I’ve gone for Cornish pasties to represent England in this year’s World Cup cook-off.
Yes, it’s a shameless crowd-pleaser, but I suspect that England needs all the help it can get – both in the kitchen and on the pitch.
Strictly speaking, if it’s not made in Cornwall, it’s not a Cornish pasty.
But if I’d made these in Penzance instead of London, I think they might pass muster. Continue reading
I first discovered the marvellous tarte tropézienne on a family holiday in Provence.
Queueing in the local bakery, I noticed several of the customers ahead of me were choosing what looked like a large, cream-filled hamburger bun.
There is so much mediocre, mass-produced quiche on offer that I’d forgotten how delicious quiche can be when made at home with quality ingredients. Continue reading
Until last year, we had a corner-store/deli where I’d occasionally treat myself to a Jamaican patty for lunch.
Since it closed, I’ve been going without my patty fix, until it occurred to me that I could make my own.
Delicious warm or cold, Jamaican patties are great in a packed lunch or as an after-school snack. Having experimented with different fillings, curried beef and squash & corn are the clear family favourites. Continue reading
Sacristains are made by spreading a sheet of pastry with something tasty, slicing it into strips, then twisting each strip before baking. I usually make them when I have puff pastry to use up.
Sacristains can be savoury or sweet. These are made with tapenade, but I’ve made sacristains with pesto, mustard and grated cheese, sundried tomato paste, Nutella, cinnamon sugar… Continue reading
Savoury palmiers, my penultimate Great British Bake-off challenge…
If I’d gone to the effort of making my own puff pastry like the contestants did, these would have been a challenge. Using store-bought puff pastry, they’re a doddle. Continue reading
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”
And when life takes away the cucumber you need to make Greek salad, make tomato, feta and olive galette?”
Not as catchy, but the principle is the same. Plus, it’s how this recipe came about…;-) Continue reading
Food dislikes are often arbitrary. Like many children, I held both spinach and feta cheese in low regard. But folded into a crackling jacket of phyllo pastry as spanakopita? I was all over those puppies. Continue reading
What I knew as fruit pizza growing up I recognise to be a pretty standard fruit tart.
Maybe it’s because the biscuit base was cooked in a pizza pan? The sweetened cream cheese we spread on top? Or the thinly sliced toppings (kiwi, grapes and berries rather than pepperoni, mushrooms and olives)?
In the excitement of last year’s Great British Bake-off, I rashly committed to baking all of the signature bakes.
Each week, I watched with growing dread to see what overambitious baking project I’d have to tackle next. I was fine with the drizzle cake, iced biscuits and Yorkshire pudding, and managed to turn out a passable chocolate babka.
But the thought of making Danish pastries from scratch stopped me in my tracks for months.
However, I’m nothing if not an “completer-finisher” (eventually)… Since the show ended, I’ve gone on to make lemon meringue pie and Swiss roll. And at long last… pork, chicken and cranberry pie.
Strictly speaking, I seem to recall the brief was individual meat pies, but it seemed simpler to make one large pie instead.
I haven’t made kolokithopita in years. This satisfying combination of courgettes, feta cheese and phyllo pastry was a regular summer visitor when I used to grow courgettes – along with pasta alle zucchini and chocolate chip zucchini bread.
Last week my younger daughter announced that she was going vegetarian for a month. I’m very happy to support her with this ambition – we eat plenty of vegetarian meals already, and when I do cook meat it is seldom the main event, so it hasn’t made much difference to what I serve her for dinner. Continue reading
Next on my belated list of Great British Bake-off signature bakes is a classic lemon meringue pie.
Where I grew up, most restaurants (at least the kind my family ate in), had at least three types of pie on offer.
Apple, cherry, blueberry, pumpkin, raisin, bumbleberry, saskatoon, rhubarb, pecan, peach… I’d happily order any of them, but if lemon meringue pie was on the menu, they wouldn’t get a look in.
After reviewing several recipes, I settled on this one from The Great British Book of Baking, which was published to accompany the first series of the Great British Bake-Off.
Sweet shortcrust pastry, a tangy lemon filling you could stand a fork in, and pillowy French meringue – it looked and tasted like the lemon meringue pie of my childhood. Works for me.
