A bit of a Catch up

Apologies in advance, this is a bit of a long post!

Before going to bed last night, I made one loaf and then put another on so that we could have breakfast as I did not have any bread in the house at all.  The last of the buns had been used up with the last big bowl of soup that we had yesterday.  this bread making is becoming quite a habit here.  In the past I have tried introducing homemade bread but himself clung on to the processed sliced bread making every excuse under the sun.  He has admitted that he quite likes it.  It makes lovely toast, the buns have been lovely and at least now I know he will eat it I can experiment a bit more, which gives me a little bit more flexibility. There is only a little sugar in which is important here and I am getting to use good ingredients. To muddy things a little though I think one of his main reasons for not wanting a homemade loaf is because he is left-handed and cannot cut a homemade loaf successfully.  That is therefore left to me.

I am also glad that I have the two machines.  It is working well and it is something will take into account when having to buy a new machine(s) (although I hope that is a long time off).

It has been a warmer day here in Peterborough, although it has been grey and cloudy and this afternoon in the kitchen cooking and making stuff to make sure that we have plenty to eat over the next few days.

To start with, I had intended to make some buns always easy to grab when peckish with some cheese, tuna or a little cold meat in or indeed egg mayonnaise (I use salad cream but let us not split hairs)  I am not going to make 16 buns this time though, but cut only into 8 parts so that we end up with bigger buns.  The only way I am going to find out what works for us is by having a go at it.  That way you can refine the recipes to suit your tastes and make it work for you and your family and find out what you actually like and add it to your "repertoire".

I did kind of get hijacked by making my own pastry,  More on that in a little bit within this article.

I will however be making some bread mix packages up for the Pantry at some point.  If I have some more bread flour in my stash, (not sure at the time of typing this) then I will bag some up in the next few days.  Otherwise will have to wait until I can get to the shop where I intend buying a few more bags of flour in any event.

I am going to trial a Wholemeal loaf later on to see how I get on with that as I quite like Wholemeal bread in any event, or even a half and half mix.

I am also hoping to tackle some Cinnamon Buns as I have not made these before.  Croissants are also on the cards, as I love those too.  I think this is partly down to the fact that as a seven year old I paid my first visit abroad to Belgium with my friend's family for seven weeks.  

Whilst there, I was introduced to all sorts of goodies, including Chocolate Spread for breakfast; I had to wait years for the Chocolate spread to arrive here.  Then there were the lovely fresh Croissants bought from the local Boulangerie, like Custard slices, and other Patisserie.  One of the memorable dishes for me which I dream of even to this day was not Patisserie based but a main meal a homemade tomato based dish with tiny meatballs in (which I think were made of Veal) which was delicious.  Proper thin sliced Ham with buttery fat around it and delicious Salami also to have with bread and butter.  Simple food but oh so tasty. Then there was the proper Belgian Coffee (to die for) especially with a thick hunk of Baguette which we used to dip the bread into for brekkie; all "naughties" in their own way really good home cooking and a lovely country.  I was also introduced to little chocolate bars in triangular packets with different flavours in.  Chocolate that I rated above Cadburys although that was the best available in its day here in the UK (not so much  now).  They were superb and a bright green "pop" that tasted  wonderful to a seven year old especially on a hot summer's day.  That was the summer when I learned to ride a boy's two wheeler bike with cross-bar and also fell off it on a rough lane near the woods, and ended up scraping my leg top to bottom (was in shorts with no leg covering) and ended up with my leg being painted purple.  It stopped any infection though.  Very happy memories as a lot of the people encountered on my visit are no longer with us but they are still alive in my heart. However as usual I prevaricate.

I was really off colour yesterday; am now feeling a bit brighter and I have tackled making my own pastry in order that we can have the homemade Cornish style pasties for tea tonight, with some leftover for another day served up as is.  Hopefully there will be a couple over to use another day say for midday eating.

Pastry has always been my Nemesis. I was taught one way at school and my Mum countermanded how I had been taught to make it and made me a nervous wreck. My normally cold hands usually go warm when it comes to making pastry.  Today I made it in the stand mixer (my mitts were not involved and it kept the pastry nice and cool). In an effort to get to grips with pastry and try and sort my mistakes out, I had done quite a bit of research regarding pastry.  I had read earlier that too much water is often a sign of "short" pastry with the main culprit being water added in too large an amount; and so this time round I added the water in small increments and the lard, margarine and flour came together well So much less water was needed than I had used in the past and the pastry came together beautifully.  I made 3lbs of Pastry in all today.  Some is for use in some baking tomorrow and it is being stored in the fridge overnight.

I followed the BeRo recipe for shortcrust pastry where you use half the amount of fat to flour (either one fat or split between two) so if you use 8oz flour, you would use 4oz of fat in total for this particular mix.

