Author Archives: Annalisa Barbieri

Hula Hooping

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I am on a mission to get some core stability/strength back, by doing stuff that doesn’t involve leaving the house (I have two young children). I run three times a week, which is great. But not so core specific.

I’ve long wanted to hula hoop as I have a friend who does and raves about it. And then, after seeing  Grace Jones hula-ing at the Jubilee concert...well.  Being able to hula hoop became my summer holiday challenge. I had bought my eldest a hoop in the toy shop and neither of us could master it. This was because, someone told me on line (and I’m so sorry I can’t remember who otherwise I’d credit you!), hoops sold in toy shops are…toys. Too light, too small, and virtually impossible to hula with. She said I needed a weighted hoop and one that, when held vertically, came up to approximately my belly button. (In fact you can see, when she brings it on stage, the hoop Grace Jones uses is big.)

So I bought one, from the The Hoop Dance Co. I got this one – plain, £11.99 (do you NEED flourescent? Do you NEED striped? I don’t think so) in 38″/625g for me and the 30″/550g one for my eldest. The smaller the hoop, the harder it is, so go bigger if you are in doubt.

Within 24 hours my daughter was hula hooping like a pro. And I can do 30 seconds without stopping. Major CV work out…I am half tempted to post a video of us hula-ing.

But no.

Staedtler gel crayons

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Staedtler Gel Crayons, £9.25 for six. Not cheap, but worth it.

I knew I was a grown up when I realised that I could buy my very own box of Caran d’Ache felt tip pens. When I was a child, the number of coloured pencils/markers you had were currency. She who had a whole box of them was top of the heap and you could pick your best friend. And Caran d’Ache was the very best you could get. I of course, never had a full set, just a disparate bunch of felt tip pens that I’d accumulated along the way (don’t feel too sorry for me, I had home made pizza every Friday night). I was about 25 before I realised I could buy my very own box of crayons/markers/pencils. And I did. I still don’t let anyone else use them.

I must point out here that I hate cheap crayons and felt tip pens and coloured pencils that hardly make a mark on the paper. 

The other day I got sent a package from John Lewis*. In amongst other colouring sticks – retractable coloured pencils, wax crayons – were these gel crayons. They are brilliant. There’s only six, so no shades of anything, but they are thick, so easy to use (the mark of good colouring stuff, the colours are rich cos they use good pigments), slightly glittery, but don’t go expecting disco balls. They’re not like normal crayons, but look almost like a fat lipstick. True to greedy form, I got them and when the children said “ooh who are they for?” I said, without hesitation: “Me.”

*If you think because I got sent them this is why I’m writing about them, think again. I get sent all sorts of crazy shit and I never write about it. I just don’t do that. No-one tells me what to recommend. But these are great.

Chewy scoop biscuits

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 These have just come out of the oven. They are crispy, salty, sugary, chocolately. But not sickly, because that would be wrong.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I keep all my torn out recipes in Muji PP Portfolio books. I have about 12 of them covering different subjects like ‘Everyday’, ‘Pasta’, ‘Fish’ and of course one just for biscuits…

I had cut this recipe out of the Waitrose magazine some time ago and recently refound it. It was the word ‘chewy’ that got me, even though these biscuits aren’t, actually chewy (or I have not found them to be so).

Not that that matters, because they’re delicious, easy to make and – best of all, for me – you can make the dough, shape them and then freeze them so when you fancy home made biscuits you’re only a quarter of an hour away from them. It also means you can cook just a few at a time (important for greedy types such as me).

Anyway, here is the recipe. I didn’t have hazelnuts so I used walnuts. The three types of chocolate is really important, as is the salt (obviously all the ingredients are important. But what I mean is something that seems unimportant, like the salt, is actually crucial in my view).

I didn’t use an ice cream scoop, just shaped them with  my hands into walnut sized balls. My biscuits, as you can see, aren’t flat like those in the magazine.

I found 12 mins was plenty, but my oven is fierce.

If you want to freeze them – and I recommend you do as this dough makes loads, you just shape them and them freeze them spaced out on a tray or plate or something. When frozen, then you can bung them all into a freezer bag (if you bung them all in to begin with they will all freeze stuck together, and you don’t really want that), to pull out and cook – from frozen – whensoever you wish. If cooking from frozen, give them 15 mins.

