Tamsin’s Houmous

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I’ll have to add a picture anon and also I can never really decide how you spell houmous so I hope that will do.

Here’s the thing with me and houmous. I’ve never really liked home made, or at least I have never made any at home which pleases me.

But all this has changed. I went to my friend Tamsin’s house; Tamsin is an inaugural member of my Suffolk Chocolate Club and it was her turn to host, and she made this amazing houmous which now I make and it’s, amazingly, still amazing when I make it.

The key is a really whizzy blender. I make mine in my Sage Super Blender, which is not its real name. I find if I make it in my Magimix it needs far longer to make it smooth.

You need (I’m so sorry about the formatting, not sure what’s going on with WordPress atm)

A 400g tin of chickpeas drain the liquid and keep it separate
50ml of the chickpea liquid (but you might need a bit more, I never do though)

60ml lemon juice, this seems to be about 2/3 of my little organic lemons. Don’t forget you can grate the peel and keep it in the freezer, for something else.

60ml extra virgin olive oil

1 garlic clove, peeled
1 teaspoon of ground cumin

Half a teaspoon of paprika
1 tablespoon of tahini

1 teaspoon of sea salt

Blend it all up til smooth, serve with a drizzle of very good olive oil.
It’s really good. The recipe says you can add 100g roasted red peppers to make it into red pepper houmous.

Yorkshire Eclairs

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These were a beautiful accident.

We had guests coming, and I had planned to make normal eclairs, stuffed full of white chocolate cream. But as I went to get the mixture out of my Kenwood mixer, I noticed the whisk attachment, which I’d had for about twenty years, had splintered and broken. There were really sharp filaments of metal sticking out, and I couldn’t risk the possibility that some had got into the mixture (and you can’t really sieve eclair mixture). So I had to start all over again.

However, my Magimix food processor whisk wasn’t strong enough to give me that really ribbony eclair texture, so I knew the dough would be too soft to pipe. But I wasn’t about to waste a whole other mixture so I thought sod it, I’m going to pour it into my Yorkshire Pudding tins – which are like shallow four circle shapes per tin – that’ll contain the mixture. And it worked beautifully. You could treat these like a normal eclair, by splitting them and coating the top with chocolate and injecting the insides with cream. But I didn’t want the faff after such a relatively stressful baking morning. So I just placed the cream on top, put some berries on and as an homage to the usual chocolate topping I poured on some Bare Bones Chocolate Syrup (seasonal produce) but you don’t need this latter.

Just to bring everything up to date here are the recipes for the eclairs and the white chocolate cream.

Eclairs (makes eight in my Yorkshire tins)

125ml water
50g butter
75g plain flour
3 medium eggs (at room temperature, this is important)
pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 180C.

Put the water in a sauce pan with the butter and salt and heat until the butter has melted. With the heat still on, beat in with a wooden spoon, the flour. Mix around vigorously until it forms a dough and doesn’t stick to the sides of the pan.

You can let the mixture cool here, you’re meant to, I never do.

Put the dough in a stand alone mixer with the whisk attachment on, then add the first egg. When fully incorporated add the other egg and then the third. Strictly speaking you only add enough egg til it comes together to form a thick, ribbon-y dough, that is to say that when you lift the whisk out of the mixture it leaves trails of visible ribbons behind for a few seconds. But I just add three eggs in and if you’re making Yorkshire eclairs the consistency of the dough should be thick, but it doesn’t matter if it’s not super thick because you’re not piping it.

When the dough has some substance to it, pour it into your Yorkshire tins (you do not need to grease them in anyway). Bake for about 25-35 mins. Longer will give you a dryer, crisper eclair if that’s what you want. For this recipe, ie in this shape, I like them a bit fluffier and softer so I check after 25 mins.

When cool, dollop on the white chocolate cream and top with berries and you are good to go. Once assembled eat immediately.

