We don't knead another hero

The one potentially exciting insight Cathy gave me into home cooking was the idea of 'no knead' bread. I love bread but am sorely lacking in the bread baking skill department. I maintain this is a result of my poor kneading technique. Consequently the idea of no knead bread fills me with delight!

To be perfectly honest though, what the bread lacks in human effort, it makes up for in time required. I've now tried this recipe twice: the first time it took the bread almost 15 hours to 'bubble' as Cathy puts it. The second recipe was much quicker (as I 'helped' it along by doubling the yeast and increasing the liquid quantities) and it took about 10 hours.

Nevertheless the bread is quite tasty: it's rather dense almost like Rye bread so darker flour probably works better. There is nothing more fun than serving a home cooked loaf and it is an easy if time heavy process, so in that sense its well worth the 'foresight' required.

No Knead Bread

Ingredients

3 cups of flour

1/4 tsp of yeast (although I upped it to 1/2 to quicken the process)

1 1/2 cups of water

1/2 tsp salt

whatever flavours you would like to add.

Method

• Put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix to a sticky dough
• Leave the dough for 12 hours or so until bubbles appear on the surface
• Take the bubbling dough and place it on a heavily floured surface. Shape into a dough mound shape and leave to rest for 15 minutes.
• Fold the bread in half and in half again to make a bread shape.
• Leave it to rise between 2 heavily floured teatowels for approximately 2 hours.
• Preheat the oven to 200 degrees and place a casserole dish in the oven to warm up.
• Once the bread has risen, carefully transfer it to the casserole dish and bake with the lid on for 30 minutes.
• Remove the lid and brown the crust for another 10 minutes.

Cathy's blog includes a number of recipe ideas for the bread, including this tasty looking cinnamon raisin number.

You say potato and I say...mmm soup.

In my opinion leek and potato soup is one of the simplest, tastiest seasonal dishes imaginable.

Over the years I've had a good few attempts of following leek and potato recipes: some have worked, some haven't... but usually whenever I throw the potatoes and leeks in a pan of stock and the result is fairly consistent, regardless of the method.

So I was interest to find that Cathy had a recipe for this winter staple which suggested roasting the vegetables first. I was a bit sceptical about the added flavour this extra step in the process would add. In truth, not a lot. It did make the dish slightly 'fuller' than usual and actually it was a pretty quick method of cooking the vegetables. So if you don't mind an extra roasting tin to wash up, it's probably worth the effort.

I should not that Cathy suggests using Kale: I couldn't find any so just used more of the top part of the leek in the dish. This has the same slightly bitter taste of kale anyway. I also roasted the leeks on the grounds that this would add more to the flavour.

Roasted Leek and Potato Soup (serves 4)

Ingredients

1 leek, halved and chopped into smallish chunks

4 potatoes, cut into smallish chunks

1 onion, cut into smallish chunks

150 ml milk

500 ml vegetable stock

Olive Oil

seasoning

Method

• Roast the chopped vegetables in olive oil for about 20 minutes (until soft but not smooshy). Watch the leeks so they don't stick to the bottom of the roasting dish.
• Meanwhile bring your stock to the boil.
• Add the vegetables to the stock and cook for a further 10 minutes.
• Blitz the soup until nice and creamy.
• Season well (lots of pepper is very yummy)
• Add the milk

Serve with 'no knead' bread.

It's not right but its ok...I'm gonna make it anyway!

Earlier this week our lovely friend Anja celebrated her birthday. Anja is part of Lund's Sustainable City Walk a great initiative which provides information on sustainable shopping in Lund. I decided I was going to attempt some seasonal baking for a birthday treat and came across this very tasty looking recipe for pear and ginger muffins.

Then disaster struck (well minor blip anyway) I discovered you cannot get Swedish pears in January. I was quite surprised at this as I always thought of pears as a winter fruit; but no, the pears in this recipe are from The Netherlands :(

That said, it was still rather tasty and I think would work equally well with apples: especially those apples that are a bit grainy and reaching the end of their winter lives.

I changed the recipe slightly (because my sugar coated baked goods have a tendency to burn) but the original can be found here.

Pear and Ginger Muffins

Makes: 18! (although the original recipe said 12, but then it is a Nigella effort and her portions are always a bit suspect).

