Banana-Honey Bread

Anyone who's been reading Freshly Ground for a while will know that I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with that curious breed known as the Celebrity Chef. And by love-hate, I don't mean that I love to hate them, or even that I hate them at all. Most the time, I am inspired by their dedication to good food and nutrition and taste, and sometimes it's just that they are such a world beyond what I will ever be as a cook that it bugs me.

So, in order to give the Olivers and Ramsays of the world a fair go, I've also made an effort to document my humble attempts to replicate their luscious-looking dishes in my own small kitchen.

My last try was not terribly successful - there must have been something in the Italian air that I was missing. (Either that, or, as the Alligator said, I just didn't follow the recipe, so it was my own darned fault).

This next one, however, hit the mark perfectly. To be fair, I've made this before, and it worked back then too, so I came into the process with anticipation rather than foreboding, which may have helped.

But how hard could making bread with the banana and the honey built-in be?

Another Jamie Oliver recipe, this one is from his second book, Happy Days with the Naked Chef, and is a real winner. Especially if you have bananas that look like this stinking up your fruitbowl:

The key difference between Oliver's recipe and my interpretation of it is that I'm lazy: mine just goes straight into the breadmaker to do all the hard work.
Jamie Oliver's Banana and Honey Bread
(1 Loaf)

Ingredients:
500g Strong Flour (Hi-Grade)
1t Salt
2t Sugar
2T Breadmaker Yeast
3 Ripe Bananas, Pureed (see picture above)
4 T Honey, either runny or melted until it's runny

Dump all the ingredients, reserving half the honey, into the breadmaker pan. Turn onto a dough cycle.
I'm just going to pop this photo in here gratuitously, because I like it.
When the cycle is done, turn the dough out onto a floured bench and gently shape. With a long knife, cut the dough into six roughly equal sized pieces. Then, if you like, you can score them into fancy shapes. Place in an oiled baking tray and put into a warm, dry place for one hour to rise.

Drizzle over the remaining honey and place into the oven at 200C, for 18-20 minutes.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool - but not too much.
With a bit of butter, you won't find these last long enough to get cold.

So Jamie, this one's a 5-Star winner. That's just Pukka.

A Curry Odyssey Episode 6: Roti Bread

Back to the Great Curry Odyssey! It's lucky I'm getting so much mileage out of that big day when I made the Lamb Korma, because I haven't really cooked a proper curry since.

I have plans to try a Chicken Tikka Masala next, so if anyone can direct me to a good recipe to look at I'd appreciate it. A big shout goes out to BamBam for the loan of the Food of India book. It's the ultimate inspiration in print.

Moving onto Roti bread, then. What's great about this is that unlike my disastrous attempt at making Naan breads, this recipe for Rotis came out perfect first time. Seriously, I've never made these before. Following a link on my Key Ingredient: The Back Burner feed, I found this step-by-step photo recipe for making your own rotis from scratch. Lubna at the Yummy Food blog has gone to all the effort, but I didn't want to steal her photos, so I took my own. It's all her recipe, though. And it works, first time.

Before I launch into it, I'll make one quick comment. The roti we get when we order Indian or Malaysian or Thai tend to be a bit greasy, and are generally quite delicious. These ones, on the other hand, are dry and crunchy. However, I'm sure that this comes down to balancing your ingredients to suit your tastes and health needs. Quite simply, add more salt and oil for a more flavoursome, indulgent bread, or leave them as they are for a healthier option than you'll get from the local takeaways.

Roti/Chapati/Indian Flatbread

(Makes about 6, depending on how big you want them)

Ingredients
2 C Hi-Grade Flour
Extra flour for dusting
Water to mix dough, as required
2-3 drops of Oil for kneading
Pinch of salt
More Oil or Ghee if you have it
Combine flour, salt and oil, then add water slowly to form the dough. Knead until this becomes soft and elastic. Cover and leave to rise in a warm place for 15-20 mins.

Divide the dough into 5-6 roughly equal portions. Dust with flour and set aside.
Take one piece of dough and roll out flat on a floured surface.
Brush with a little oil (or a little more, depending on your taste) and fold the corners in...
...and in...
... and in ...
... then flour and roll out again.
Heat a wide heavy pan. Place the rolled roti on the pan. Cook until the top starts to look a bit dry, and turn before it starts to burn.
Press down on the roti with a kitchen tea towel or paper towel as the other side cooks to get a nice even puff.

Now you can brush your roti with more oil or ghee and either put aside in a warm place (ie, in a warming drawer) or serve up straight away with hot curry and cold raita.

More of the Great Curry Odyssey

Herby Bread

It's the weekend. If it's not the weekend where you are, rest assured that it's probably the weekend somewhere. If that is simply impossible no matter where you are, you can take comfort in the fact that at some point it will be the weekend again.

OK, now that I've put that nonsense to bed, I want to show you something I love to do on the weekend, when I have the chance: Bread.

Don't be scared. I'm a lazy baker. I trust whole-heartedly in the stringent work ethic of the electric breadmaker. What I don't like about breadmakers is their complete and utter failure to present even a semblance of artisanship when they deliver up their final product.

Being inanimate may be somewhat to blame for this, but when you're dealing with a cook as fussy as me, there are certain standards I expect to be met. Let's just ignore that laziness comment for now.

