Scalloped Potatoes

Recently I noticed that potatoes do not make much of an appearance in George's diet so I thought it would be funny to make a Scalloped Potato to slowly introduce him to potatoes since I am rabidly fond of horrible things like crisps and chips.

There isn't really a need to list out a specific amount of ingredients, but you will need at least one potato per person, and some cheese and butter. The cheese and butter need to be cold - I've observed that people living in cold countries sometimes leave their butter out of the fridge for long periods of time (especially in a cold sub-zero temperature kitchen like this kitchen tends to become when its winter) - but for the butter to be sliced you'll need to have it really solid; if not after a minute or two or handling you're going to be swimming in melting buttery goo.




Firstly, the potato needs to be sliced really thinly but not to the bottom. I've put two spoon handles at both ends of my potato to prevent myself from cutting it all the way to the bottom.



Next you should slice up all the butter and cheese into small slabs and alternately stuff each potato incision with either cheese or butter. I've used a simple cheddar here.



Bake for about 180deg for 1 hour to 1.5 hours depending on size of potato. At the half hour mark, take it out and put more shredded cheese on top. A medium sized potato will be well done by about 1 hr 15 minutes. Depending on the vagaries of your oven, you can also cook it at a lower heat for longer. Our other oven is sometimes crazy, so I had to turn it down to 150 after half an hour as I was worried it would burn on top. Basically the timing is not so important so long as you check it for its doneness and once you are satisfied that everything has melted together and cooked you can consider it done.



Here it is served with chopped spring onions and a bonus tomato. So there, a baked potato dinner that looks impressive and yet requires minimal tending.

Basic Tomato-based Pasta Sauce

After years of many abortive tomato-based pastas, I now think all variations are best when beginning with these basic parameters. Don't add strange things like onions or leeks or ginger or five-spice or anything experimental in the base sauce. Its a matter of restraint, and if one actually wishes to eat a tomato sauce then just stick to the recipe and make a goddamned tomato sauce. I'm not saying you can't have avant-garde sauce, but if you're not in the mood for avant-garde sauce, then just make normal tomato sauce!



Ingredients for a basic tomato-based pasta sauce
1 tin Ginos tomato paste (39p) / Or any kind of kind of tomato paste, about 2 tbsp
Half a box of tomatoes on vine (£1.00 per box)
3 cloves garlic
Fresh Basil
Dried Basil
Salt to taste
Pinch of sugar

Some years ago I had an Italian housemate who allegedly told me that the right way to start making your pasta sauce was to start by sautéing sliced garlic in very very hot olive oil, and then, followed by the other ingredients. As tomatoes themselves have the tendency to have a rounded or tart taste, the addition of some sugar actually really helps lift the taste. I prefer Tomato paste over Tomato Puree as it is much more concentrated, and in the cooking process, one can add more water.



In this iteration of this pasta we added sliced chestnut mushrooms and used a peculiar round pasta that George had bought from some fancy italian deli. I also wish we had a pasta maker so we could make pasta of any shape!! TRIANGULAR PASTA! DONUT RING PASTA! INFINITELY CONTINUOUS PASTA!

Marmite Irish Soda Bread and the Death of the Oven

Yesterday I made another two loaves with slightly amended ingredients - one "control" loaf and one Marmite flavoured loaf. The winner of the night was the Marmite Soda Bread, which we ate with cheese. Our taste testers reported that they enjoyed its aftertaste and that it could be eaten on its own, as eating it with cheese was quite a salty affair. The colour of the bread was also a deep brown instead of white.

Ingredients:
250g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate
200ml semi-skimmed milk
half a lemon
two tablespoons marmite
half teaspoon salt
one teaspoon dark brown sugar

Note a slight increase in flour used. I found that I had to add a substantial amount of flour to make it less sticky. I need to get a measuring cup so that I can be more accurate with liquid measurements, rather than asking my assistant to "pour about 40% of this half-imperial-pint container of milk into this cup of lemon juice".

Method:
Put milk and lemon together and allow to curdle for 15 minutes. Mix all other dry ingredients together, and stir in the soured milk to make a dough. Knead to distribute ingredients evenly, roll into a round shape and score it with a knife on top, then place on a greased baking tray and bake at 180c for 40 minutes. It is done when its brown, sounds hollow when tapped, and most certainly done when the oven door has fallen off.



so said #G1U5EPPE on instagram
This was of no fault of my own, but I had the unusual fortune of being the one who would bake the last loaf that would cause the oven to disintegrate.