The eclairs can be kept in a tin for a day or two but they will soften. I rather like them like this but you may not.

White chocolate cream

Ideally make this just before you do the eclairs (even the day before) so it can set in the fridge.

You need 300ml of double cream and about 100-125g of white chocolate.

Heat half the cream in a saucepan, break up the chocolate, as small as you can, and then pour the heated cream over the top of the chocolate and stir until melted. (You can of course just put both together in a bowl and melt over hot water but I find that’s more of a faff.) When it’s all melted, put this chocolate/cream mixture in the fridge until it’s cool. When it is, mix in the other half of the double cream and whisk until stiff. It’s now ready to serve when you are.

Lavosh

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Lavosh are a bit like Italian Linguette – flat breads that you use with dips. They are so easy to make, the dough can be kept, balled up into individual portions for extra convenience, in the fridge for a day or two, ready to be rolled out and baked and you can have fresh lavosh on the table in under 20 mins.

You need, for eight lavosh

1 teaspoon of dried yeast
125ml of lukewarm water
1 teaspoon of caster sugar


300g of 00 flour (or just plain if you don’t have 00)

60ml of extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon of sea salt plus extra for sprinkling

1 egg white

Some herbs for atop, I’ve used basil here but you can use anything you like, fresh rosemary would be nice, as would dried oregano.

Mix together the 1 teaspoon of yeast, 125ml of lukewarm water and the teaspoon of caster sugar in a small bowl and give it 10-15 minutes until the top is frothy.

Whilst you are waiting for this mix together the 300g of flour and one teaspoon of salt in a bowl, make a little well and pour in the 60ml of extra virgin olive oil.. When the yeast/water/sugar mixture is frothy, pout this into the flour mixture too, and mix together until you have a rough dough. Knead this gently for a few minutes (if you need to you can do this on a lightly oiled chopping board or surface) leave for five minutes, go back and knead it again for a a minute or so (nothing strenuous is needed) leave it for another five minutes and by this time it should be smooth. Now leave it covered with a tea towel in a bowl in a warm place until it’s risen slightly. You could also put it in the fridge at this stage and carry on the next day with the cutting up into portions and rolling it out.

When it’s risen slightly cut into eight portions. I then roll them up into balls and with a rolling pin roll them out until they are long and thin. You can then cook, as below.

But if you haven’t previously kept the whole dough overnight you can cook some now and some – balled up in portions or as one big lump of dough – tomorrow as long as you leave the dough in the fridge at about 4C.

Basically when you are ready to bake them, preheat oven to 200C.

You can then either place baking parchment on a baking sheet and put the rolled out lavosh onto it, brush with the egg white, press in the basil leaves or whatever herbs you are using and sprinkle some salt. Then cook for about 12 mins until golden brown.

Or what I do is I preheat the baking sheet with the oven and when the oven is up to temperature the baking sheet is hot. I have separately prepared the lavosh onto the baking parchment (I have a re-usable silicon one). I take out the hot baking sheet and gently slide the lavosh on the baking parchment onto the tray. This way the lavosh puff up more but it’s really not necessary. Then bake as before

They are ready to eat pretty much straight away and are absolutely delicious with dips.

Pretzel Rolls

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The food writer Nicola Miller introduced me to what I think is the best bacon roll, from 5 Angel Hill in Bury St Edmunds. Their soft pretzel rolls, filled with salty bacon slices can see me going pretty much all day. Few breakfasts do this.

So when I saw this recipe for soft pretzel rolls in BBC Good Food magazine a while ago, by Edd Kimber (who I think is a genius and the only person I pay for on Substack) I had to make them.

I gave up hope of making them so they looked like pretzels, mine just look like in the picture. They make great rolls for sandwiches, sweet – but not too sweet – and soft. And of course with bacon for breakfast, and maybe an egg. I also really like them on their own.