Dan Lepard’s Almond Layer cake with crushed raspberries

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All my own work.

This recipe was published in the Guardian last year. I made it on the day it came out, as you can probably see from the below the line comments (Dan linked to a picture of the cake that I tweeted, for I can no longer bake in isolation, but need to share with the world). Since then I’ve baked it many times. It’s perfect for when you want a proper teatime cake with goo. And it’s not difficult.

The recipe is here. There are a few comments I’d like to make:

I don’t have 18cm cake tins so I use 8″ ones (which is slightly bigger than 18cm, sorry to mix imperial and metric). It’s fine.

I find 30 mins just a bit too much….so check after 25 mins.

I double up the syrup Dan uses to soak the sponges, as I find doing his amount isn’t enough for my thirsty cakes.

You could easily, easily make two not-so-high-cakes out of these, by that I mean slice the cakes in half horizontally. That way you get more cream/raspberries to sponge ratio. Won’t be so towering and impressive, but if you need more cakes.

Put more cream in the sandwich layer than you think you’ll need. It squishes down.

Children also seem to love this. I find this is important when I just want to do one thing.

This is a really delicious cake. It’s so much more than a Victoria sponge. It’s so easy to make (make the cake bits ahead, assemble before you eat it) and is impressive. My friend Kate is so greedy for this cake, I can make her turn all sorts of tricks for it.IMG_0995

 

Eating and freezing notes: Unless this cake is for An Event, I now make two cakes out of it. That is to say instead of putting one of the cakes atop the other, which makes for a spectacular cake but one that’s fairly high, I slice each in half (see pic above). Or I freeze one of the (plain) cakes for another time. It freezes really well but freeze it before you soak it with the brandy/sugar syrup. Do that when you defrost it and then proceed with the cream/fruit part.

Schiacciata

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Aerial view before going into the oven

Schiacciata means squashed in Italian, and this is a recipe for a sort of foccaccia bread with grapes squashed into it. It’s not a sourdough recipe, you don’t need a bread maker. It’s really very simple. I have had this recipe for ages, cut out from an Italian magazine and converted into English stuff.

It’s an odd bread though. People often say to me things like “oh God I couldn’t make my own bread I’d just spend all day eating it”. Well, I don’t spend all day eating bread. I think this is largely because sourdough (what I usually make every day) is delicious, but satisfying. Even though it’s a sum of parts of water, flour and salt, the way it’s made makes it far more satisfying than bread made with commercial yeast plus those same parts. My partner makes a foccacia that is so addictive I am as bloated as a puffer fish by the end of a meal as I carry on eating it well after my stomach is stretched to fullness.

This is an odd bread, however, because what would you eat it with? Well cheese is an obvious one. A salty cheese especially I think (actually, almost any after-dinner type cheese, I just really wanted to write the words ‘salty cheese’). And I think it would be perfectly wonderful with Parma ham. Whatever you have it with, it makes for a very attractive centre piece, would make a lovely present, is easy and quick to make but really needs to be eaten within a day of making it. It’s lovely warm, but not too hot, from the oven. And it’s very hard to resist, so don’t make this if you’ve just gone on a diet (loathsome word). You won’t get a big, airy crumb. This is altogether a more cakey bread.

So, this is what you need:

1tsp of dried, fast acting yeast (I use Dove’s)
1tbsp of caster sugar
80ml extra virgin olive oil
Fresh rosemary sprigs, I dunno, like about five or six
200 strong white bread flour
200-300g red or black seedless grapes, washed and dried, all off the stems.
a generous half a teaspoon of salt

You can easily double up or treble the recipe. I double it usually and make it in a big rectangular tin. But really, that gives you enough for a dinner party and you don’t really want that unless you are actually having a dinner party. And as this bread doesn’t keep I’d keep the quantities modest until such time as you know you’ll be feeding the five thousand.

