Monday – BBQ Koftas with Langoshi (Hungarian Flatbread) and Cucumber Jogurt Salad
Tuesday – Warm Chicken Cesar Salad in Wraps
Wednesday
(lunch) : – Smoked Haddock, Watercress and Leek Tart
               – Fruit Salad with Homemade Shortbread Fingers
(dinner)
               – leftover Tart, pancakes
Thursday – Homemade Oven-baked Indian Samosas with Onion & Pepper Salad
Friday – Fusilli Pasta with Sundried Tomatoes, Garlic and Pecorino

Baking: Shortbread Fingers, Fruit Buns

The weather is so uncertain here at the moment, it doesn’t feel at all like summer, so the menu this week reflects that – there’s a lot more warm, comfort foods than I’d normally be wanting in July!

Monday -       Homemade Pizzas “Spanish” and “Vegetarian”
Tuesday -      Mixed Sausage and New Potato Warm Salad with Runner Beans
Wednesday – Mini Maultaschen (filled pasta) with Quick Sauce (dad’s night out!)
Thursday -    Tuna, Chickpea and Feta Pasta Salad
Friday -          Fresh Pea and Bacon Risotto

Baking This Week: soft rolls, apple and blackberry crumble

I realise that everyone knows how to make this, but it’s the sort of thing that I forget how much I like, so maybe posting it will remind someone else how much they also like it and they’ll stick it on the menu for dessert this week!

Ingredients

• 250g short-grain or pudding rice
• 1l full-fat milk
• sugar to taste (I think I used a couple of tbsp)
• single cream (optional)
• a few drops of vanilla essence

Method

1. In a heavy-bottomed pan, bring the rice, milk, sugar and vanilla essence to boil, stirring occasionally to stop the rice sticking or clumping.
2. When boiling, reduce the heat down to a minimum, put the lid on and leave for about 20mins, checking every now and again to give a stir.
3. After 20 mins, taste to see if the rice is cooked. If not, leave for a bit longer, otherwise remove from the heat and allow to cool.
4. Once cool, you can mix in some cream (or milk, if you prefer) until you have the consistency you want ie thick and sticky ,or quite thin and runny (this makes it sound rather unpleasant, but actually it’s gorgeous!).
5. Serve with sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on top!

A friend of ours in Croatia always bakes Medenjaki biscuits for her grandchildren (and any other children that happen to be around!) and as we all really enjoy them, I keep meaning to ask her for her recipe. In the mean time, I did a bit of research on the internet and found lots of variations of these traditional honey biscuits (usually baked at Christmas, actually, and decorated appropriately, but just as nice now in summer too).

This is my version of Medenjaki, which makes no claims as to authenticity, but is rather delicious anyway!

Ingredients

• 150g butter, at room temp
• 100g icing sugar
• 2 eggs
• 500g plain white flour
• 1 tsp cocoa powder
• 3-5 tbsp clear honey
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 185°C and line a tray with baking paper.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Mix the dry ingredients together, then add to the butter and sugar, together with the eggs and honey. The amount of honey you will need depends on how sweet it is – taste it and see if you want more!
4. Mix until it forms a stiff dough-like paste.
5. Take about a tablespoon of the dough and form quickly into a smooth ball in your hands. Flatten it between your palms and place on the baking tray.
6. Continue until you have used up all the dough – this amount makes between 25 – 30 biscuits, depending on size.
7. Bake for 7 -10 minutes until lightly coloured on the outside. They may still be a bit soft inside, but they harden up slightly as they cool.
8. These keep very well for a few days, kept in a tin.

I haven’t been updating on Lawrence because there hasn’t really been much to say. He’s been drying out on top quite a bit, so I’ve been stirring that back in every morning and feeding as necessary, but there really has been quite a lack of bubbles to speak of. What’s stopping me from just giving up is that he still looks healthy, and he smells FANTASTIC! Really yeasty and almost alcoholic (though there’s no visible sign of any “hooch”).

This is what he looked like this morning, with the crust on top broken:

I stirred him around, then moved him into a new, larger jar where he’ll have a bit more room:

I punched a few holes in the lid, so his fetching headdress is now gone:

But after feeding, he looked rather well, I thought – still not exactly over-bubbling, but maybe he’s the strong, silent type?

I’ll give him a few more days and then have a go at baking some sourdough bread.

I’ve been meaning to try something like this for ages, but somehow never got round to it, until tonight. I’ll definitely be doing it again, though, as it has a number of things going for it:
- it’s really tasty!
- I’ve pretty much always got the ingredients at home (you can vary any vegetables you like in it)
- I like to have at least one if not two vegetarian meals per week, and this fits the bill perfectly
- it was easy and relatively quick to do

Ingredients

• around 300 – 500g potatoes (the firm, waxy type, NOT the floury ones)
• about 6 eggs, beaten
• few spring onions or 1 small onion, sliced or diced
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 1/2 courgette, diced
• 1/2 tsp mixed herbs
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• a few tbsp milk
• salt and pepper to taste
• a bit of butter