The baked bicarb bit is a pain but you only need to do it once to yield a jar of baked bicarb which lasts for a good few batches, and it is worth it (I’ve done it without and they are fine but the baked bicarb does add something). I’ve reproduced the recipe here, eversoslightly tweaked, largely to help me as the way it’s laid on in BBC Good Food I always found confusing.

For the pretzel rolls (makes eight)

500g strong white bread flour

7g dried yeast (I use Dove’s Farm)

25g dark brown muscovado sugar

300ml of luke warm water

50g unsalted butter
(I sometimes put 50g of fridge-cold butter into a jug of 300ml of just boiled water and wait til the butter melts, thus cooling the water, and then wait until the water is at the sort of temperature that when you dip your finger in it feels neither hot or cold)

1 teaspoon of salt

For when ready to bake

2tbsp baked bicarb (see later)

An egg for egg wash

Sea salt for sprinkling if you want.

I put all the ingredients for the pretzel rolls (not the ‘for when ready to bake’ bits) into a food mixer with dough attachment and mix for ten minutes. Then I take out the dough hook and leave at room temperature for an hour (less if it’s really hot).

When ready, take the dough out and divide into eight. You roll each piece out into a long sausage and then shape into a U then cross the ends up and over. If you get stuck just YouTube How to shape a pretzel but don’t get fixated on making large holes or gaps. You can also just shape these into little normal buns. Place on parchment covered tray.

Then you can either set these aside for – as the original says – 20 mins (covered with a cloth) or do as I do which is put them in a fridge which is at 4C (on a parchment covered tray, covered with a tea towel). I bake them the next day. Note these won’t keep for ever in the fridge so if you want them the next day, make them late afternoon/evening.

When you are ready to cook, preheat the oven to 200C and bring a large pan of water to the boil put in the two tablespoons of baked bicarb (I will tell you how to do this at the end). Take your tray of pretzel rolls out of the fridge. Depending on how big your saucepan is you put in, say, two pretzel rolls and a time and boil for 20 seconds each side (flip over using the slotted spoon). Take out the pretzel rolls with a slotted spoon and place back on the parchment covered baking tray.

When all are done like this you brush the rolls with beaten egg, sprinkle with sea salt if you so desire and bake them at the 200C for 20 mins. They will be a rich golden brown. As soon as you are able to place them on a cooling rack, off the parchment (otherwise they can go soggy). Wait as long as you can to start enjoying them.

Once cooled these also freeze beautifully, I defrost them in the microwave on the defrost function for about 2 minutes.

Baked bicarbonate

Preheat oven to 120C. Foil line a baking tray and pour a whole tub of bicarbonate of soda (the sort of size you get in the supermarket) . Spread out so it’s all even and bake for one hour. When cool put in a specially marked container so you have it for next time.

Iced coffee, perfected

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I first wrote about iced coffee, made using an ice cream base, nearly ten years ago. Since then I’ve (I think) perfected it.

This is ludicrously easy to make if you have an espresso maker, a bit more laborious if it’s only a stove top. The mixture keeps in the fridge for about a week (or at the very least the life of the cream you add but you can also add the cream, if you like, at the mixing stage, or leave it out altogether if you absolutely must). All you do when you want to drink it is add ice cubes to a glass, milk of choice and then a good dollop of the iced coffee mixture. You will need to taste it to make sure it’s right for you.

I make the base mixture quite strong so it goes further and isn’t so tooth-achingly sweet.

This is what you need and just mix all together and store in the fridge until needed.

397g Waitrose Condensed Milk (for those, like me, who boycott Nestle, it’s great to know that Waitrose now makes its own condensed milk and it’s cheaper than Nestle’s)

400 ml of espresso, you can go higher if you want.

80ml or so of double of single cream, see what you have in.

A pinch of ground coffee



Bagels 2.0

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I first started making bagels over 13 years ago. I still make them very regularly. Home made bagels are not difficult, completely different to shop bought versions and whilst I won’t say they are ‘healthy’ they are very much better if you make them yourself.