This is what you do:

Chop up the rosemary sprigs (take the leaves off the stems) until you have very finely chopped bits, about a tablespoon’s worth. Put in the olive oil in a pan and warm very gently through for a few minutes. Then take it off the heat and let it cool and infuse. You want it to be back down to kinda blood temperature, honestly as long as it’s not boiling hot you can’t go wrong.

Whilst that’s happening, mix the yeast in 90ml of warm water and a scant tsp of the caster sugar (more like half really, kinda like a pinch). Whisk gently and leave for 10 mins until frothy. Maybe longer, but it will have frothed and puffed up a bit.

Now add the flour and salt to a bowl, make a well in the middle and then the yeast mixture and half the rosemary oil. Mix together roughly with your hands until you’ve got it mostly together. Leave, covered, for about 8-10 mins.

Turn out onto an oiled board and knead for about ten seconds. Leave for 8-10 mins.

Turn it out onto an oiled board again and knead for about ten seconds. It should be all nice and smooth now. If not then do it one more time. If it looks good and smooth, cover with a bowl and leave to rise at room temperature for 1-2 hours. Sorry not to be more accurate, but it depends on your room temperature. Until it’s doubled in size. As a guide, my kitchen was at 22C and it took about 90 mins.

When you feel it’s ready, oil a suitable oven proof dish – you can use a round cake tin (23/24cm) or a rectangular one. You need something with sides really as you’re going to be brushing it with a lot of oil and you want to keep the oil in the dough, not escaping out onto a baking tray. I sort of squash the bread in, and over about 10 – 15 mins (so the dough is nice and relaxed) I push it out to the sides of the tin so it fills it. You want a thin layer of dough, not thin-crust pizza thin, but about 1-2cm thick.

Now squash the grapes in. I say squash but don’t break them, kinda push them in. Brush the bread with the remaining oil. yes it will see like a lot. Now scatter over some more rosemary, sprinkle over some caster sugar (not loads) and set aside for about half an hour, covered with cling film or a very wrung out damp teatowel.

In the meantime preheat the oven to 250 (or as high as it will go if not as high as that). Bake for about 10-12 mins, then turn down to 220 for a further ten mins or so. It’s done when it’s golden brown.

Cooked and heavily nibbled by someone.

Minestrone

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Minestrone with broken up spaghetti and small bits of ‘pastina’

It’s mid June as I write this. In Italy, where my mother is from, it’s nearly 30C. Here, in Suffolk, it’s 12C.

And everybody’s complaining about it.

So today, I decided to make some minestrone. Minestrone is peasant food. You’d make it out of the bits ‘n’ bobs of vegetables you had left over. As such, there are many different versions. This is the beauty of it really, which is that you can add more or less whatever veg you have. Use bits of broken pasta that you can’t use for anything else, etc.

My mother makes an amazing minestrone, but she makes it using frozen veg. Which is quite inspired really when you consider that she lives in central London now, not on the edge of a vegetable patch. And the frozen veg is really fresh and delicious. I used to hate her minestrone (sorry Mamma, although the likelihood of you reading this is as high as the Vatican ever admitting it is wrong about anything) and the one and only time I was sent to bed without my dinner was when I, one evening, refused to eat it. I thought – and still think – this was quite harsh considering that I used to eat almost everything else. Including chickens’ feet and chickens’ stomach and tripe and brains. I mean, come on! Give me a break.

Anyway, I love it now and this is how I make it. I’d love to say this is a recipe passed down from my Nonna, but nope, I got it from Waitrose.

2tbsp olive oil
140g pancetta, cut up; or cut up bits of bacon (entirely optional, but makes it nice)
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 sticks of celery, you guessed it, diced
1 clove of garlic, diced or chopped, go crazy
1 medium potato, peeled and guess what? diced
2 medium courgettes, diced
400g can of chopped tomatoes
1 large sprig of basil
Parmesan rind (save them for this)
salt and pepper (but not salt if you use the parmesan rind)
410g borlotti beans, drained and rinsed (optional)
50g your chosen pasta, nothing too thick, I love broken up spaghetti

You can prepare each veg as you go along.

Put the oil in a large saucepan and then add the pancetta/bacon. Once it’s beginning to colour, add the onion and cook gently until soft. Fry until soft.

