Pukka!

I was at the market today looking for something to make a salad, and I saw these beautiful fresh figs. So, I took them home and made this salad with mozzarella, prosciutto and an amazing lemon, olive oil, and honey dressing from a Jamie Oliver recipe. And the result was ... pukka!
I know, I know ... I am falling back on the Italian cuisine again, but it's what I am used to. I promise to try harder with the French next week.

A piece of this ...

When I was twelve years old, I wrote an essay at school on the origins of the pizza. I invented a creation myth for the dish in which a neapolitan woman took the random contents of her larder, placed them onto a circle of dough and put the whole thing into her wood-fired oven. When admirers asked what the creation was called, she said a pizza, because it was made of 'a pizza dis and a pizza dat!'

This story contains an essential truth about Italian pizza, that the dough is really a vehicle for whatever you feel like eating. In Italy, outside the big tourist centres, people are often surprised that familiar pizzas, such as 'capricciosa', 'quattro stagioni', and 'pepperoni'* are not listed but are replaced either with fantastical names, or shopping lists of the toppings used. The name 'capricciosa' can actually be translated as 'whatever you feel like'. One of the pizzerias close to my farm in Tuscany boasts 100 types of pizza, each given the name of a local hamlet.

The plain cheese and tomato 'pizza margherita' is usually found on most menus, it being one of the only truly Italian pizzas familiar in the English-speaking world. The authentic version, contains red tomatoes, white mozzarella, and green basil leaves, the colours of the Italian flag. The original was named for the Queen of Italy, who made a visit to Naples in 1889, by pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito of the pizzeria Brandi.

Friday night is pizza night in my house and I usually top them with whatever I have left in the fridge. The hand-made pizza dough and tomato sauce are easy to make and can be kept in the fridge until you are ready for action.

Pizza Fantasia

Ingredients

Dough (makes 2 large pizza bases)
1 sachet of dried yeast
300ml tepid water
10g salt
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon sugar
10g salt
12g yeast
500g flour

Dissolve the sachet of yeast in about 100ml of tepid water. A good way to test for tepid is to place your fingers in the water. If you can't feel it, then it's the right temperature. Then leave the yeast for about 10 minutes to activate. It should start bubbling. If it doesn't throw it away and start again as your yeast is not working.
Then dissolve the salt in rest of the water and add the olive oil. Place the flour in a large bowl and add the sugar, the yeast mixture and then the salt, oil and water. Bring the mixture together with your hands and then turn out onto a worktop and knead for about 10 minutes. The dough it done when it has achieved a smooth elastic consistency.
Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave in a warm place for about two hours, by which time the dough should have doubled in size.

Tomato sauce
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion finely diced
1 tin chopped tomatoes (400g)
1 tbsp tomato puree
100 ml water or red wine

Heat the olive oil in a high-sided frying pan over a low heat. Add the onion and fry slowly for about 10 to 15 minutes until golden. Cooking the onion slowly will allow the sugars to caramelise meaning that you don't have to add sugar. Do not allow the onion to turn to dark or it will create a bitter taste. Add the chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, water / wine,  and sprinkle with salt. Turn up the heat, bring to the boil and allow to simmer for about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool completely before using on the pizza. If you want, you can pass it through a strainer, but I like the lumpy bits, which give the pizza texture. This can also be used as a pasta sauce and will keep in an airtight container for about a week in the fridge.

Pizza

grated mozzarella cheese
toppings of your choice

Heat the oven to 230 degrees. To make up the pizza, divide the dough into two and each piece into a pizza shape using your fingers. Then cover with a layer of the tomato sauce, a layer of grated mozzarella cheese and a piece of this and a piece of that, whatever takes your fancy. The place it in the oven, I would recommend using a pizza stone, and cook for about 25 minutes. Buon appetito!

*A word of caution to anyone travelling in Italy. Order 'pepperoni' and you will be presented with red or green peppers ('peperoni'), the actual Italian meaning of the word. 

Ratatouille

My local market

Thanks to Disney, almost everyone now knows the name of this classic French dish, which is one of my personal favourites. As a child, I was brought up on the Italian 'peperonata' which is very similar, but without aubergines and courgettes (US translation: egg plants and zucchini) and is delicious as a hot accompaniment to meat or as a cold salad. Add in what are my two favourite vegetables and we are very close to perfection. 