8oz/225g Plain Flour

Pinch of salt

2oz (50g) of lard

2oz (50g) of margarine

Cold water to mix about 30ml (approximately 2 Tablespoons)

For a sweeter pastry add in 1 oz/25g of caster sugar to the mix

"An interesting note in the book indicates that for the recipes in the booklet quantities of pastry are expressed as quantity of flour used i.e. 8oz/2225g of shortcrust pastry is the amount of pastry made using 8oz/225g of flour and not the sum total of the ingredients.  The weight of the fats should total half of the weight of the flour".

I made the pastry in the stand mixer by adding the flour and the fats and then using the standard beater to combine the fats and the flour on the lowest setting until finely blended,

I then started dribbling in the water a little at a time.  Do not put it in, in one fair swoop.  Gradually, the pastry will come together with the minimum amount of water.

Form the pastry together and then wrap in foil and put in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

I made three double batches of pastry i.e. 3lb total.

Take out from the fridge and roll (in one direction turning the pastry rather than the pin) until you have enough pastry to make the size of the pasty you are making.  I used a saucepan lid and scored all the way around with a sharp knife and put these to one side.  I cut out 10 pasties all told as I doubled up the recipe for the pastry in any event.

I also followed the recipe in the BeRo book for the "Cornish" style pasties.  I used a little more pastry and filling but the basic recipe is this:

Ingredients:

Pastry required

6oz/175g Short pastry. (i.e. pastry made from 6oz flour, and 3oz fat)

Filling

4oz/100g braising steak finely chopped.  I used Beef Skirt.

2 medium potatoes finely chopped.

1 small onion finely chopped

1 x 2.5ml/1/2 a teaspoon of salt

Freshly ground black pepper (I used white)

Milk or egg to glaze the pastry

Heat oven to 220degrees C/425 degrees F/Gas Mark 7

Divide the pastry into four roll out each piece to about 0.5cm 1/4 inch thick keeping in a round shape. Trim if necessary.  I use a saucepan lid for cutting out the pasty shapes.

Mix the meat with the potato and the onion.  Season well.

Divide the filling between the rounds of pastry, dampen the edges and draw up the sides so that they meet in the middle.

Firmly press edges together, flute with the fingers and brush with beaten egg or milk.

It has been a while since I made any "Cornish" style pasties, and to tell you the truth by the time I got to building up the ingredients into the pastry I was running out of steam a bit and could not remember how to form the pasties.  So the first few were a little bit "naff".  However by the end I had managed to remember how to do them and they have come up reasonably well.

Bake for about 10 minutes then reduce heat to 180 degrees C/350 degrees F/Gas Mark 4 and cook for a further 40 minutes

Tomorrow I also have some Coconut Cheesecakes to make up, some cookies, some flapjacks and maybe some scones and muffins.  Will see how I get on.  If I run out of steam again will probably make on Monday.

On the preserving front, I also have plans to make some Onion Soup and Burnt Onions for gravy making.  It is a while since I have made some of these but I am intent on getting what I can put up on the Pantry shelf this year.  Even if I only do a couple of jars at a time (double or triple or quadruple the recipe) it will all add  up at the end of the day. I have all the ingredients to hand including the Tarragon Vinegar which is something I use a lot of in cooking and which I make most years.  Another good reason to make Homemade Tarragon Vinegar. I think it is good for an onion soup as well.  I also need to make some Souper Mix. I just need to find that other Liquidiser!  Link is here for the Burnt Onions for Gravy, which goes back a fair way on my Blog to the early days in 2009:

Burnt Onions for Gravy

Tomorrow, I shall cook the Brisket in my covered enamel roaster and also make some Yorkshire Puddings.  If I have several things to cook which requires the oven to go on then that is what I do, to get the most out of the fuel.  I am also going to do a little more baking whilst the oven(s) are on.  I have some ideas as to what to do with any leftovers, but what I actually make will depend on what I do have left in the fridge as things are starting to get a little low.

As I have indicated, a lot of my cooking is using up stuff/ingredients that I already have in the house.  In the past I have always kept a very well stocked Pantry and I am finding it very infuriating at the moment that I cannot do what I normally do on the provisions front.  We can only do what we can do though with what we have available to us.  Although I still where I can top up on what I consider basic items like Rice, Porridge Oats, SR Flour, Plain Flour, Bread Flour etc.  This is one of the reasons I have not really done a Pantry update recently, but I do feel one of a different kind coming on.

Today has therefore been a busy one, but enjoyable from the perspective that I actually got to play with the Pastry and work out how best to do things for me.  Finding my way around things.  I was quite pleased with the results too.  One of my better attempts.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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