It's a pitta I didn't try this earlier

I like pitta breads. They are a good size for when you want some bread and a filling but when a two-slice sandwich feels a little over-facing. In the past I have always bought them, but I figured they can't be difficult to make. Indeed, a little research suggested they are exceedingly simple, and the practice confirms they are.

The making the dough and the cooking parts are very, very quick, so it's just the proving for a couple of hours that takes the time. I recommend these if you're having a barbecue or perhaps for hors d'oeuvre - just for a little more of an 'I did that' factor.

I've done a pictorial tutorial below for you to cut out and keep.

Enjoy! 

To make, to bake, to buy: pastry

Pastry – Oh! Truculent child, why do you vex me so?

I seldom cook with pastry. I very much enjoy eating it, especially on savoury pies, but we generally try to keep such high-fat foods as treats. Without regular consumption I have never really bothered to get into the art of pastry making and I freely admit this is a product I usually buy. After all, with so many good products out there, why not languish in the realms of ignorance?

Past experience with shortcrust pastry makes me blush and cringe a little and used to make me think I should just let it lie. In a home economics lesson many moons ago, I managed to end up with was a sheet of pastry from which bits seemed to crumble if I so much as looked at it. Of course, any attempt to rectify the mess made everything worse. My humiliation was compounded by the teacher’s appraisal of my efforts in front of the whole class, and I didn’t attempt to make shortcrust pastry again for nearly 20 years. The two occasions I have tried since I suppose what I managed was passable, but I think I made it too thick and the ‘short’ was somewhat lacking.

Flaky pastry faired better at school, but I haven’t made it from scratch since because it has always seemed too time-consuming, and if I don’t make it myself I can pretend that the fat content is lower than it really is. When it comes to filo and choux, I have never cooked with them and have only bought complete products, such as strudels or eclairs. I doubt that I will bother ever attempt the former; to create something that delicate is probably best left to the experts. Choux pastry is something I’d like to explore for savoury dishes, but if I want to, I guess I’ll have to learn to make it, as I don’t think you can buy the raw paste (or if you can I would be suspicious about what was being used to stabilise it!).

All the articles I have read about handmade dry pastries essentially say the same things: cool hands, cool kitchen, don’t mess up the fat to flour ratio and don’t stretch the dough when rolling it out. I think, though, that nothing is foolproof. Some people just get pastry, some people just don’t and some will get there if they persevere. Starting this blog has driven me to push myself a bit more now I have time to spend in the kitchen and to try new things and things that scare me (well, I have to have something to write about). My recent success with bread rolls was an extra spur. On Sunday, therefore, when my husband expressed an interest in pie for dinner, I grabbed the bull by the horns and decided to make my own.

The use of the food processor helped enormously. The dough was made quickly and easily, which helped to avoid overworking and kept it cool. Some cooks say that you can’t tell when enough water has been added and that you need to feel it by hand to be sure. It’s probably true, but I didn’t know what I was feeling for so I went with it anyway and figured the delectable Mr M would be kind enough to eat it no matter how it turned out. In the processor, there is a sudden change when the dough clumps and starts to bump around the bowl. Once that has started, it’s probably OK. You have to take it out of the bowl and give it a quick knead into a ball before resting anyway, so you can add a little more then if necessary. And bish, bash, bosh, the hard bit is done.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I ended up with the rather tasty double crust minced beef plate pie below. 

I was very, very proud. The pastry was crisp, not too thick, didn’t shrink overly much and came out a lovely golden colour. In amongst high praise, the only niggle my husband had was that the pastry was too buttery. Indeed, it was an all-butter pastry as I that was all I had in. I didn’t mind it myself, but I can see that all butter might be better for a sweeter filling than minced beef. Next time I’ll try half butter, half lard, as in the recipe below.

With this success, I would certainly consider making shortcrust pastry again rather than buying it. Flaky and filo, though, will stay firmly on the shopping list.

Shortcrust pastry

Makes enough for double crust pie in a 9.5 inch pie plate.

280 g plain flour

Half tsp salt

70 g butter

70 g lard

Cold water (ice cold if possible) to mix or 1 egg yolk and water to mix, for a richer pastry

To make the pastry dough by hand, ensure the fat is at room temperature before starting. Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl then cut the fat into small pieces and add it to the flour. Use a round-bladed knife to start cutting it into the flour then, when the pieces are tool small to cut any more, lightly rub in the fat in the flour with the fingertips until the mix resembles breadcrumbs. If using an egg yolk, make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, add the egg and use the knife begin to combine before adding the water. Add the water 1 tbsp at a time and incorporate with the knife. Once the mixture starts to bind work it by hand until the dough forms a ball.

To make the pastry in the food processor, keep the fat chilled. Sift the flour and salt into the processor bowl then cut the fat into small cubes and add to the flour. Pulse the mix in the processor until it resembles breadcrumbs. If using an egg yolk, add it at this point through the tube in the lid and pulse the mix. Add the water a little at a time until the mix begins to clump. Remove the dough and knead it very quickly into a smooth ball. 

Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate for 30 min.

The proof is in the proving

Well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks, hence the lack of posts. My part-time hours have been stretching their boundaries, and I was put rather behind by my computer contracting an annoying virus. Thus, the domestic side of life has been taking a bit of a back seat.

When I finally did manage to get to the shop – a necessity as we were running out of a multitude of things – I forgot to buy bread. Rather than pop out again, though, I decided to re-try making bread rolls. If you’ve read my post on leavened bread you will know that in the past this has not been entirely successful. In view of fairing better with naan bread recently, though, I felt all was not lost. I do try to take the stand that I will be able to do things if I just persevere.