Ratatouille, (ra-ta-too-ee) has it's origins in the southern, Provence region of France and therefore has cousins in most Mediterranean countries. You will find it on menus hiding behind names such as 'pisto' (Spain), 'caponata' (Italy), 'kapunata' (Malta), lecso (Hungary), and 'briami' (Greece). Even in France, it sometimes masquerades as the romantic 'valentine' or the mouthful 'bohémienne languedocienne'.
Tuesday morning is market morning in my neighbourhood, so I popped out to get the vegetables to prepare it. 

Ratatouille

2 aubergines (egg plants)

2 white onions

1 red pepper

1 yellow pepper

2 medium courgettes (zucchini)

6 large plum tomatoes

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

6 tablespoons of olive oil

2 tablespoons of tomato purée

2 teaspoons of chopped tarragon

1 teaspoon of chopped rosemary

salt

ground black pepper

Chop the aubergines into large cubes. Cover them with salt, and leave them to sweat their juices for about 10 minutes. 

Peel and halve the onions and them cut them into semi-circular slices. 

Remove the insides of the peppers and cut the skin into large square pieces. 

Chop the courgettes into rounds and chop the tomatoes into eight pieces each. 

All your pieces of vegetable should be about the same size. 

Heat the oil gently in a large saucepan or casserold and add the aubergines, onions, peppers, and courgettes. Cook for about 5 minutes and then add the garlic and the herbs. Add the tomatoes and tomato purée, season with salt and pepper. Add a small amount of water and then cover and simmer for about 15 minutes or until the peppers are tender. 

Serve hot as an accompaniment for chicken or meat, as a main course, or cold as a salad. 

Panis quotidianus

Bread is seen as one of the ultimate challenges for the amateur cook. It's something that we take for granted, but forms so central a part of our daily diet that even the slightest change can cause consternation. It is no accident that Jesus used it as a metaphor for food and that, in English at least, the word is a synonym for money, that other essential for sustenance. When I was living in Tuscany, I discovered that the local bread was made without salt and, to my palate brought up on salted English loaves, was simply unpalatable. Thankfully, someone had given me a Panasonic breadmaker a few years before, with which we were able to make delicious English bloomers!

Recently, I have started baking bread without the benefit of a machine which, unfortunately, takes a lot longer but is delicious. You can make good bread dough in a mixer with a dough hook very quickly, but there is a lot of waiting around for the dough to rise. But if you plan a morning or evening around it, you can have delicious, freshly baked bread on a daily basis.

I started with a recipe for a basic white loaf which is a good one to begin with and to learn the techniques before moving onto experiment with different flours and ingredients.

The recipe I use has five ingredients:

300ml of tepid water
5g of dried yeast
560g of white flour
10g of sea salt
20ml of oil

Bread ingredients

You can use any oil. The original recipe used rapeseed oil, but I prefer to use extra virgin olive oil.

Start with the yeast. Dissolve it in the water. If the water is of the right temperature it should feel neutral when you put your hand in it. Leave it for ten minutes to start working and you should be left with a frothy liquid. If not, then the yeast hasn't worked and you should throw it away and start again.

The bubbles show that the yeast has started working

Then mix the salt in with the flour. You want to try and keep the salt away from direct contact with the yeast as it will retard it. Then add the oil and the yeast mixture and work it with your hands into a dough.

Mix the salt with the flour to keep it away from the yeast

Next comes the kneading. This can be done in a mixer with a dough hook in which case it is ready when it clings to the dough hook and the bowl is clean. However, I think that anyone who is serious about making bread should do it by hand a few times to get a feeling for the process. After a few minutes of kneading the quality of the dough changes and the surface becomes soft and slightly silky. Keep going for about 10 minutes and you will be left with a tight soft ball which bounces back when pressed with a finger.

Dough after kneading

Transfer the dough to a clean bowl which has been rubbed with olive oil and wrap tightly with clingfilm. Then put it in a warm place for about an hour to prove. This is the process by which the yeast will make the dough grow to about twice the size it was before. I warm the oven to the lowest temperature, (50 degrees) and then turn it off and leave the bowl inside.

Before ...

... and after one hour

When it has proved, remove the dough from the bowl and hit it with your hand. All the air will leave and it will return to its original size, but don't worry, this is correct. The dough will feel different again now though: much looser and more pliable.