GEORGE also made excellent toasted vegetable and tofu wraps with leerdammer. They were toasted until they were almost crisp, reminding me of the corn tostados which I was so crazy about in Mexico. I should like to find corn versions of these wraps to make food with, and perhaps in smaller debbiesizes. Anyway, it looks like we shall have to explore making wraps and other things whilst the oven gets fixed.

Irish Soda Bread

I've decided that I should start a new food blog to mark what seems to be a new start and a new year. I'm curious to do some epic food experimentation but constrained by budget. After returning from Ireland, I figured it would be good to learn how to replicate a kind of soda bread - a bread which seemed so rich and cakey at times, with addition of different ingredients - and here above is the resultant loaf (Success!). Having never ever baked a loaf of bread before, I began with a variation on the Airy Fairy Easy Peasy Soda Bread recipe from agirlcalledjack.



Ingredients:
200g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate
200ml semi-skimmed milk
half a lemon

Optional, which I added because I had around the house:
half teaspoon salt
one teaspoon dark brown sugar
a packet of seeds

Preheat the oven to 180C. The milk is to be mixed with the juice of half a lemon to set aside to curdle for 15 minutes. During which time you mix all the dry ingredients together and eventually slowly incorporate the curdled milk to form a dough ball. Cut an X on top and bake for 40 minutes at 180C, after which it should be light and should sound hollow when tapped.

Milk and lemon can be substituted with old soured milk or buttermilk. In fact the milk and lemon is a kind of substitution of its own, the acid of lemon or acid in soured milk is necessary to activate the bicarbonate of soda, probably also helping to find a use for soured milk. Yeast was not always able to be obtained, hence the invention of bread made with soda. The cross that is cut on top with a knife is supposed to "ward off the devil and protect the household" [1].

Another interesting recipe is explained here:

A correspondent of the Newry Telegraph (a newspaper in Northern Ireland) gives the following receipt for making "soda bread," stating that "there is no bread to be had equal to it for invigorating the body, promoting digestion, strengthening the stomach, and improving the state of the bowels." He says, "put a pound and a half of good wheaten meal into a large bowl, mix with it two teaspoonfuls of finely-powdered salt, then take a large teaspoonful of super-carbonate of soda, dissolve it in a half a teacupful of cold water, and add it to the meal; rub up all intimately together, then pour into the bowl as much very sour buttermilk as will make the whole into soft dough (it should be as soft as could possibly be handled, and the softer the better,) form it into a cake of about an inch thickness, and put into a flat Dutch oven or frying pan, with some metallic cover, such as an oven-lid or griddle, apply a moderate heat underneath for twenty minutes, then lay some clear live coals upon the lid, and keep it so for half an hour longer (the under heat being allowed to fall off gradually for the last fifteen minutes,) taking off the cover occasionally to see that it does not burn. This he concludes, when somewhat cooled and moderatey buttered, is as wholesome as ever entered man's stomach. Wm . Claker , Esq., of Gosford, has ordered a sample of the bread to be prepared, and a quantity of the meal to be kept for sale at the Markethill Temperance Soup and Coffee Rooms. Farmer's Magazine. [2]

Curious at the economics of bread making and its associated costs, I did some calculations based on prices of the ingredients which were mainly bought from Sainsburys (Stamford Hill outlet) yesterday. Disregarding the "extras" such as the pinch of salt and sugar, and the electricity/oven/equipment/etc, this is how much the main ingredients for a loaf of homemade soda bread cost [price breakdown of ingredient for each unit of bread is in brackets]:

1.5kg Flour - £1.10 [15p]
0.569ml Semi Skimmed Milk - 49p [20p]
Bicarbonate (pack of 5 teaspoons) - £1.00 [20p]
1 Lemon - 32p [15p]

Thus the estimated cost of baking exactly one loaf of Irish Soda Bread was 70p.

I should add that the seeds were a nice addition, although I haven't quite figured out how to make more seeds stick to the top of my loaf. I'll try to bake different variations of this recipe in the next few weeks...

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See also:
[1] History of Irish Soda Bread
[2} Soda Bread History