The Garden

Well my garden has been good to me over the last few months and I have learned a lot from it. First lesson learned is that celeriac really does need to be thinned out quite brutally (I ended up with half a dozen tiny baby celeriac bulbs all grouped together). Second lesson learned was…… rats love tomatoes. I however do not love rats so when I discovered that one had build a nest in the base of one of my beds of tomatoes, I first tried not to scream like a little girl, then I put the hose on “jet” setting and blasted the fat little rodent out of its nest. Once it had ran up over the fence into the neighbour’s yard (oops) I pulled out the tomato plants and filled in its nest. How tough am I???!!!

So I have taken out most of the remaining crop and have some seeds in the seed trays which I’m hoping will develop into healthy seedlings ready to plant in the next 5-6 weeks. I am still nurturing some cherry tomatoes and rhubarb which are maturing in their beds. Watch this space for Rhubarb and apple crumble.

Bread

I have been making a lot more home made bread over the last few weeks and I have to say it's the best I have made, the only difference between this and my previous attempts is that I have finally purchased some decent hard wheat flour and I have made a conscious note of how long I am kneading the dough for. I have found that it really does need to be Kneaded (no pun intended) for 10 minutes.

The reason for using hard wheat flour is that it has a high gluten content that allows the dough to stretch and therefore rise to give you that light fluffy bread everyone loves so much. The kneading of the dough activates the gluten to allow it to stretch and rise to its full capacity so the flour is very important. A lot of plain flours in the supermarket are soft flours which are best for cakes and biscuits.  

Now I don’t really follow a recipe but below is a rough guide of how I make my bread.

Ingredients:

750g flour plus extra for dusting work bench

7g sachet or 1 ½ teaspoons of dry yeast

2 cups of warm water

1 teaspoon of honey

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 pinch of salt

Method

In a small jug mix the warm water, yeast, sugar, salt, and honey. Give the mixture a stir and leave it aside so the yeast can activate. It is ready to use once there is a thick foamy top to the mixture.

Pour your flour into a very large mixing bowl. Add the yeast mixture and work the flour into a dough.

Knead the dough on a clean work bench for ten minutes, adding flour to the work bench if the dough starts to stick.

Put your kneaded dough into a clean dry bowl and cover it with cling film or a damp tea towel. Leave in a warm area to prove for about 3 hours, or until it has doubled in size.

Now you need to degas the dough by kneading it again lightly. Place your dough on a oiled baking tray then score it and sprinkle with your favourite seeds.  Let the dough sit on top of the preheating oven for about 40 minutes or until it has risen again.

The oven needs to be set at 220°C but when the loaf is put in to bake, turn the oven down to 200°C. Bake the loaf on the bottom shelf for about 30 minutes or until golden. The loaf is cooked when it sounds hollow when tapped. If it doesn’t sound hollow then it needs to be cooked for a little longer.  

Peach and Coconut Crumble

If you have any left over filling from your peach pie (as I did) then make these little crumble to bake at a later time, they freeze well so you can save them for a rainy day.

All you do for these is pour the cooked peaches into ramekins and top with crumble. Use the recipe from the previous post but add coconut. Bake at 180°C until top is golden.

If you didn’t make the peach pie but still want to try these then just follow the instructions on the previous post regarding cooking the peaches or use any stewed fruit you like.

Peach Crumble Pie

It is over half way through January and I haven’t even posted one recipe yet! I have a couple to share with you today one is an all time favourite of mine, peach crumble pie.

The pastry in this recipe is a little fiddly to work with but there are some tricks I will share with you that will make it easier and although it’s a little crumbly when lining your pie dish it is very forgiving and patchwork seems to go unnoticed in the finished product.

For the pastry:

Ingredients:

250g butter

1 cup icing sugar

3 cups flour

3 egg yolks

Method:

Pour all the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl and mix up by hand.

Cube your butter and add it to the dry ingredients. Start rubbing the butter through the mixture. Once you have rubbed the butter through, add the egg yolks and keep working the mix by hand until it can be worked into a ball.

Now what you need to do is get four sheets of baking paper, take two of the sheets and put half of the pastry mix between the two sheets. You need to try and roll out the mix between the sheets. Try to press from each side and fill the square. Don’t worry if it comes out the side just trim it off and add it to the remaining mix. Depending on the size of your paper sheets you may be able to get three sheets out of this recipe. Repeat this for the rest of your pastry then lay the pastry sheets flat in the fridge for 15 minutes before lining your baking dish.

When you line the pie dish you will take one side of the baking paper off, allow the pastry to get just pliable then press it, exposed side down, into the pie dish. It will probable have a few cracks and it might not fit all the way up the side of your pie dish but don’t worry, just trim off the excess and use it to fill in the gaps. Once you have a line pie dish with no gaps, return it to the freezer for 20 minutes and preheat your oven to 200°C.

The pastry has to be blind baked so cover the frozen pastry lined pie dish with several layers of foil making sure they are well pressed into the base of the dish. Bake the pastry for 25 minutes at 200°C. remove it from the oven and check it has slightly browned all over.

For the crumble:

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups oats

1 ½ cups flour

1 ½ cups almond meal

2 cups of brown sugar

200g butter

Method:

Pour all the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl and mix up by hand. The mixture is beautiful and sandy at this point.

Cube your butter and add it to the dry ingredients. Start rubbing the butter through the mixture until you get the consistency of wet sand that will hold together when pressed but break apart easily.

For the peach filling:

The great thing about this kind of recipe is you really can use any fruit you have but stone fruit is my favourite, I actually used a mixture of peaches and nectarines and it was delicious.

Ingredients:

8 large peaches (double that if the fruit is small)

½ cup sugar

1 tablespoon of water

Method:

Remove the stone from the fruit and roughly shop it. Pop all the fruit into a large saucepan then add the sugar and water.

Cover the saucepan and cook it on a medium heat until everything starts bubbling quite vigorously. At this point there is usually a large amount of liquid that has come out of the fruit so remove the lid and turn the heat down to low. Allow the fruit to simmer, stirring occasionally, until you have a thick fruit mixture that is not too wet.

To construct the pie, simply pour the peach mixture into the blind baked pie crust. Then top with crumble and return to the oven. Bake on the bottom shelf at 180°C until the top is golden brown.

Cream Puffs with Chocolate Sauce

This was homework for my stepdaughters french class. I've never made choux pastry before so I was glad when they worked out so well. I just love when the children are given cooking related assignments!

My Garden

Well this shabby start to summer had to have a silver lining and here it is...... My garden has responded well to all the rain and the result is more spinach than I know what to do with. That's not strictly true, as I am rarely at a loss with what to do with spinach.

Christmas Cupcakes

I thought I'd bring a little festivity to my Friday morning tea at the office. I've barely posted anything of late but I assure you this is not due to lack of interest! I, like all of you I'm sure, have been completely run off my feet of late and so it looks like January will bring an inundation of recipes to my blog that have otherwise been put on the back-burner.