The original recipe still stands but I’ve tweaked it ever so slightly and this is what I do now, making it in a stand mixer.

Ingredients:

450g strong white bread flour

1.5 tablespoons of caster sugar

1.5 teaspoons of salt

230-240 ml of water, at body temperature preferably (but just not ice cold).

1.5 teaspoons of dried yeast

egg wash for later and seeds if you want them.

Method


If you want to eat these the next day, start making them about 5pm. They overprove easily, even at 4C in the fridge, so you don’t want them hanging round too long. If you want to eat them that day, start making these about 3 hours before you want to eat them.

Put everything in a stand mixer with a dough hook. Mix steadily for ten minutes. Take out the dough hook (on very lazy days I don’t even do that, I drape a tea towel over the mixer) and cover.

Leave for one hour at a room temperature. After an hour the mixture should have risen. Obviously if you live somewhere very hot or very cold adjust accordingly. The dough should be puffed up and a bit yielding to the touch.

Now cut the dough up, using a bread knife, into eight pieces (more if you want to make smaller bagels). You can now either roll each piece into a long sausage and then join the ends (overlap slightly, as per pic below, although in that they are already baked) or gently knead into a ball (put dough in palm of your hand, cup your other hand over and gently make circles, it’ll ball-up), then make a hole with your finger, or a wooden spoon and make the hole a bit bigger. Place on a baking parchment lined tray. Cover with a clean tea towel.

You can also roll them into a sausage shape and overlap the edges if you prefer.



Now either put in the fridge at 4C if you want to bake these the next day – in which case you can go straight to the boiling of them once you’ve taken them out of the fridge. Or rest for about an hour til they’ve puffed up.

Whenever you are ready to cook:

Preheat oven to 220C.


Bring a wide-mouthed pan of water to the boil. I boil two at a time. Slide in two bagels, upside down to begin with (it doesn’t really matter but this is the way I do them), boil for 45s, tip over with a slotted spoon, boil for another 45s. Take out with the slotted spoon and place them to drain for a few minutes on the tea towel, whilst you do the others.

Once ready to bake put them back on the parchment lined tray you had them on, brush with beaten egg (can be a whole egg or just a yolk if that’s what you have), sprinkle with seeds if you want.


Bake for about 12 minutes (depending on your oven of course).



Voila. They also freeze (once baked) beautifully – better than letting them go stale and then toasted them – and you can defrost them gently in a microwave and they seem like freshly baked.

Courgette and Yuzu cakes

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My friend Lucy told me about this original recipe, from the Waitrose site.

I’ve adapted it, to include ground almonds, olive oil, and also tweaked with the icing. If you want to see the original recipe it’s here, otherwise here’s how I make it now.

Because I also like my treats to be contained, I make these in muffin cases and the recipe makes 16.

For those who have done the Zoe Trial, these score 59 per cake (“enjoy regularly” and I do!). They make very moist cakes that keep really well for about a week in the fridge and I think get even better as they age! These have become a real favourite int he house. Just make sure you eat them when they are really cool, or leave them for a day before eating.

200ml extra virgin olive oil

200g caster sugar

4 eggs

2 tablespoons of yuzu juice

125g self raising flour (I have also used white spelt and then a teaspoon of baking powder)

125g ground almonds

1 teaspoon of bicarbonate

250g courgettes – grated and put in a sieve for a bit then squeezed to get moisture out (there won’t be a lot)

pinch of salt

Icing

One and a half tablespoons of icing sugar

250g cream cheese

1 tablespoon of yuzu juice

Method

Oven to 180C. Put muffin cases in a muffin tray (I have a 12 hole one and then a 6 hole one, or you could make these in stages).

