Success and Failure

Last Friday with The Dear Leader (confusion to her enemies) off diving, and Sternest Critic starting his new job, I had the house to myself with my last commission in hand despatched to the editor the previous day. Being 84.7 per cent retired is enjoyable, or at least it is for those of us with some resources financial and personal. I'd not want every day to myself, but the occasional one is a rare treat. Naturally I chose to spend the majority of it in the kitchen.


Of late I've been baking a lot of bread, in fact I haven't bought a loaf for I'd guess three weeks. I got fed up with either tasteless dross or stupidly expensive 'artisan' offerings (that may not be very artisan). With the freezer stocked there was no need for standard stuff, so I opted to go the more exotic route and try two of Ursula Ferrigno's Italian recipes for richer loaves. One succeeded, one failed - my fault not hers.


The success was an egg-enriched flatbread, flavoured with vanilla extract (not essence, crude oil derivatives don't tempt me) and as I lacked one stipulated ingredient, with rosewater. It rose nicely, came out golden and with a pleasing texture between chewy and soft, and was very tasty. The failure was fig bread, a bit like a pannetone. It was a salutary lesson in not just following the instructions, but thinking them through. It came out claggy, far too dense at the bottom, because I used some home-made figs soaked in alcohol, but still included the juice of three oranges the recipe included for wetting dried figs. It has actually improved over the days, probably drying out a bit, and toasting helps, but I'm annoyed at not seeing the problem coming.


You live and learn. I will give the fig bread another go, maybe near Christmas. The flatbread, and others in the same vein, will appear on our table shortly. Anna del Conte's book on Northern Italian cooking features a savoury one with walnuts and rosemary; Ursula Ferrigno has others that intrigue. I've improvised my own with spare dough, baked with loads of fried onions and some herbs on top, Not that I'm obsessing, but I'm about to re-read Elizabeth David's huge tome on English bread and yeast cookery with an eye to making some enriched breads and rolls of more local heritage. We're lucky that filler-upper bread is not a major component of our diet, but good bread - from the smell as it bakes to the taste as you get outside it - can be such a joy.

The Charm of Culinary Chance

I wish I had invented the term 'clean eating.' Since The Dear Leader (may her enemies be forever cursed) and I became an item in the late 1830s I've been doing what I'd term cooking from scratch - buying, or increasingly now growing - good ingredients, and making them into what I always hope will be successful meals. And unlike those zealots who communicate clean eating's precepts as a near fascist ideology, I love food.


Say it though I shouldn't, over more than three decades I've developed some skill. But it is one of the many charms of such cooking that things can go wrong, to varying degrees, or if you're lucky, they go very very right. Different atmospheric conditions; the age of ingredients; slight variations in measurement; the power reaching the oven...


Last weekend I made some bread, using my patent recipe, an amalgam of HF-W's magic bread dough and Ursula Ferrigno's biga starter/enhancer. It is consistently good, but for some reason - our new oven perhaps - this time the three loaves came out crustier and lighter and tastier. Same yeast, same flours, different result. Sternest Critic often takes me to task about my inability to bake crusty bread. This came out crusty, remained crusty, even defrosted crusty. SC is currently 2000 miles away, so presenting him with the evidence was impractical. I was so proud I gave one of the three to a friend eating with us that evening.


Last year I was obsessed with making gnocchi and similar creations. The first effort, a dough rich in ricotta, was stunningly good, little pillows of deliciousness, so good I tried to repeat the exercise a few days later when a friend (by coincidence the same one) was with us. Same ingredients, same recipe, same method, but the gnocchi were that bit tougher and denser. Tasty, but not as fine. A third effort months later was in-between.


I celebrate such unpredictability. Naturally I'd prefer it to be degrees of wonderfulness, but I don't want production line soulless regularity. As I write a batch of dough is rising in the warm conservatory. The bread it will produce later today will almost certainly not be as crusty as the previous stuff. But maybe it will be richer; or with larger bubbles; or somehow more savoury. As long as the results are not downright bad, I'll be content, and if they are excellent I'll be delighted.

Two New Flexible Favourites

In my last post I mentioned Ursula Ferrigno as my latest hero. Heroine? What is PC? Her books are both interesting for the Italian cultural and heritage side, and full of very cookable recipes, unlike the vegan tome the Dear Leader (eternal damnation to her enemies) kindly bought me recently, where each recipe has about 20 ingredients, some of them rarely seen in this part of Lancashire. And yes, the author looked exactly as you'd expect him to look, though as Al Gore and Bill Clinton are both vegans now, they don't all look the same. But most do. I like some vegan food, but not because it is vegan, if that makes sense. I like good food, and if it happens to be vegan, alright.


Two of Signora Ferrigno's dishes have now entered my regular repertoire. A vegetable tian, and a potato cake. Both are the sort of dishes I like - easily adapted to use alternative ingredients while sticking to the principle of the thing.


The essential tian is made with courgettes trimmed, boiled for about 12 minutes, then mashed to bits in a bowl when slightly cooled. Some short-grain rice is boiled, again cooled slightly, and added to the bowl. In too go plenty of Parmesan, a beaten egg or two, and some shredded spinach. She fries an onion and some garlic, I just bash some garlic. The Dear Leader's darkest dungeons are full of those who used three pans in cooking one thing. Mixed together, the mushy mass is seasoned and added to a flattish Le Creuset dish, topped (my touch) with more Parmesan, then baked at 180C for 35 - 45 minutes depending on how watery it began life. Fab and healthy, and with a glut of courgettes currently it is one to feature weekly for a while.


The potato cake is equally good, equally cheesy. And not vegetarian. Leftover boiled spuds are made into a sloppy mash with milk and melted butter, a Mozzarella chopped and added, plenty of grated Parmesan, and some chopped salami, along with just-cooked cubes of Pancetta. A veggie version with fried cubes of courgette (so many bloody courgettes) worked well too. In a greased pan or fireproof dish the bottom is lined with breadcrumbs, the mash etc added and flattened gently, and more breadcrumbs patted into the top. Baked for 40 minutes or so at 200C it comes out nicely browned. Put a plate over the pan, tip it up, and the cake comes out more or less intact. And it is delicious, a filler-upper that if ever it were allowed to go cold (and this would probably merit more egg in the recipe) would, cut into squares, make a fine nibble with drinks. The thought does strike one, however, that almost anything with tons of cheese, bacon and salami is likely to be a winner.


A general point from this. Dishes that are flexible are the lifeblood of the home cook. Not molecular cuisine, not painstaking measuring of precise quantities of ingredients, but an idea that will work with a snip and a tuck here and there. HF-W, another of my heroes, does tend to include variations on a theme in his books, and not be over-worried about fractions of a gramme; not really so the blessed Delia, which may be why I only turn to her at Christmas.