Add the carrot, then the celery, then the garlic, then the potato, then the courgette. At each stage add the veg and let it cook for a minute or two.

Give the courgettes a couple of minutes, then add the chopped tomatoes. Fill the now empty tin with water, twice, and add to the minestrone. Now add the basil (if you don’t have it, don’t stress). Add parmesan rind and some pepper. If you don’t have the parmesan rind then add salt too.

Bring to boil, lower to simmer. With lid off, simmer very gently for two hours. You can eat it after one hour but it’s so much nicer after two hours. Twenty mins before the end, add the beans if you want to use them (I’m not a mad fan of the beans, and prefer it without).

If you’re planning on eating the whole lot in one go, also put the pasta in now, otherwise you get a better result cooking the pasta separately and adding it when you eat the minestrone.

That’s it. I find this really therapeutic to make and deliciously wholesome to eat.

What to do with your starter when you go away

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This piece in the Guardian today is getting quite a lot of attention on Twitter. I think some people have taken it a tad too seriously…(it’s about checking your sourdough start into a hotel).

But it does bring me onto something pertinent, which is that people who I’ve got into sourdough (I’m a sourdough pusher) and have shared my starter with, have gone into a panic about going away.

It’s really no big deal. If you go away on holiday:

Make sure your starter is in a big enough jar to cope with any expansion.
If you’re worried about your start erupting (I never do, but I know some people do) then refresh it about 24hrs before you go away, not just as you leave. So you can keep an eye on it.
Keep the starter drier than usual so it’s less frisky.
Put your starter in the fridge.

I have to say, I don’t do anything different as I know my jar is big enough and I know how my starter behaves, but just to be extra cautious.

It’ll be fine. When you come back, refresh it as normal once or twice before you bake.

That’s all. Happy hols!

An easy summer dessert

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My summer dessert special. If you come to my house during berry season, this is likely what you’ll get.

This is, actually, really, a dessert I invented myself. You can tell by just how imprecise everything is. It was probably borne out of that great motivator: greed.

This is what you need:

Some amaretti biscuits

Mascarpone, you need about 1-2 tablespoons per person depending on size of glass.

Some yoghurt

Lemon curd

Some berries

Some icing sugar

Some pretty glasses

Long spoons

 

Crush the amaretti biscuits. Whip up the mascarpone with the yoghurt and lemon curd – to taste. I tend to have a 60/30/10 split mascarpone/yoghurt/lemon curd. And when I say whip up, I mean just kinda loosen it with a fork until it’s all homogenised.

Take some of the berries and whizz them up in a liquidiser with the icing sugar. Just a tablespoon or so of the icing sugar! This is for the syrupy part.

Then you just layer everything, a layer of crushed biscuits, a layer of fruit, layer of the mascarpone mixture, a bit of the syrup repeat, etc. The syrup makes things really tasty, so don’t skimp on it. I like to end up with a  sprinkling of the amaretti or some chopped hazelnuts on top of a top layer of the mascarpone mixture.

You can make these in advance and bring them out at the end. With a flourish.

 

A white chocolate lolly ‘cake’

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I don’t even like white chocolate, but let me tell you, these were so good I almost ate them all in ‘quality control’ before the actual day.

Yesterday was my eldest daughter’s first holy communion. I made her a cake made entirely of white chocolate lollies. Since first experimenting with chocolate lollies last year, I’ve really moved on with them and by investing in a few things: proper moulds, sticks and a stand, you can really make something quite simple and easy to make (but ssssh, don’t tell anyone) into something that looks spectacular.

I made these the day before, and just assembled them on the day (i.e. slotted them into the holes in the stand). Once I’ve had an alcoholic drink, my guests have to pretty much fend for themselves so anything that can be pre-made plays to my great organisational skills and my weakness for being a dreadful, drunk, host.

I usually make chocolate lollies in 70% cocoa chocolate. But a few months ago, my friend Lucy (who is the only person in the whole of East Anglia who possibly has more baking gadgets/biscuit cutters than I) mentioned that she had made some lollies in white chocolate using crystallized violets. I stored this bit of information away in my brain, thinking white lollies would be lovely for a holy communion, instead of a cake, say. We had some crystallized violets that my partner and the girls had made for mother’s day (every aspect of that sentence sounds smug, but I don’t mean it to), I used Green and  Black’s white chocolate (which is, I have to say, absolutely superb). And this is what I did.

