Pizza snails

s’s birthday wish was to have his class from børnehave over to play. They do this sometimes for birthdays - the whole room of kids goes to the birthday boy/girl’s house for a few hours in the morning during børnehave time, with a pedagog or two. But we haven’t tried it before… 

Apparently pizza snails (pizza snegle) are required for such gatherings. Like overnight bread rolls, these seem to be something every Danish mum can whip up with her eyes closed.

I asked two different Danish mums about how to make pizza snegle, and both directed me to the same recipe, this one. So that seemed like a done deal. 

(makes about 30 medium snails - including some slightly small/awkward end ones - about 20 acceptably similar ones)

For the dough:

50 g fresh yeast

200 ml milk

150 ml plain yoghurt 

2 eggs 

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp honey

100 ml olive oil

250 g / 9 oz wholewheat flour

400 g / 14 1/2 oz plain flour

 

For the tomato sauce:

1 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 400 g tin tomatoes

2 tbsp tomato purée

2 tsp dried oregano

Salt+pepper

 

To finish:

125 g (one pack) fresh mozzarella, finely chopped

1 egg, lightly beaten - for brushing

 

Make the dough:

Mix yeast in a large bowl with the milk. Add oil, yoghurt, honey, egg, salt and wholewheat flour and mix well together.

 

Add plain flour a little at a time until the dough is nice and flexible (it was a bit sticky). Put in a warm place to rise, with a tea towel over it, for about an hour or until doubled in size.

 

Make the tomato sauce:

Heat olive oil in a pan and sauté onion and garlic until soft and translucent. Add tinned tomatoes, tomato purée, oregano, salt and pepper. Simmer c 20 min until thick. Let cool, and keep in fridge until needed, esp if making in advance.

 

Assembly:

Roll out half the dough on a floured surface until c 1/2 cm thick rectangle/square. Spread half the tomato sauce out evenly on top, except c. 4 cm from one end. Sprinkle with half the cheese. Roll into a long roll and cut snails about 2 cm thick with a sharp knife. Put on baking sheets lined with baking paper, with a few cm between them at least, and make round and neat with your hands. Repeat with the other half of the ingredients. Let rise on the sheets for 30 min. Brush with beaten egg. Bake 16-18 min at 180C, until golden brown.

 

They came out well and looked legit. They didn't go down all that well with the kids (they preferred melon, salty popcorn and coconut water), but there were no major complaints so think I got them about right.

Salsa di noci (walnut sauce for pasta)

We are hooked on the great Italian supermarket in Sydhavn. S snuck a pot of salsa di noci into our shopping basket last time we were there, despite my protestations at buying anything walnut-based, considering our epic quantities. But it turned out to be delicious, and a little different from any walnut-based pesto I'd tried before. I googled for a recipe, and it seemed pretty simple. So I tried this one. And it was great! So there is an argument for buying walnutty things after all - new ideas for our supply!

35 g white bread, crusts removed

100 ml milk

150 g walnuts, toasted

10 g parmesan, grated 

1/2 garlic clove 

40 ml olive oil 

lemon juice, to taste 

salt, to taste 

pepper 

extra chopped walnuts (optional)

chopped parsley (optional)

 

Put the bread into the milk and leave to soak for a few min.

 

Put the soaked bread in a blender along with the walnuts, parmesan, garlic and oil. Blend to a smooth paste, slowly adding the leftover milk back in to reach the desired consistency

Season the sauce with salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste

Often served with gnocchi or long, flat pasta shapes such as tagliatelle (we ate it with penne and it was still good). Garnish with extra toasted walnuts and chopped parsley if you like (we didn't have any so didn't, and it was still good). Had some roasted aubergine pieces on the side and that was nice mixed in, as an option. Oh and I think a bit of ricotta salata as an option too.

Walnut bread

So many walnuts, so little bread...

Tried this recipe. Halved it - four loaves seemed too much. And cut the raisins and replaced almonds with more walnuts.

