Cardamom Buns

December 31, 2019January 2, 2020 / a H-L / 1 Comment

As much as I’ve tried to avoid baking sweet things, I do love the reaction I get when I share these treats with friends and family. The festive season has been the ideal time to test, tweak and perfect the recipe, although it’s a frightfully early start if you want to get them on the table in time for breakfast.

Ingredients: (makes 12)

Buns:

100g unsalted butter
200ml milk
5g salt
7g sachet dried yeast (Easy Bake or Quick Yeast)*
250g plain flour
250g strong bread flour
90g caster sugar
2 tsp ground cardamom
2 eggs

Filling:

100g unsalted butter (softened)
100g caster sugar
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp ground cardamom

Coating:

1 egg, beaten
50g caster sugar
1 tbsp ground cinnamon

Method:

Start the buns by melting the butter in a pan with the milk and the salt. Allow it to cool a little.
Mix the flour, yeast, cardamom and sugar in a bowl and incorporate the eggs and the melted butter and milk.
Knead the dough for 5 minutes until smooth. A dough scraper will help as it will be quite wet and sticky at first.
Leave the dough covered in a warm place to proof for 1 hour or until doubled in size.
For the filling, mix the softened butter with the sugar, cardamom and cinnamon until combined.
Roll out the dough out into a square about 35 x 35cm.
Spread the filling over evenly and then roll the dough up.
Slice it up into 12 pieces and place them onto a baking tray or into muffin cases. You can use a fine piece of string/cotton/wire to loop around slice the dough instead of a knife – this will prevent the dough getting squashed out of shape.
Cover and leave the dough to proof for a further 30-45 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 180°C (fan or 200°C conventional) and mix together the remaining caster sugar and cinnamon.
Brush with beaten egg, dust with plenty of the sugar mix and bake for 12-15 minutes.

*If you’re using ‘easy bake’ or ‘quick yeast’, you can add it straight to the flour mix, otherwise, you’ll need to activate the yeast by first mixing it with a splash of warm water and a sprinkle of sugar. It will be ready to go as soon as it starts to bubble.

Baked Feta

December 5, 2019 / a H-L / Leave a comment

“What’s your signature dish?” A fairly ubiquitous question which I have to admit I loath hearing as a result of routinely struggling to think of a satisfactory answer. Why? I suspect it’s because I’m far more interested in exploring new and exciting dishes than honing one in particular, but if you were to ask me which recipe I’m most proud of, this would undoubtedly be it.

Crafted from disparate concepts I’d pilfered from a couple of intriguing recipes which irritatingly I can no longer recall, the feta cheese element perfectly compliments the riot of flavours in the topping to balance everything out with surprising harmony.

Soft, warm, creamy, salty cheese, finished with a cold, sweet, spicy, sticky, aromatic, acidic, zingy dressing. Pass me a spoon.

It may not be the most elegant dish, but give it a taste and I’m sure you’ll agree that looks can be remarkably deceiving.

Ingredients:

20g fresh ginger, very finely diced
½ hot green chilli (10g), very finely diced
Handful fresh coriander, chopped
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
½ unwaxed lemon, zest and juice
75g stoned dates, chopped (Medjool are best!)
Feta cheese (200g block is enough for 2 people)

Method:

Do not underestimate how long it takes to finely chop all the ingredients.

Preheat your oven to 180°C.

Place the feta in a heatproof dish and bake it for about 15 minutes or until it starts to brown very slightly on the edges. It wants to have a subtle sheen and a slight wobble to it like a panna cotta.

Mix the rest of the ingredients together to make the topping.

Dress the hot cheese and serve with spoons.

Note that if you have any of the topping left over (this is probably enough for 2 blocks of feta – 4 people), it will keep for a few days if covered in the fridge…. You’ll just have to bake some more cheese or find another delicious use for it – please let me know if you do!

Bombay & Co

May 11, 2019May 11, 2019 / a H-L / Leave a comment

Is it possible that this is the best place to eat in Cheltenham right now? For me, it’s probably the best place I’ve ever eaten in Gloucestershire. Bold words, but here’s my logic..

Bombay & Co excites me. London life bleeds my time and energy to write reviews at my former pace, but I’m simply compelled as thought it’s my civic duty to make a public service announcement. This restaurant excites me like the discovery of a lost city or a new species of butterfly – I’m desperately trying to soak up the moment and relive the details before it’s changed forever more.

Forget the menu; just ask politely to be fed and trust your host to provide you with an array of street food, carefully and thoughtfully sequenced for maximum culinary impact on your taste buds.