We ate this chorizo-leek phyllo tart a few times over the summer. I’d cook it early in the day – tarts and quiches benefit from having enough time to cool and rest – and we’d eat for dinner with a green salad.
I’ve experimented with adding goat’s cheese, sundried tomatoes, and sliced olives, but didn’t feel the tart was improved by it.
The chorizo provides ample flavour, and without cheese, the cream and eggs bake to a silky, custard-like consistency.
Sometimes simple is best. Continue reading
Börek, burek, byrek, byorek… The vowels may change from country to country, but the delicious, savoury pastries found across Turkey and the Balkans are largely the same.
In Albania, spinach seems to be the most common filling for byrek. But they sounded so similar to the spanakopita I occasionally make, that I opted for a cheese version instead. Continue reading
Pide are Turkey’s answer to pizza, and surprisingly easy to make. The dough came together in minutes, and by the time I’d made the toppings, it was risen and ready to roll.
I went with two traditional toppings – spicy ground meat and spinach and cheese – but there’s definitely scope to experiment here.
I divided the dough into four pieces, and made four largeish pide, but you could just as easily make six individual ones.
Note that the recipe below is for the amount of filling you need if you plan to make both types of pide. If you want to make only one, either freeze half the dough to use another time or double the quantity of filling. Continue reading
There’s been a hiatus in the Great British Bake-off project, but the girls were never going to let me get away without making the double chocolate tart.
Chocolate pastry is new to me. My go-to pastry recipes have little or no sugar, and I wasn’t confident that would be enough to balance the bitterness of the cocoa. The pastry recipe I followed starts by creaming the butter and sugar, which resulted in a biscuity-crisp crust. Continue reading
Cream horns are delightful things – and were completely new to me when I saw them on the Great British Bake-off the other week.
The concept is a simple one. Thin strips of puff pastry are rolled around a conical mould. Once baked, the pastry cones are piped full of sweet cream.
My heart sank when the Great British Bake-off contestants were set the task of making a raised game pie.
According to BBC Good Food (where I found this Paul Hollywood recipe), “a game pie always makes a spectacular centre piece and… is amazingly straightforward to make – especially if you buy mixed game meat ready-prepared from a good butcher.”
Continue reading
The Great British Bake-off signature bakes seem to be increasing in complexity as the weeks go by – which is as it should be I guess.
Still, I find myself watching in trepidation, wondering what challenge I’ll be inflicting on myself next…
Frangipane is such a beautiful word, conjuring up images of sugar and spice, flowers and French patisserie. These tasty little numbers with their moreish almond filling, tart slick of raspberry jam and flaky crisp pastry are as delicious to eat as the name suggests.
These Thai sausage rolls are the pretty much the only ones I make these days. With the fresh herbs and Thai flavourings, they seem lighter and less greasy than the regular kind.
I always make a batch at Christmas, and a couple of other times throughout the year. I’ll often freeze some, to be baked from frozen on another occasion. Continue reading
I seriously over-estimated the quantity of limes needed to make 30 litres of sayonara baby for my birthday bash. As a result, limes have been featuring pretty large in our meals recently. Vietnamese chicken salad, salmon phyllo parcels, caipirinhas of course, and still a towering heap of limes dominates the fruit bowl…
…which inspired me to make a lime meringue pie. After reviewing a number of lime pie recipes, I opted to include some lemon juice to ensure the filling was tart enough to balance the sweetness of the meringue and biscuity base. Four more limes down, fourteen to go… Continue reading
I wanted to slip this recipe for summer blueberry tart in before summer officially ends on Monday. We’re having a lovely September, but there’s no escaping the feeling of something ebbing away. The warning bite in the morning air, the lingering mists, the falling leaves. Even at midday, the sun no longer packs an espresso punch – it’s filtered coffee sunlight for us from now on… Continue reading
These Portuguese custard tarts were surprisingly easy to make, and delicious to eat when sitll warm. Another Simon Rimmer recipe I found online. Continue reading
Made these cheese and onion empanadas for our Ecuadorian World Cup meal. I was skeptical about the idea of sprinkling something savory with sugar, but it works. The recipe comes from Laylita’s Recipes, and goes into great detail about the different types of empanada dough. Continue reading
Ten More Bites 