Bread, pastry and cake

Welcome to my blog/journal/whatever

This is the real guts of this website. The old website and its archived posts is still available at its old url. Newcomers might like to dip into it every now and then.

Welcome to you all. Amazingly I still don't seem to be running out of ideas on what to write - well occasionally - but I have my writer's block strategies to turn to - see the text on the right. Check this page for the latest posts and if something interests you just click on it. It's easy to leave a comment and I love to read them. And now you can subscribe to the blog and get emailed notifications of new posts. And sorry I just don't understand Facebook.

"We are not here for long. So let's at least make ourselves something good to eat."

Nigel Slater

"I was born hungry, not a cook."

Julia Child

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well"

Virginia Woolf

Writer's block

Every now and then I can't think of a suitable topic and so I have devised a few strategies to get around this.

Lucky dip

The first strategy I devised is to go to one of my three cook book bookshelves, close my eyes and pick a book. Close my eyes again and pick a page. It's really quite an enlightening method of getting over writer's block.

'A word from'

My second strategy is to devote a post to the thoughts of one of my favourite cooks. Hopefully it will introduce them to you

Or

I shall choose a picture I have come across and extemporise on that.

A second kind of lucky dip

I have been thinking about first recipes in cook books - so I shall choose a book not quite randomly and then look at the first recipe for inspiration.

Comments I love reading your comments. Just add a name - any name - it needn't be yours, add an email, ditto, type in your comment and hit the Comment button. Done. Wix sends me an email to tell me what you said, so I can respond if needed. Mostly I just read and enjoy. If you would like to subscribe to this blog and get notifications of new posts then click here. It's free - just a way of knowing what I wrote about today.

enjoy

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A kataifi template or two

"a bit like shredded wheat, only 10 times tastier" Yotam Ottolenghi Today's Guardian Feast newsletter featured this Kataifi pie with feta. tomatoes and warm oregano honey from Alice Zaslavsky. I was a bit taken by it, thinking that this might be the next thing I will make for a vegetarian. I mean it looks wonderful, has all the trendy things like the drizzled honey thing, pistachios and feta and all things I like inside - tomatoes, cheese, onions. And no chilli. But se

6 hours ago

Tiny El Salvador

"The wildcard of Central America" Lonely Planet I'm continuing my world tour today, working my way through Central America with El Salvador - the smallest country in the area - slightly smaller than Belize. It is also the most densely populated part of Central America although some 40% of its population have left the country. Well it's had a really turbulent history in recent times - a civil war from 1980 to 1992, which was a regular feature in the news of the time, and si

4 days ago

Bananas and butter - a surprise ramble

"Yes!! Why? Because bread is tasty, butter is tasty and bananas are tasty!" Neat_Expression 5380/reddit I've really enjoyed this little ramble around the net, which just started out with bananas and butter and ended up with all sorts of weird and wonderful sandwiches via America's deep south in the Depression, New Orleans, Japan, the Minions, Hitler and Elvis. Perhaps I should stick to the route I took, which began with bananas and butter, inspired by my fairly regular open

5 days ago

Some party time recipes

I've spent the morning, no - most of yesterday afternoon as well, making marmalade from a gift of home-grown mandarins, from friends, and a whole lot of lemons that I had in the fridge - 12 assorted jars seen here being the result. It's very satisfying when you get to this point, although there's always the worry it won't set, although this time I think I marginally worry about the opposite - too set. Anyway it's left me feeling lazy, so I thought I would just provide a few

Nov 17

Tomato and corn pies (and tarts)

"The problem more often than not is a basic one: tomatoes are very wet and tart crusts need to stay fairly dry" Deb Perelman/Smitten Kitchen I needed something that wasn't going to take long because I had already used up half of the day on reading a book group book and trying to speak Italian in my Italian class. Very depressing. So I decided I would pick a recipe - and then just ramble - and this was it - Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen's Tomato and corn pie I'm not exactl

Nov 11

Scarpaccia - and sad/happy memories

"thin and a bit crusty, just like an old shoe." Frank/Memorie di Angelina That's how I feel a bit these days ... Well not quite thin enough in body anyway. But this is a story all about this delicious looking Tuscan speciality. As always I start on one thing and wander here and there before ending up somewhere completely unexpected. So to begin at the beginning - the picture above of Tom Hunt's version of Scarpaccia which instantly reminded me of another Italian zucchini

Oct 31

Old-fashioned canapés - first recipe

"If you don't have the time to prepare something good then just serve some olives or nuts." Beverley Sutherland Smith Well you would perhaps wouldn't you? - or just open a bag of crisps because canapés - the retro kind - often take a lot of work. This is a photograph of some of Beverley Sutherland Smith's canapés, styled in a very old-fashioned way on a silver platter with the bottle of champagne in a silver bucket. The kind of thing you would get served at a fancy cocktai

Oct 30

Hawaij, spice mixes and marketing

The other day I bought this expensive jar of Ottolenghi hawaij paste. It was on a special, I was just filling in time waiting for David for some reason I cannot now remember, wandering around Woolworths when I spied it. I had noticed Hawaij a lot here and there, or so I thought, and I was feeling a bit down, and so I thought 'why not?' and put it in my trolley. I feel a tiny bit cross at myself, because there are lots of recipes online for a hawaij spice mix, and it's not

Oct 23

The mysterious invisible cake - France, Russia, Japan?

"It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed." Jean Cocteau Tuesday is the day that Deb Perelman's Smitten Kitchen newsletter arrives in my inbox. Today - seeing as how it is autumn - well fall - over there in the US of A - she was focussed on apples, and amongst the many delectable recipes on offer was this Invisible apple cake, which she likened to Apple sharlotka - a Russian cake that she had wri

Oct 21