Wild garlic

Inspired by Joanna's recent  Potato Masala Dosa with Wild Garlic  post I thought I would venture across the fields that back on to our estate and pick some wild garlic by the wooded stream. Each year, Sue and I notice the ransoms growing but often we leave it too late to pick. I have added it to salads and used like spinach in spicy lentil dishes but I thought I'd try something different this time and ended up making a delicious pesto instead. 

Malted sourdough loaf

I have just ordered Bethesdabasics, a guide to making sourdough bread from the PArtisan Baker. I am looking forward to trying some of his recipes and techniques and hope to post some of the results here. I have fond memories of Bethesda as I lived in North Wales in the late eighties/early nineties.

I have been making my own bread over the past three months. I have made a tasty wholemeal sourdough bread but my favourite sourdough loaf so far uses Dove Farm's Malted bread flour. I have been using a simple method I found at  River Cottage. Last Wednesday night I added 250g flour to 300g  water and 100g of my starter (which has a thick batter consistency), mixed it up and covered it, leaving in a cool place.

The next morning I added 300g of flour, a glug of olive oil and 10 g of salt. I kneaded the dough for about 10 minutes, it was initially quite sticky but I resisted the temptation to add more flour. I then shaped the loaf into a tight ball and then left it covered in a bowl.

Up to now I have usually gone to work and then at 6 pm I have knocked back the dough, reshaped in a tight ball and then left it for 2-3 hours to proove before baking in the oven. The results have been good. However, I was wondering what it would be like if I left it to prove for longer, so I improvised a proving basket (mixing bowl and a floured tea towel!) and left it overnight.

Friday morning I quickly placed the risen dough on a floured wooden chopping board, slashed the top of the loaf and put it onto a hot pizza stone in the oven, with the usual misty spray of water to create a steamy atmosphere. The bread had a great aroma as it baked.

The crust was chewy and the tangy complex flavour of the bread only required a little butter to complement it.
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Best tasting loaf so far. I think I've caught the bug for this sour dough  bread-making!

A is for Aubergine

"The aubergine seduces. No other vegetable can offer flesh so soft, silken and tender.You don't so much chew an aubergine as let it dissolve on your tongue."  

Nigel Slater, Tender Vol I, p. 39 

A new global food store has opened up just opposite to where I work. It has a wide array of middle eastern products as well as pulses and spices and I intend to supplement my weekly organic veg box with some of the  produce they sell. I love the large bunches of coriander and flat leaf parsley, such a contrast to the plastic packaged supermarket trimmings.

I saw these aubergines and immediately thought of a recipe I had read in Yotam Ottolenghi's "Plenty", a book I received as a present last Christmas. I have long enjoyed his weekly column in the Guardian newspaper.

The recipe for burnt aubergine with tahini can be found on his blog here. I made it as a salad with cucumber and tomatoes and very good it was too.

One of the reasons for starting this blog was to encourage myself to try new recipes from cookbooks I already own.