Shape the dough into a loaf and place it in a loaf tin, which has been rubbed with oil. Cover it again, and place in a warm place for another hour. During this time it will double in size again, so make sure that there is room beneath the cover for this to happen. Instead of clingfilm, I use a plastic bag for this to ensure that the dough can rise out of the top of the tin.








































Heat the oven to 220 degrees and place a backing tray at the bottom. When the loaf has risen, cut the top with a sharp knife once or twice, creating slashes. Then sprinkle with flour and place in the oven. Before you shut the oven door, take a glass of cold water and through it into the baking tray at the bottom of the oven. This will create steam which produces a nice crust on the bread.

After 30 minutes, remove the loaf from the oven. Knock the bottom of the tin. If it sounds hollow, then the loaf is cooked.  Leave it in the tin for a few minutes to cool and then turn it out onto a wire rack to cool fully. And voilà, white bread!

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!

I decided I wanted to try to make the french classic brioche. This is a kind of bread enriched with that french staple, butter. It seemed obvious to look for a Julia Child recipe and found the following, although I am not sure if it is authentic Julia since it was quoted on a variety of websites but was also in a YouTube video featuring Julia but where it was demonstrated by Nancy Silverton. Anyway, it worked a treat as you will see!

The recipe was in two halves, first a sponge base and then the dough for the brioche. For the sponge base:

1/3 cup of warm milk (100-110 degrees)
2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry yeast
1 egg
2 cups flour

Now, being European I have always avoided recipes involving cups, but this time I decided to brave it, noticing that my IKEA measuring jug was marked in cups as well as deciliters. So the method was to put the milk, yeast, egg and one cup of the flour into the bowl of your mixer and then mix using a spatula. You were then directed to cover the mixture with the rest of the flour and leave for 30-40 minutes. When you looked at it, the flour covering was supposed to be cracked showing that the yeast had worked. As you can see, this happened right on cue!

Next came the ingredients for the dough.

1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
6 oz butter at room temperature

So back to the method. You put the sugar, salt, eggs and one cup of the flour to the bowl and then mix using the dough hook on low for about 2 minutes until things start to come together. Then you add the rest of the flour and then mix on medium for 15 minutes. This is a bit of hard work for your mixer. You will need to stop occasionally and scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure that it mixes properly. When it is finished, the dough should stick to the hook and slap the sides of the bowl. This is an excellent description as it's exactly what you will see.

Now you need to add the butter to the dough. To do this, you need to make sure that the butter is the same consistency as the dough. Now the dough is sticky and wet and you can get the butter to this consistency by whacking it with a rolling pin or wrapping in cling film and rolling.

Keeping the mixer on low speed, add the butter a tablespoon at a time. It will look like it's not working and the butter will spread on the sides of the bowl, but keep faith as suddenly it will disappear into the dough. When all the butter has gone, return the mixer to medium for 5 minutes. When done you will be left with a dough that is a little wet and feels cool. So put it in a bowl and cover it with cling film.

You can now have a rest as the dough rises. You need to wait a grand total of 2 to 2 1/2 hours until the dough doubles in size, which as long as the milk was the right temperature at the beginning, it will.

When it has risen, put your fingers under dough to lift it out of the bowl and it will deflate. Don't worry, this is all part of the process. Then cover it with cling film again and then place the bowl in the fridge for 4-6 hours. During this time it will double in size again. I didn't say this was quick!

Now, take the dough out of the fridge and divide it into six equal portions. Roll each portion into a ball and arrange in a loaf tin in two rows, as in the picture.

And guess what? You now have to wait for another two hours for it to double in size.

Next, brush the tops of the balls with egg wash being careful that the sides are not touched. This can stop the dough from rising. Then cut a cross in the top of each ball with a pair of scissors! This is truly the classic technique. I was shocked but then saw this video of Michel Roux doing the same so obeyed.

So this now goes in an oven, preheated to 190 degrees C for 30 to 40 minutes and when you have finished, voilà! You will see that the balls blend into each other and form a very attractive shaped loaf.

Perfect with Nutella or jam for breakfast with coffee, or more traditionally, dipped into a bowl of hot chocolate!
As you can see, brioche takes a long time, but if you plan it correctly, the final stages can be done in the morning, facilitating a wonderful fresh cooked loaf for breakfast!