Melted the white chocolate.
Poured it into the moulds.
Put in lolly sticks.
Scattered on some crystallized violets or freeze dried strawberries (from Waitrose, they come in a tube, in the baking aisle).
Put in fridge to set.
Removed from moulds after a couple of hours.
Tasted one for quality control purposes.
Decided they were so amazingly good I had to have more.
Cycle to Waitrose to buy more white chocolate.
Repeat process.
And then, when time comes, slot the lollies into the holes in the stand and da-dar.

A note about the stand. I bought mine from Amazon. It doesn’t appear to be sold anymore, but I’m looking out for other stockists as it’s really lovely and minimalist and classy.

Cast iron pans ‘n’ skillets

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Everyone seems to have a tale of the cast iron frying pan that never got washed and was passed down from mother to child. I certainly have. Whenever I did the drying up with my Ma, and that drying up involved the frying pan (not a cast iron one), she would tell me about her Ma’s frying pan which never got washed, just wiped.

This queer little detail fascinated me for ages. How could you not wash a frying pan?

Fast forward many years later.  And all my well meaning friends, the one who breastfeed for years and have home births and make their own bread and are…generally just like me. Well they started going on and on about cast iron frying pans. How non stick made you die, how canaries in rooms with non stick frying pans just dropped down dead.

It was really boring, so I thought I’d buy a cast iron frying pan, if for no other reason than, when they came round, I could whack them round the head with it.

And now, here I am being just like them and going ON about cast iron. It’s true, owning a cast iron frying pan is like having another member of the family, someone you love and trust and who never lets you down.

Only kidding. It’s not. It’s a frying pan for goodness sake. But yes, there is something really nice about the weight, the solidity of a cast iron fucking frying pan. And I was actually getting fed up of non stick stuff lasting just a few years before it started to fall apart (and I’m not talking cheap pans, either, all of my non-stick pans were Berndes).

I now have three cast iron frying pans (aka skillets). They’re all from Lodge. They’re not expensive (I got mine from Amazon) and I stripped them all down (they come pre-seasoned, but I wanted to season them myself, so I stripped them down using oven cleaner) using this incredibly complicated, scientific formula from this rather fabulous website.

Even once you’ve done the seasoning in the oven, with the organic linseed oil, the prescribed six times (you need to feel the pain), it still takes a few uses for them to become really non stick, but then, you’re flying (frying…).

So, the first few times you cook with them, don’t use them for something where the non stick properties are really important.

Oh and according to Sheryl Canter (writer of the blog post on how to season your pan, above) you can wash your cast iron pans. We do. I gently wipe them with a non-scratch pad, hot water, occasionally a bit of washing up liquid. As she points out, the seasoning got there via a long process, a bit of hot water and soap ain’t gonna get it off. Then I dry them on the hob for a couple of minutes and apply a slick of olive oil to cover the whole pan. If any bits get stuck on, if you heat up the pan you can get them off with a wooden spoon or some other more gentle implement. Don’t use the pans to heat up water or anything with tomatoes in – the acid can damage the pan. You need your stainless steel pans for stuff like that. I recommend Le Pentole, superb. Mine are still going strong some 25 years after I bought them. (They’re not cheap.)

A few other advantages of cast iron:

It gets really hot and retains the heat, so great for fast cooking but also great for long, slow cooking where you can turn the heat right down.

You can cook something on the hob and then transfer it to the oven (like tarte tartin).

Works out your biceps and triceps every time you lift the damn things up (that’s actually a pain but I’m trying to make it into a positive).

I’m sure my cast iron pans will last for many years, and I’m sure my children will be delighted that instead of passing down my diamonds,  I’ll be passing down my non-canary killing skillets.

ps: Don’t confuse the cast iron I’m talking about here with enameled cast iron (viz Le Creuset).

pps: to answer Claire (below, who has asked me a question on Facebook), yes I do use my cast iron frying pan to make pancakes in. This is the pan I use.