Ingredients:

2 large pears (1 peeled and finely chopped, the other thinly sliced)

1 3/4 cups flour

1/2 cup of brown sugar

3/4 cup of caster sugar

1 tsp of ginger

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup of flavourless oil

2/3 cup of sour cream

1 tblsp of honey

2 eggs

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius
• Line muffin tins with paper cases
• Mix the brown and caster sugar with the oil, until light and incorporated.
• Whisk in the eggs, honey and then stir in the sour cream.
• In a separate bowl sieve the flour, baking powder and ginger.
• Fold the 'wet' mix into the dry (careful not to over stir)
• Fold in the chopped pears.
• Fill each muffin case about 2/3 full of muffin mix and top with 3 small slice of pear.
• Bake for 20 minutes
• Cool for 5 minutes in the tin.

Enjoy eating with coffee, friends and only a smidgen of guilt that the pears came from The Netherlands.

Chilli Vanilli

Here at the seasonal beets, we realise that there are some lovely fruit and vegetables that will never be grown locally and thus are never in season.

What to do? For things like leaves, root vegetables and fruits there is almost always a local and seasonal substitution (spinach and leeks for salads, apples instead of bananas, plums for pineapples and so on). Alas, for other ingredients - in the words of Margaret Thatcher - there is simply no alternative.

Enter the Chilli Pepper!

I'm a big advocate of spicy food, especially right now in the cold winter months when we could all do with a little more heat. They are also particularly well suited for sweating out a case of the winter sniffles. A well-placed chilli can spice up all kinds of dishes from curries to seafood to a hearty gulash soup. But shop-bought chillis, alas, do not generally come from anywhere near to Europe. India, China, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Mexico, Vietnam, Peru, Pakistan, Ghana and Bangladesh account for 85% of global chili production.

The absolute best way to lower your chilli-induced footprint while still enjoying plenty of spicy goodness is to grow your own plants. Chillies grow surprisingly well indoors all year round, they're cheap, and you can buy literally hundreds of varieties to experiment with.

A little known fact about chilis is that the heat is not contained within the seeds themselves but rather in a compound called Capsaicin that coats the seeds and the insides of the pepper. Capsaicin is insoluble in water, which means that knocking back a glass of icy-cold water in a 'spicy' moment will do nothing to relieve your burning tongue! Instead, try dairy products like sour cream - an indian 'lassi' for example is a great accompaniment to a hot curry. And failing that, a cold beer usually helps too (even if it's just a placebo!).

One of my favourite recipies is a super-spicy Thai style Green Papaya Salad. In the somewhat-predictable absence of green papayas, you can use cucumber as a substitute. The key to this salad is the balance of the lime juice, fish sauce, sugar and chilli - keep mixing up the quantities until you reach the perfect balance of flavours.

Shred the papaya or cucumber (using a grater or potato peeler, your choice). If you're feeling flush you can quarter a couple of tomatoes and add them to the shredded mixture too. Next, take between one to ten small red chillis (depending on your taste buds and your bravery), a couple of cloves of chopped garlic (again, amount depending on your taste buds), and a handful of chopped green beans and grind together in a pestle and mortar until broken up but not paste-like. Add to this a spoonful of sugar (palm sugar is best), the juice of a lime, one tablespoon of fish sauce and a handful of dried shrimp (optional). Give it a good bash again with the pestle and mortar and then mix with the shredded papaya. Top with roasted and coarsely chopped peanuts and enjoy!

I don't know much butter know I love you

Winter is a difficult time of year to get excited about, not least in the cooking department. After months of cooking root veg, who can blame you if your greatest culinary desire is the quick fix of a salad. Root vegetables (the humble carrot aside) are not really known for their speed of delivery. Its a strange man who enjoys chomping on some raw turnip.

They are also sometimes pretty time consuming to prepare. Whilst The Seasonal Beets thoroughly recommend keeping skins on where possible (for we all know that's where the best nutrition is stored) there are times when that is just not possible. My dog loves turnip skin: I am less enamoured by its woody texture.

On top of that whilst root vegetables are filled with nutrition and can be sweet as sugar, the stereotypical varieties we can easily access do lack a certain variation in flavour (yes bothersome friend turnip I'm referring to you again).