Beat together the 200ml of extra virgin oil and the 200g of caster sugar for about two minutes with an electric mixer (whisk attachment). You want it to have thickened. Then add the four eggs, one at a time, the two tablespoons of yuzu juice, the 125g self raising flour (or spelt and baking powder), 125g ground almonds, 1 tsp of bicarb and a pinch of salt, then finally the courgettes.

Spoon carefully into the muffin cases and cook for about 25 minutes. It’s quite hard to see if they are cooked as these are a moist cake, but press down and there should be som resistance. If not cook for a few minutes more.

When completely cool, mix together the cream cheese and icing sugar (just with a fork or spoon it should take seconds) and yuzu juice and top each cup cake with icing.

Store in the fridge and enjoy one a day! I don’t have any pics yet as I am both greedy and lazy but will remedy this soon.

Bakewell slices (for a picnic, updated)

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I first wrote about these back in 2010. I haven’t made them for years. I used to bake Bakewell tart a lot and I thought I didn’t like it anymore. But it’s late September, our government is currently shit, I can’t escape to Italy as Mussolini is basically back in power and the news is too much.

So in order to escape I got up early to make these for a craft morning tomorrow (which is mine and my youngest’s way of escaping the world).

The pastry:

200g plain flour
2 tablespoons icing sugar
100g cold unsalted butter, cubed
2 egg yolks if you want to be true to the recipe but I now just use one egg

I whizz the flour, sugar and butter in a food processor, then add the egg until it all comes together. You can do it with your hands too of course.

I never roll out pastry. Life is too damn short. It’s not too short to make your own pastry though cos shop bought really isn’t the same and how long does it take to weigh out a few ingredients and slam them in a gadget?

When it’s blended, I just take bits of the pastry and flatten it out into the bottom of whatever tin I’m using, welding it all together with a thumb like a giant pastry jigsaw. I use a square tin that’s about 21cm. Line the bottom well with baking parchment, first though, if possible with some ‘overlap’ to help you lift it out when it’s done.

Then when you’ve covered the bottom of the tin with pastry in this piece meal (no gaps though) but completely acceptable fashion, chill the pastry for about half an hour (perfectly do-able to chill for longer of course).

In the meantime, preheat the oven to 190C. When the pastry has rested, cover with foil, pour on baking beans. Bake blind (this means with nowt in it but the baking beans on the foil) for 15 mins. Then remove the beans (take care they’ll be hot) and bake for a further five minutes.

The filling

I use Bonne Maman Black cherry jam, about a third of a jar.

frangipani filling pt 2:

125g caster sugar
100g very soft unsalted butter
3 eggs
half a teaspoon of almond extract
150g wonderful ground almonds (I LOVE ground almonds)

Mix the butter and sugar together until it’s light and fluffy, this is quite a good work out for your arms and you’ll expend about 12 calories to offset against the calorific value of these slices, then add the eggs, one at a time, mix well, then the almond extract and finally fold in the ground almonds.

When the pastry base is out of the oven and cooled just a little, spoon the black cherry jam onto the pastry case, then on top spread the frangipani topping.

I also like to top it all with flaked almonds, like a handful scattered on top. You can never have enough almonds, rich in protein (so they bring down the GI of anything), calcium and essential fatty acids. How can you go wrong. Unless you’re allergic to nuts of course.

Cook for 20-25 mins or so, the top should be definitely golden, not pale blonde. When out, tie your hands behind your back and dive in face first. Or alternatively, slice into Mr Kipling type slices. I top mine with a mixture made of 50g icing sugar and 50g cream cheese, drizzle on top.

These keep lovely in an tin for a few days.

Pea and ham pasta

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This is surely a nursery stalwart, and I cut this out of a BBC Good Food magazine earlier this year and hid it as it’s pasta and it’s too easy to eat pasta. But, as I seem to be on a carb fest I scheduled this for dinner last night and it was absolutely delicious. Warming, comforting, cosy, just as our government crashes and burns the economy. We ate it in front of the fire trying to keep sane (and warm). I have changed this slightly as don’t agree what they did with the peas (they say cook them in the last few minutes of the pasta cooking but this is impractical if you want to then puree the peas, see later).

