the week's cooking and baking
Jan. 24th, 2016 08:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitYesterday I made a raised pork pie using the Paul Hollywood recipe linked to. I tweaked it a little bit out of necessity and laziness, using bratwurst because English sausages aren't available where I live, and some chopped up ham steak because I couldn't be bothered with cooking a ham hock (also, US ham hocks are very very smoky, and I wasn't sure if that would be right). I used regular shallots because I've never even seen a banana shallot.
Anyway, unlike the beef pie I tried last time, I like this one a lot. The meat isn't all soft and gooshy and the overall texture is drier, so the pastry stayed more crisp.
I've been having one problem with hot water crust pastry, though, which is that when I cut into a pie, the pastry tends to break off in chunks instead of slicing neatly. Anybody have any advice on this? I'm not sure if it's just a case of "your pie will not look like the perfect photo in the cookbook" or if I'm doing the pastry wrong, perhaps making it too dry.
In other baking, yesterday I mixed up a batch of dough for what The Book of Buns calls Snittsidan Bullar, a Swedish bread roll topped with seeds. The book calls for white and/or whole wheat bread flour and a little rye; I ended up using white and whole wheat flour in equal proportions, plus some barley flour and the rye. I acquired the barley flour a while back because it was on clearance for cheap, so hopefully it works well in this recipe. The dough is on the counter now to warm up and rise after an overnight refrigeration, and I'm going to top the rolls with a mix of pumpkin and sunflower seeds.
This morning I made a cauliflower and avocado salad which is an old favorite from one of the first cookbooks I ever owned, Sundays at Moosewood. It's a vegetarian cookbook, as I was a vegetarian then, and a lot of it's probably horribly dated now because vegetarian cooking has grown so much, but at the time it was a revelation. I don't actually have a copy anymore and I couldn't find the recipe online, but you don't really need a recipe anyway. You lightly steam some cauliflower, toss it with a dressing of mayonnaise, lemon juice, and a bit of cream cheese mixed in to make it creamier, and add sliced avocado and sliced hard-boiled eggs. Yes, I know it sounds odd, but the flavors work well and it's a good winter salad. I normally omit the avocado because I have a slight oral allergy to them, but I was tempted by the lovely big Haas avocados in the supermarket the other day and got one. By good fortune, it was at the perfect point of ripeness today, and its creamy goodness was worth the way my throat feels itchy now.
Later on I'm going to cook some Brussels sprouts with blue cheese and chestnuts (using more of the vacuum-packed chestnuts I bought before Christmas). I meant to cook this yesterday to go with the pie, but that didn't happen. Which was just as well as I had forgotten that the pie is supposed to be served cold anyway.
I also plan to make some kind of mixed-grain salad with chickpeas and tomatoes which should do for some work lunches next week. It'll also help with Project Use Up the Random Stuff in the Cupboards, which is a thing I need to do.
As usual, another very domestic weekend for me. I've been feeling a bit off, not quite sick but definitely not well, with a cough, stuffy nose and a scratchy throat even before I ate the avocado, so it's a good time to stay in and do light bouts of cooking between bouts of napping.
Anyway, unlike the beef pie I tried last time, I like this one a lot. The meat isn't all soft and gooshy and the overall texture is drier, so the pastry stayed more crisp.
I've been having one problem with hot water crust pastry, though, which is that when I cut into a pie, the pastry tends to break off in chunks instead of slicing neatly. Anybody have any advice on this? I'm not sure if it's just a case of "your pie will not look like the perfect photo in the cookbook" or if I'm doing the pastry wrong, perhaps making it too dry.
In other baking, yesterday I mixed up a batch of dough for what The Book of Buns calls Snittsidan Bullar, a Swedish bread roll topped with seeds. The book calls for white and/or whole wheat bread flour and a little rye; I ended up using white and whole wheat flour in equal proportions, plus some barley flour and the rye. I acquired the barley flour a while back because it was on clearance for cheap, so hopefully it works well in this recipe. The dough is on the counter now to warm up and rise after an overnight refrigeration, and I'm going to top the rolls with a mix of pumpkin and sunflower seeds.
This morning I made a cauliflower and avocado salad which is an old favorite from one of the first cookbooks I ever owned, Sundays at Moosewood. It's a vegetarian cookbook, as I was a vegetarian then, and a lot of it's probably horribly dated now because vegetarian cooking has grown so much, but at the time it was a revelation. I don't actually have a copy anymore and I couldn't find the recipe online, but you don't really need a recipe anyway. You lightly steam some cauliflower, toss it with a dressing of mayonnaise, lemon juice, and a bit of cream cheese mixed in to make it creamier, and add sliced avocado and sliced hard-boiled eggs. Yes, I know it sounds odd, but the flavors work well and it's a good winter salad. I normally omit the avocado because I have a slight oral allergy to them, but I was tempted by the lovely big Haas avocados in the supermarket the other day and got one. By good fortune, it was at the perfect point of ripeness today, and its creamy goodness was worth the way my throat feels itchy now.
Later on I'm going to cook some Brussels sprouts with blue cheese and chestnuts (using more of the vacuum-packed chestnuts I bought before Christmas). I meant to cook this yesterday to go with the pie, but that didn't happen. Which was just as well as I had forgotten that the pie is supposed to be served cold anyway.
I also plan to make some kind of mixed-grain salad with chickpeas and tomatoes which should do for some work lunches next week. It'll also help with Project Use Up the Random Stuff in the Cupboards, which is a thing I need to do.
As usual, another very domestic weekend for me. I've been feeling a bit off, not quite sick but definitely not well, with a cough, stuffy nose and a scratchy throat even before I ate the avocado, so it's a good time to stay in and do light bouts of cooking between bouts of napping.