Gushing reviews make me nauseous, but don’t despair, there’s balance that adds to the charm. Bombay & Co would have passed me by if it weren’t for a local pal dragging me to the crappy end of the High Street. First impressions and the all-important curb-appeal? My self-confessed snobbish standards would likely have kept me from ever passing through the wonky doors between the tatty drapes. Actually, maybe it’s been there for years and I’ve simply never even noticed it.

I’d usually write lots more and wax lyrical about the dishes themselves, the flavour combinations and layout on the plate etc, but I don’t want to spoil your own personal experience. Just let them take you on a street food journey – it’s so ridiculously cheap and remarkably good value for money that you simply can’t go wrong.

Who would have thought that cheap and nasty white burger buns would marry so well with Dabeli or Pav Bhajji. They import all their spices from India and make everything from scratch; Pani Pooori, Bombay Mix, the works. They’re even opening for breakfast every Sunday folks!

The cobbled, basic setup and graffiti artwork decoration is brilliant. Even the spelling mistakes – bonus points if you can spot one. Eating is all about the experience and if anything, I’d say that it heightened the senses, making the delectable flavours even more surprising, like a ingeniously engineered juxtaposition. It’s not, but it makes me smile to think that we’re all being duped and there’s a Michelin-starred kitchen and highly-polished brigade on the other side of the swing-door. Alas the FSA hygiene rating confirms there isn’t.

It’s the balance of food, atmosphere, price and environment that makes an eating establishment truly great and stand out above the rest. Friendly, relaxed, welcoming, cheap and above all else, delicious. I beg you Bombay & Co, please don’t change a thing. It’s inevitable that they eventually will, as success and recognition lead to change, so make the most of it whilst you can; get your tiffins at the ready, the spirit of Mumbai has arrived in the Cotswolds.

Bombay @ Co:

337 High Street, Cheltenham, GL50 3HS

dine@bombaynco.uk

01242584301

@bombaynco

Curried Popcorn

March 16, 2019March 16, 2019 / a H-L / Leave a comment

Inspired and tweaked from a Stéphane Reynaud recipe, this is a surprising twist on the norm. Popcorn can be a reasonably healthy snack, although the classic styles are far from it.

Popping your own corn couldn’t be simpler – just heat a little oil in a large pan until shimmering, add the corn kernels and cover with a lid. Give it a little shake and then wait for the popping sound to subside.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp vegetable oil
50g popping corn
35g unsalted butter
1 tsp garam masala (or any curry powder)
zest of 1 unwaxed lemon, finely grated
Pinch of salt

Method:

Once you’ve popped the corn as described above, mix in the other ingredients whilst it’s still hot and serve. Too easy.

You could use pretty much any flavoured butter you might have.

Pangrattato

January 13, 2019 / a H-L / Leave a comment

Everyone should have homemade pangrattato in their store cupboard. It ticks so many culinary boxes:

easy to make
easy to store
virtually free
absolutely delicious
improves a plethora of dishes
reduces food waste
you can’t buy it in the shops

It’s remarkably satisfying, so why wouldn’t you!?!

What is it?

A literal translation from Italian would be ‘grated bread’ – basically, pangrattato is toasted breadcrumbs.

Uses?

I use it as a garnish to add a little flavoured texture and make dishes more interesting – risotto, spaghetti, baked cheeses, lasagne, creamed leeks, gratins, Mac n’ Cheese! It’s gold dust in my eyes.

I’m sold, so how do I make it?

Tear up any bread that you have leftover (that’s not mouldy obviously) and pop it into a food processor with a clove of garlic and a few fresh herbs if you have them. Give it a blitz until it resembles breadcrumbs and then drizzle in a little olive oil with the motor still running. It only needs enough oil to very lightly coat the crumbs.

Tip the crumbs into a dry frying pan and toast them over a medium heat, stirring and moving them around constantly until they become golden in colour – you’ll hear the sound change as the crumb becomes crispy. Tip it out onto a tray so that it can cool evenly and then store it in a glass jar, ready for sprinkling when the moment takes you.

You can experiment with flavours if you like – try adding different combinations of herbs such as rosemary, sage or thyme, perhaps an anchovy fillet and a little of its flavourful oil or some unwaxed lemon zest. Dried chillies will give it a deeper flavour and a bit of a kick.

Now, I appreciate that many people will discard the crusts from their sliced loaf as a matter of routine. @toastale actually make good use of this bread to make beer from packet sandwich manufacturing! If you chuck your crusts and any leftover bread into a freezer bag now and again, you’ll be able to defrost it all at the same time and cook up a big batch of pangrattato every few months.

Not an ounce of my precious sourdough goes to waste!

Food Fit For Felix

A culinary journey