who have eaten it – or that’s what they tell me, anyway ... It is truly a labour of love, taking 3–4 hours to prepare. I gently cook a Bolognese sauce for 2–3 hours and make fresh pasta sheets and béchamel sauce. By the time it’s served, the sauce is rich, the pasta is silky soft, and the béchamel has melded with everything else to provide a satisfying creamy roundness. A bit of grated cheddar, bubbling and golden, on the top lends savoury finesse. The only downside to the lasagne is that it takes mere minutes to demolish.
To finish off the in-laws’ weekend visit, I cooked a Sunday roast with chicken. This in itself was not anything very special, but what I enjoyed about it was breaking with tradition and cooking Yorkshire puddings instead of stuffing. I wanted to show off, really, as finally, after years of being disappointed by my attempts, I recently managed to pin down the ingredient proportions that work for me. Much utter tripe is talked about how to make the perfect Yorkshire pudding, but the recipes are numerous and all seem “guarantee” perfect results. Even the Royal Society of Chemistry has got in on the act. Well, I don’t use their recipe but I still end up with well expanded, air-light, crispy, golden-brown puddings. The only gripe might be that they are not always the perfect shape – they sometimes spread out a little more than up, but when they’re served within the confines of my home, who cares? Four inches tall? Pah!
Last weekend I took advantage of some lovely seasonal produce. I had noticed marrows in the vegetable aisle and felt inspired. Marrow has a mild flavour and a high water content, so they provide a innocuous container that can take on pretty much any flavours, but stay refreshing, which is always helpful if the stuffing ends up a little dry. This time I made a beef mince stuffing. With the remainder of the mince I made meatballs for the freezer (always handy for a quick pasta dinner in the week). As I also had some marrow left, I added it to aubergines, courgettes, peppers and tomatoes to make ratatouille. We used that a couple of times with pasta as a chunky sauce, but it makes a really good hot accompaniment where you might use salad instead.
Finally, I had some pork loin in the freezer. My quest to come up with a range of sauces for pork dishes coupled with a seasonal offer on plums led to plum and ginger sauce. This is very simple to make and can be used as a dipping sauce or in stir fries. The sugar content is quite high, with natural sugars from the plums plus dark brown sugar, but once in a while that’s not going to do much harm.
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