Method

1. First prepare the potatoes by peeling and slicing them quite thinly (not paper-thin, but shouldn’t be chunky either)
2. Boil them until they are just on the verge of being done; they should have a bit of bite left to them (if you have one of those microwave steamer bags, just pop them in there, it’s much easier!)
3. While the potatoes are cooking, fry the onion, pepper and courgette (or whatever other veg you’re using) in a little oil (I use rapeseed) in a medium-sized non-stick frying pan which has a metal handle (you will need to put it under the grill, so you don’t want anything that will melt!)
4. Add the crushed garlic and herbs and keep frying until the onion is getting slightly brown and sticky (but not burning) and the pepper is completely soft. This takes quite a while, but the taste is fantastic and much more interesting than if you just quick-fry.
5. Heat the grill up to medium high.
6. Drain the potatoes and add them to the frying pan. Mix them all up together (the potato slices will break up), and add salt and pepper to taste.
7. Mix in the milk with the beaten eggs and then pour that into the frying pan.
8. Give everything a good stir and make sure it’s all covered in the egg mixture. Then cook on a medium heat until the underside is getting light brown (the sides should be cooked enough by this point so you can peek underneath). The top will still be runny.
9. Pop the whole pan under the grill for 5 minutes or so until the top is golden brown and all the egg is cooked.
10. Allow to cool slighty before slicing and serving with a nice crisp green salad.

Variations

• any in season vegetables can be used with the basic potato, egg and onion mixture
• grated cheese in with the egg or on top
• apparantly, it’s also very nice cold, but we didn’t have any left over to try!

I’ve signed up for I’m an Organizing Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday, so hi to anyone visiting from there [big friendly wave!]

Here’s our menu for the coming week, 14th – 20th June 2008:

• Monday
  • Macaroni Cheese with Bacon Bits and Crunchy Breadcrumb Topping
• Tuesday
  • Potato and Vegetable Fritatta
• Wednesday
  • Mum’s Night Out – Boys Do BBQ
• Thursday
  • Chicken and Vegetable Stir-Fry with Homemade Chow Mein Sauce and Egg-Fried Rice
• Friday
  • Gnocchi with Herb Butter and Cream Cheese Sauce
• Saturday
  • Homemade Fish-Fingers with Potato Salad and Peas
• Sunday
  • not sure yet!    

 All recipes (if successful!) will be added (with photos, this time) as I try them!

Well look here:

Who’s a handsome sourdough starter, then? It’s Lawrence, that’s who!
When I checked on him this morning, he was fizzing and bubbling like you wouldn’t believe. I am trying not to get my hopes up too much (I’ve been here before), but that does look like a healthy sourdough starter, doesn’t it?
After his feed and mix, he looked like this:

I just checked on him again (it’s a couple of hours after his feed) and he’s still looking good: slightly more bubbles than on the photo above. I’ll give him a couple of more days, and then see if we can’t get a nice sponge going, ready to bake some bread!

I’m not at all sure about this. Lawrence was looking very split this morning – water on top, thick flour sludge at the bottom and not a bubble in sight:

I mixed him up again before feeding and was a bit worried that the texture was very stringy and elastic.
However, after the feed of flour and fresh water, we had a nice thick batter again, and lots and lots of bubbles:

So now I’m not sure what’s going on. The smell has definitely changed, it’s more yeasty or bready. But the texture is worrying me, as is the lack of bubbles before feeding. I think I need to do some more research to see if this is normal!

You may be wondering why I am baking my own pretzels when, living in Southern Germany, I can buy them in every single bakery, not to mention the extra Brezel booths which pop up all over the place. Well, yes, I can buy them everywhere, but they aren’t always very good. In fact, the most consistent thing about pretzels here is their inconsistency. Plus the fact that they are almost always covered in so much coarse salt that you first have to spend 15 minutes picking it all off.

So my main motivation in baking my own pretzels was that I wanted small pretzels that tasted how I thought they should – every time I baked them – and that didn’t have any salt on them, as I wanted to give them to Henry to snack on.

I did a bit of research before starting and as with almost anything else, opinions vary as to how exactly a soft pretzel should be made. In the end, I went with a recipe which was pretty much how I usually make bagels, except that I boiled the pretzels for a much shorter time in water which contained “Haus Natron”, rather than the rather dangerous lye which would be in the original recipe (it gives the pretzels their characteristic colour and crust, which is why they are known as Laugenbrezeln ie lye pretzels).

I’m not that great at forming the actual pretzel shape yet, so they looked a bit wierd, but I’m sure that will get better with practice.
Here is the batch before going in the oven:

And this is what they looked like about 12 minutes later:

Most importantly of all, they tasted fabulous!!!!

The recipe is as follows and makes 6 mini pretzels:

Ingredients

• 250g flour
• 1 pack dried yeast
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• approx. 150 – 200ml warm water
• 2 packs Natron (I actually think 1 pack would have been enough, and if you can’t get this you can substitue 1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda instead)
• oil for greasing tray

Method

1. Mix the flour, yeast, salt and sugar with enough of the water to make a smooth and stretchy dough, then cover it and leave to rise in a warm place for about an hour.
2. When the dough has about doubled in size, put on a big pan of water to boil. add the natron and preheat your oven to 225°C.
3. Divide the dough into 6 equal sized pieces and form each one into a long, thin rope with the ends being slightly thinner than the middle. Mine were about 30cm long.
4. Form the pretzels like this:
5. Boil the pretzels 2 or 3 at a time for 30 seconds, making sure you turn them a couple of times. DO NOT boil for any longer, or they will go very chewy and rubbery!
6. Take them out of the water with a slotted spoon and place on an oiled baking tray. If you want salt on them, you should sprinkle it on now.
7. Bake in the oven for 10 – 15 mintues until well browned.
8. Take out and allow to cool slightly before eating.