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Tuesday 26 May 2020

Za'atar Tear and Share Bread




I’ve definitely waxed lyrical about za’atar before – it’s an incredible spice mix that I first had, smeared on fresh flatbread, in Beirut. When I travel, my souvenirs are food related. I love exploring the cuisine of new places and then trying to recreate it at home.



And I love bread. But I find flatbread difficult. Enter, the simple and delicious tear and share loaf, made in a bundt cake tin. Now I’ve mainly seen sweet recipes for this kind of bread (cinnamon, caramel etc) but the savoury one piqued my interest.

The bread kind of got away from the too-small pan

I served it with falafel and some gyros-style chicken but it would be great as a snacky dinner centrepiece with an onion-garlic dip.


Sunday 24 May 2020

The Best Caramel Squares AKA Millionaire's Shortbread




I want to mark this one permanently as **use this one. I know that I have posted a few previous iterations of this kind of traybake, but this is the one that I will be using from now on.



Why, you say?
  • The base – crisp buttery perfection
  • The caramel – smooth and creamy
  • The chocolate – milky sweetness



It tastes like the ones from the good bakeries at home. I’m going to make this forever. 



Thursday 21 May 2020

Steamed BBQ Pork Buns - Char Sui Bao

PERFECT


This takes quite a bit of prep but it’s super delicious and worth it. Luckily I have time on my hands and a recipe I’ve been dying to try. Normally I’d go out for dumplings and bao once a month, so I’m feeling the lack of it in my life.



I haven’t gone super traditional with the pork for the filling, usually it would be made with roasted pork shoulder. I didn’t want to make loads, so I improvised with a small cut - pork chops. It was still very good!



Also please look up a good video for the pleating technique because mine are unforgivably messy.



Tuesday 19 May 2020

Homemade Sausage Rolls

I'm so proud of this pastry - and it's easy!

In these uncertain times, being able to cook is really important. It’s something that has kept me sane, and I’ve had some extra time to be able to make stuff I never normally would have. You can make this recipe even easier, by buying pre-made pastry, but I haven't made it in ages and wanted to make sure I still had it (spoiler, I do).


Pre-bake (I got ten out of the recipe and froze the other two).

One thing I’m really missing is a big meaty sausage roll. The kind where the filling is thick and flavoursome and the pastry is fresh and crisp. You cannot get this from a supermarket pre-packaged sausage roll. I mean, I’m still buying and eating them, but they’re quite underwhelming.

Post bake, smells so good
The obvious next step was to take things into my own hands. I whipped up some rough puff pastry (took about 50 minutes) and filled it with sausage meat that I randomly flavoured with anything that sounded good.

And it was good.

Makes 10 sausage rolls, serves as many as your heart desires

Ingredients for the puff pastry
  • 200g plain flour
  • Pinch salt
  • 175g butter, not cold from the fridge
  • 100ml cold water


Ingredients for the sausage filling
  • 400g pork sausage meat
  • ½ onion
  • 1 tsp sage
  • ½ tsp paprika
  • ½ tsp mustard
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • Ground black pepper


To finish
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • A sprinkling of seeds (sesame seeds, poppy seeds etc)


Method

Start with the pastry as it needs time to chill. Your butter should be nearing room temperature but not soft, I took mine out of the fridge about 2 hours before using.

Measure out the flour, stir in the salt, then add the butter (cut into chunks). Roughly rub the butter into the flour with your fingers. There will be big globs of butter – you want that.



Add in about 75ml of the water and mix until you have a rough, slightly soft dough. Add more water if needed to get it to come together.

Cover in cling film and rest in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Come back to it, form into a rough rectangle on a floured surface.



And roll out until long and thin, like 15cm x40 cm ish. Roll in only one direction.



Fold the bottom third into the middle, and put the top third over the top of that.



Spin it around 1 quarter turn and roll it out as before, folding over again.

Turn it once more, roll out and repeat the folding. Put the folded pastry in the fridge again for 20 minutes.



Now you can make the filling. Chop the onion up small and add it to a bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Mix well with your hands.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.

Now, remove the pastry from the fridge and roll it out once more to a long rectangle, but a little wider than before, closer to 20cm by 45 cm.



Place the meat filling in a long cylinder shape up the centre of the pastry.



Brush one long edge with beaten egg. Roll up, keeping the seam at the bottom. The egg should help to bind it together. Cut into whichever size you like, I went for 10 medium ones.

Place on a baking tray, brush with the egg and sprinkle with some sesame seeds or whatever you have on hand. I had some yummy “everything but the bagel” seasoning from a kind friend, so I used that!



Bake for 35 minutes until the pastry is golden and the meaty filling is cooked through.



Enjoy hot or cold!


Sunday 17 May 2020

Everything Cookies




Okay, I added a bit of everything for these bad boys. And they’re PERFECT.



Take a cookie. Add peanut butter. Sprinkle over some coconut. M&Ms? Sure, they can join the party. Chocolate chips go without saying.



YES. GET IN MY MOUTH.



Saturday 9 May 2020

Cocoa Coconut Cake




Hello, hot weather! For me coconut is such a summer flavour, and I'm always looking for ways to incorporate it into cooking. This is a perfect, chocolately, fudgy cake with a deep nutty twist. Its dense and the flavours just smack you in the face - my kind of cake!



My mum made this and it was such a hit I had to try it out for myself! It's a very simple recipe, but the cake you get at the end of it is killer.



It’s like a mix between a brownie and a cake, and it also makes delicious cupcakes. For the cupcakes, I baked for 15-20 minutes instead of the full cooking time and decorated as normal.




Ingredients for the cake
  • 90g desiccated coconut
  • 325ml reduced-fat coconut milk
  • 275g plain flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 45g cocoa powder
  • Pinch of salt
  • 200g soft unsalted butter
  • 225g light muscovado (or light brown) sugar
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract
  • 3 large eggs

For the buttercream
  • 75g coconut milk (take some of the hard part from the tin above)
  • 50g unsalted butter
  • 300g icing sugar (you might need more)
  • 30g cocoa powder
  • 1-2 tsp milk, if necessary
  • Chocolate sprinkles/dessicated coconut, to finish.


Sunday 3 May 2020

Instant Pot Lamb Biryani




Someone got a new gadget for Christmas! And someone has time to work out how to use it now!

I have been interested in pressure cookers, from a safe distance, for a while. But I was still very surprised when Santa put one under my tree! The reason I haven’t gotten one before is that it seemed a bit daunting to learn a whole new way of cooking, and one that comes with its fair share of safety briefings.



I have never made a biryani because I was worried about the rice burning to the pot, and put off by the time it takes to cook it. So this meal felt like the natural first one to try out.



I completely didn’t believe that it only takes 7 minutes to cook in the Instant Pot. But trust me – it does! SEVEN MINUTES! But it’s not like that’s all  the time that it takes – you still have your prep, sauté and depressurising time, so all in all this probably takes about 40 minutes from start to finish. Which is relatively quick for this type of meal, but it’s not like dinner will be made in 7 minutes.



Sorry about all the ingredients, but the whole spices are really key to the flavour if you have them!
Meal prep life

I have found that some of the recipes for the Instant Pot don’t explain much and assume a level of knowledge. I am still very much learning so I will assume no such thing and explain as much as I can as I'm testing it out.