Bread shouldn't just be a sustenance that gets us through the days. It should be a joy. If you think about how much bread you eat (gluten-intolerants are welcome to shake their heads in disgust at this point in time), why not make it yourself, and make it delicious?

With a breadmaker, all the hard work is done for you. Let the machine make the dough, then pull it out, let it rise, dress it up and slide it in the oven. Lovely stuff.

Mediterranean-style Herb and Garlic Bread

(Disclaimer: I've never actually been to the Mediterranean, so this could very well be a false claim. Nonetheless, it has olive oil in the recipe, so I'm sticking with it.)

Dough Ingredients:

300g Strong Flour
200g Semolina Flour
2T Breadmaker Yeast
1T Honey
1/2t Salt
280ml Warm Water
3T Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 Cloves of Garlic, finely chopped
(Alternatively, you can use Garlic-Infused Olive Oil, and make sure you get some of the chunky stuff in there)

Place all ingredients in the pan of the Breadmaker and turn on to a dough cycle.
When the cycle is finished, pull out the dough and gently shape on a floured bench. Because of the olive oil, this bread will be slightly denser than usual. That's OK. We like that.
Place the dough in a oiled baking tray and put it somewhere warm to rise for one hour. I always use the Hot Water Cupboard. While it's doing its thing in there, chop up some more garlic and some fresh rosemary and thyme.
Preheat the oven to 200C. Take the risen dough and brush gently with more olive oil. Sprinkle with the garlic and herbs and bake for 20 minutes.
It should come out a bit denser than normal bread. Delicious eaten warm with butter melting through it, or for sandwiches or toast or to soak up soup or whatever. Mmmm.

Who needs Twitter?

When I first started investigating what this Twitter thing was all about, I deduced that the 'Serious' users took umbrage with the 'Frivolous' users, whom they accused of wasting precious bandwidth by posting worthless junk like "Hey Look I'm having a bagel for breakfast", and "On the Tube, with a coffee and a danish".

Far better, the Serious users would argue, that Twitter be used for Useful Things, like the [Insert Product or Service Here] that the Serious user is peddling.

Truth be told, I still haven't quite figured Twitter out. I don't know how to follow #streams yet, and I seem to have a lot of people following me who just want to sell me stuff. So I ignore them.

Am I a Serious Twitter user? I use Twitter as an additional tool to keep an ear to the ground in the publishing world mainly, but it's so full of noise that it's hard to know what you're hearing that's worthwhile and what's not. Twitter is, for me, a mild diversion at the very most. I'm sure there's some real value to it, but I haven't had to the time to really get to grips with it yet.

I do, however, pop links to Freshly Ground up there from time to time. I haven't yet posted what I had for breakfast on Twitter, but there's a first time for everything.

Even though this is a scheduled post, when I get back online I'll be sure to let all my 30-odd followers know that if they'd like a look at what a Fantasy writer cum-Weekend Chef eats for breakfast on a Sunday, they can get a glimpse, in full living colour, with the simple click of a mouse.

So when it comes to posting on Twitter about what you had for breakfast, who needs it? That's what I've got a blog for!

French Toast with Bacon and Maple Syrup

(Serves 3, or 2 if you're slow)

Start with 3 large free range eggs.
In a large bowl, mix up the eggs with 3T Milk, and season with freshly ground pepper and salt.
Add a little grate of fresh nutmeg. (Ah, freshly grated nutmeg. How you brighten my days and warm my nights.)
Start frying up some bacon in a hot pan, preferably greased with the bacon rind.
Soak a piece of bread in the egg mixture while a slab of butter sizzles in a nearby pan. I have two pans on the go at a time like this; there's no point letting it get cold. Fry each piece of French Toast for about 3-4 minutes a side, until brown and crispy and cooked through.
Dish up with crispy fried bacon and maple syrup, with a pot of fresh coffee near at hand. Best eaten with the sun pouring in on the kitchen table, or rain running down the window while you're cozy inside.

First of the Summer Burgers

Spring is an awfully two-faced creature. Yesterday we were basking in the sun, discussing how it actually felt hot outside, and today the country is battening down the hatches as gale force winds close Wellington airport and rip rooves off houses. Oh, and it's raining and cold. The fire is burning at home, while here at work the yard is a hazardous place to be without a hardhat. I would love to point out how this must be a sign of climate change, but I've lived in Wellington for 20 years now. Nothing about this change of heart surprises me. I just feel sorry for the lighting guy that I know is out in this soup up a 45' boom lifter wrapped up in a tarp and desperately needing to pee, waiting for the First AD to call lunch. Chin up, Saxon, this is the glamour of the film industry.
Anyway, we're willing to take any hint of spring as an excuse to get back into summery food. Dessert Chef made fresh bread rolls using our standard pizza dough recipe, rising them in Texas muffin tins so they kept their shape, and we had Bacon and Egg burgers to welcome burger season to our house for the year.
I'm sure I don't need to pretend this is a recipe. Fry the bacon. Fry the eggs until the the whites are set and the yolks are still running. Dress with garlic aioli and pile on top of shredded lettuce, sliced tomatoes, beetroot, cucumber, pineapple and cheese.
Welcome back to summer! (Let's keep up the illusion, anyway, shall we?)