And yet root vegetables are cheap, nutritious and very seasonal so we should definitely be eating them in plentiful supply. How can we fix this tricky conundrum? The answer my friends is butter.

"Is there anything better than butter? Think it over, any time you taste something that's delicious beyond imagining and you say 'what's in this?' the answer is always going to be butter. The day there is a meteorite rushing toward Earth and we have thirty days to live, I am going to spend it eating butter. Here is my final word on the subject, you can never have too much butter." Julie Powell, Julie and Julia.

Whilst butter alone is wonderful, its magical taste enhancing capabilities can be heightened by the addition of a few key ingredients. Flavoured butter should be a staple in any tasty kitchen. It can be added to baked potatoes; mashed vegetables, boiled vegetables, oven roasted vegetables, fry your vegetables in it or just spread on a piece of crusty toast. The possibilities are for flavoured butter are endless and its so easy to make.

• Take 1 packet of unsalted butter and leave it out of the fridge to soften.
• Then get out the biceps and your spatula and start beating the butter until it becomes soft and pliable (or use a foodmixer...).
• Add your ingredients and whip into a frenzy until all incorporated.
• Leave to stand for 30 minutes and then place it in the fridge to harden.
• Once hard roll into a sausage shape and wrap in baking parchment (like a christmas cracker)
• This can then be stored in the freezer. Just cut away what you need when you need it.

Recipes for flavoured butter

Roasted Garlic Butter (excellent in mash)

1 packet of butter

1 large head of garlic

1/4 tsp salt

Cut the garlic in half and roast the garlic in the oven until soft. Squidge out the garlic, let it cool and add to your butter.

Herby Butter

(the world is your oyster here, I like rosemary and thyme together but tarragon is also very nice, especially on mushrooms! Check out our recipe booklets for other good herb/veg combos)

1 packet of butter

1 handful of freshly chopped herbs

1/2 tsp salt

Chilli Butter

(melt and use to make Kale Chips!)

1 packet of butter

A zest of half a lemon

1 tbsp of dried chilli flakes

1/4 tsp salt

Loads more recipes can be found on the BBC Good Food website and at The Nibble but look out for more flavoured butters on this blog too!

Red cabbage with pearl barley and apple

Red cabbage is in season right now. It is cheap and healthy - but sometimes I almost find it overwhelmingly big, thinking that I will not be able to eat a whole cabbage head before it goes bad.
That is why I have decided to try and find good recipes for inspiration.

Here is one recipe that I got from Sæson for god smag a website that has a lot of beautiful and interesting recipes, the only downside being that they are in Danish.



For 4 persons you need:

1 dl pearl barley
2 apples, for example Ingrid Marie or Cox Orange
1/2 l finely chopped red cabbage
1 finely chopped red onion
1 dl dried fruit (e.g. raisins, abricots, cranberries)

Dressing
2 tbsp oil
4 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tsp honey
1 tsp cumin
salt and pepper

Boil the barley according to package, drain and cool.
Remove the seeds from the apples and cut into boats.
Mix barley, apples, onion and the dried fruit.
Mix the dressing and taste it with salt and pepper before pouring over the salad.

This is a very nice and filling salad.
The recipe is quite large so you can consider halving it if you are not expecting company.

Hannes carrot soup

My friend Hanne Holm has made this delicious and simple carrot soup recipe.
It is tasty, healthy, fast and simple - and it is student economy friendly!

You need:
600 g carrots - cut into smaller pieces
1 large onion - chopped
2 cloves of garlic - chopped
3 bay leaves
1 tbsp ginger - chopped
2 tsp ground cumin
1 l vegetable broth
3 tbsp lime or lemon juice (I often skip, or put a little apple cider vinegar instead)
salt and pepper to taste
oil for frying

to make it extra lovely you can garnish with
sour cream
fresh coriander
peel from organic untreated lime or lemon


Method:
sauté garlic and onion
add carrots, cummin and bayleaves and fry a little longer
pour broth over, add lime, lemon or vinegar to taste and boil till carrots are tender
remove the bayleaves and blend the soup
put the leaves back and heat the soup back up.
Garnish and serve.

This warms you to the bone on cold winter evenings.