This serves two but as a small dinner, augmenting the pasta to 250g, it served three of us fine.

200g conchiglie pasta (don’t fight it like I tried to, this is a great shape for this dish, we used the smaller-size shells, not tiny tiny but just normal, recipe calls for conchiglione which are the big mofos but we didn’t use them)

160g cooked peas
1 red onion, finely chopped

A slosh of olive oil

100g cooked ham

150ml double cream

Juice of half a lemon

40g parmesan, plus extra to serve

Cook the pasta according to the packet instructions, which we know always lie.

At the same time, because cooking is all about multi tasking, heat the oil in the frying pan and fry the onion until soft. Add the ham, cream, lemon juice and parmesan, then season and mix together well. Remove from heat, try not to pick at the bits.

The recipe says to puree some of the peas which you can do if you want (we did). Drain the pasta loosely (ie keep a tiny bit of the water on it) then tip everything into a big pan/frying pan and mix together, serve from the pan if you want and add extra parmesan.

Customise your chocolate chip cookies

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Yum yum yum

So many places promise that their cookie is the best, or their recipe will spring forth the best cookie. But in lockdown, my youngest and I sought to find a way to make a recipe for what WE wanted in a cookie. We started with an amalgam of cookie recipes we had made (see Hugh’s Ten Minute Cookies as a starter, ) and then we looked at this excellent ‘parametric’ of how to make cookies just as YOU want them, and we experimented.

You may need to sign up to read all the data but it’s free and I think Chef Steps is brilliant. We specifically wanted to ‘step up the chew’ and Chef Steps told us that to do this we could do all, or one, of a few things, namely: increase the hydration. In our case we added an egg white. Melting the butter also releases the water in it so we know do that instead of just using softened butter. Change the flours, we introduced bread flour – I know! – into our recipe. Change the sugars, we upped the brown sugar to white sugar proportion. By carefully decreasing the cooking time you can also add to the chew, but if you get this wrong – dah dah DAH – you’ll just end up with a soft cookie. That ain’t no bad thing but it won’t be che-wy.

Anyway, I’ve had this recipe under a magnet on the fridge for two years now and I live in fear of losing it. We took ages to get it how WE wanted it. So I’m committing it to here so it’s forever saved. You may also enjoy it but you can now experiment and make YOUR cookie the best.

125g butter, melted and cooled. I use unsalted but if you use salted butter don’t add the salt mentioned later.

150g soft brown sugar

75g granulated

1 whole egg and one egg white (I save the yolk for brushing atop bagels and these ‘almost’ brioches I make regularly)

Two teaspoons of vanilla extract

75g white bread flour

75g wholemeal spelt (I tend to use Baker’s Blend as that’s what we have which is mostly wholemeal with some white spelt)

Half a teaspoon of baking powder

A pinch of salt if your butter wasn’t salted

150g chocolate chips

100g chopped nuts

Oven to 175C fan so you can do two trays at once. Bake time is 7/8 minutes.

METHOD

Cream together the 125g melted and cooled butter and the 150g of soft brown sugar and 75g of granulated sugar. You can do this by hand or in a freestanding mixer with the whisk attachment. Then add your one whole egg and one egg white (you don’t need to whisk the egg white first or anything like that). Then the two teaspoons of vanilla extract.

Now add your 75g of white bread flour and your 75g spelt with half a teaspoon of baking powder and the pinch of salt, if using. If you’ve been using a freestanding mixer, untether the bowl form the mixer and manually mix in the chocolate and nuts.

Use a tablespoon to put dollops on a baking tray lined with baking parchment and bake in a preheated 175C fan oven for 7/8 minutes. This mixture keeps in the fridge for a few days so you can have fresh cookies in an instant.