Admittedly, the bread maker did the hard work, but it’s not that bit I’m afraid of, so it’s neither here nor there to me if I hand it over to my mechanical friend. It’s the final proving that prevents my rolls from being more like dense lumps with high missile potential than easy-to-eat, tasty buns. I tried my new trick of slightly warming the oven the turning it off, and popped in a tray of rolls. Well, I should have been more optimistic, as I put all six on one tray and they rose so much some of them merged together! Happy, Happy days. I felt as proud as punch when the baking yielded a batch that was uniformly decent in size and light in weight.

The final seal of approval came from my husband, the delectable Mr M, who, astonished at the difference in these rolls from my previous effort, felt compelled to email me directly from lunching at the office with “excellent rolls!” I think I might finally have cracked it.

As a final note, if you like brown bread I thoroughly recommend the Allinson Country Grain bread flour I used.

A soupçon of experimentation

If you don’t know already, I like to make soup. I make a big batch of the stuff most weeks for my husband and I to eat for lunch. It’s enjoyable to make, partly because it’s so easy and partly because the varieties seem endless, but it’s also a good way to get vegetables into the daily diet. Some favourites so far have been spicy tomato & lentil, pepper, chilli & lime, butternut squash, chickpea & chorizo, pea, and spicy parsnip.

With the base of onion, garlic and stock, I find the world becomes my soupy oyster. In my view, soups are multipurpose. They can be luxurious, warming, refreshing, sustaining and a good way to use up stray things on the verge of turning brown in the vegetable rack. I have even bunged in half a bag of salad leaves that had rather lost their table appeal.

Having said the varieties seem endless, I sometimes feel a bit stumped about what soup to make next. I want my husband to enjoy his lunch, so it’s not a no-holds-barred situation. That’s not to say I’m afraid of trying or creating new soup recipes, as I don’t want to repeat soups too frequently, although the ingredients are sometimes driven by the contents of my fridge. This week, though, I had a particular ingredient in mind.

For a while I have thought about making mushroom soup. Since childhood I have hated the tinned stuff from the supermarket. Infrequently, but full of foolish endeavour, I have re-tried it, really wanting to like it. I did not. Such disappointment flummoxed me somewhat, because I very much enjoy mushrooms in most other guises—fried, grilled and even raw. The turning point came when I ate a homemade mushroom and garlic soup. The chasm between the insipidness of tinned cream of mushroom soup and this freshly made version with dark liquor and which as full of woody, earthy mushroom flavours was vast and deep. Thus, I went forth and bought my mushrooms.

Armed with couple of punnets of chestnut mushrooms and a 25 g bag of dried mixed mushrooms (shitake, oyster and porcini) for added mushroominess (not a real word, I know), I took a little while to think about how really enhance the flavours. Now, I can’t quite explain my train of thought in any rational light, but I first thought of frying mushrooms, which led my mind to wander to fried mushrooms on toast (something I have occasionally as a treat). Toast with a hot topping made me think of cheese on toast, to which I added a virtual splash of Worcestshire sauce, which brought me to a similar condiment, mushroom ketchup (a magical ingredient if ever there was one). The cooked cheese and mushrooms seemed to meld in my mind, and that was it: mushroom and cheddar soup was born into my repertoire.

I would like to point out that, although I reached this momentous idea without prompting, a quick search on the web clearly indicated I am not the first to do so and there are a few recipes already around. My lack of originality made me a little sad, but then I figured that by the very nature of soup being a use-up-whatever dish, true innovation is highly unlikely unless a selection of ingredients that probably shouldn’t be put together anyway are involved!

Well, the results were lovely. In the end it’s a creamier soup than the mushroom and garlic variety I had tasted previously. That said, it has bags of flavour, and I think the cheddar enriches it in terms of flavour and texture. Taking this to be a success, I’ll be trying other mushroom variations in the future, but I was pretty pleased with this for a first attempt. I recommend it to people who are of the tin-variety-hating ilk, so here’s the recipe.

Mushroom and cheddar soup

1 large onion finely chopped

3 cloves garlic minced or crushed

500 g chestnut mushrooms

25 g dried mixed mushrooms reconstituted in 250 ml freshly boiled water

750 g vegetable stock

2 tbsp mushroom ketchup (or Worcestershire sauce)

2 tsp dried parsley or 2 tbsp finely chopped fresh parsley

60 g plain flour dissolved in water

250–300 g (to taste) mature cheddar grated

500 ml semi-skimmed milk

Black pepper and salt to taste

Soak the dried mushrooms in the hot water for a minimum of 10 mins. When plump and soft, remove the mushrooms and squeeze the water out them then chop them finely. Retain the water.

Gently heat the onion and garlic in a large saucepan until the onion is soft and translucent. Turn up the heat and add the all the fresh and reconstituted mushrooms. Stir until all the mushrooms have started to brown. They should also reduce in volume a bit. Add the stock, the liquor from the mushrooms (being careful to pour slowly and keep back the last few tablespoons of liquid, which can often be gritty), the mushroom ketchup/Worcestershire sauce, the dried parsley (if using fresh parsley add it later with the cheese) and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to the boil then turn down the heat and simmer for 10–15 mins.

Bring the soup back to the boil and add the flour and water solution and stir while the soup thickens.

Remove the soup from the heat and when it has stopped boiling add all the grated cheese and stir until it has melted. Finally, add the milk and use a stick blender to part puree the soup, but leave some chunks of mushroom. Check the seasoning and serve.