(makes 2 medium loaves)

500 g plain flour

125 g fine wholewheat flour

125 g coarse wholewheat flour

3/4 tbsp dry yeast

1/2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 tbsp honey

1/2 tbsp salt

500 ml lukewarm water

1 1/2 cups walnuts, roughly chopped

Knead all ingredients except nuts together on a floured surface. Keep kneading until elastic - about 15 min. Shape into a rough square. Sprinkle nuts on top and roll up. Knead and twist to distribute the nuts. Make into a ball, put in a greased bowl, cover with a tea towel, and leave to rise for c. 3 hours in a warm place.

When risen, split in two and roll into flattened ovals. Put on a baking tray lined with paper, leaving space to allow doubling in size. Sprinkle the tops with plain flour and leave uncovered for 1 hour.

Heat the oven to 240C. Put the baking tray on the bottom rack and drop to 200C. Bake for 40 min, on bottom rack. Let cool before eating.

To freeze, wrap well. Thaw before unwrapping. Put in 180C oven for a few min.

I thought it was way too many nuts when I first added them, but it came out quite good. Bit dense maybe, but acceptable. s helped me with the kneading. I'm not great at making bread.

Snobrød

I don't even know the name for this in English: 'bread twisted onto a stick and cooked on a fire' is rather long winded. So, snobrød (literally translates to 'twisted bread') is something that it seems to me every Danish person has been making since kindergarten (børnehave), like building supercool ground-level treehouses out of sticks in the woods or making awesome morning rolls. But I had never made or eaten it. So it had become one of my dream-Denmark-goals - my American one was to see a skunk (realized just weeks before leaving after 5 years). We had been talking with our neighbours about making a fire in the garden together and making some snobrød, and finally got around to it a couple days before New Year's Eve, on a non-rainy afternoon after S+T had been cutting down some tree pieces. T had bought some special sticks (metal with wooden handles), and I made the dough using this recipe.

300 ml water

25 g fresh yeast (used c. 1.5 tbsp dried)

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp salt

500 g plain flour

Mix yeast and water in a large bowl. Add sugar, flour and salt and mix to a smooth dough. Add more flour if needed. Let rise approx. 45 min (or a bit longer). Take pieces of dough approx the size of a snooker ball, and roll into long thin sausage shapes before twisting around the end of a stick and squishing a bit into shape. Bake by holding over hot embers. Like marshmallow toasting, different techniques and tastes apply, but I think it best to be patient and go for browned on the outside / cooked on the inside. 

This was about the right amount for 4 adults and 2 three year olds, as a sort of afternoon snack. They were quite special - the crispy outside and soft inside is different from any other bread I've eaten. Next time it might be nice with seeds in the dough - sesame?

Overnight seedy bread rolls

My friend A-L makes delicious no-nonsense overnight bread rolls (morgenboller). I have a theory that every Danish person does this...

One of my lockdown goals, I decided, was to figure out my own overnight bread recipe. I asked A-L for her recipe, and she gave it to me, but it turned out she didn’t really have a recipe, it was more like the bake off technical challenges (‘add flour to make a dough’)...

I didn’t believe in my skills enough to start from her recipe, so I googled a bit and decided to try this one. I’ve made them a few times now and we love them!

(makes 12 medium-small buns)

250 ml water (1 cup)
250 ml milk (1 cup)
15 g fresh yeast (1/2 oz) - approx. 1/3 of a 50 g pack
2 tsp sugar
100 ml wholemeal flour (2/5 cup)
100 ml oats (2/5 cup)
100 ml mixed seeds / grains (e.g. sunflower seeds, linseeds, pumpkin seeds, hulled hemp seeds, poppyseeds, sesame seeds) (2/5 cup)
500 g plain flour (1,1 lb)
1/2 tbsp salt

In a large bowl, dissolve the fresh yeast and sugar in the cold water and milk. Add the rest of the ingredients and knead everything into a smooth and nice dough. Cover the bowl loosely and place it in the fridge for 8-12 hours (i.e. overnight).

Dip two tablespoons in cold water and use them to set buns on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Try to make them a little pointy - when they raise, they will flatten out a little.

Let the bread raise for an extra hour at room temperature. Heat the oven to 200C.

After the final raising, brush the bread with some beaten egg and decorate them with different seeds or grains.

Bake for 20-25 min, until golden brown. Move to a cooling rack to cool.

Carrot and sunflower seed bread rolls

Little S talks about bøller a lot. Essentially, it is his word for all food - although it really means bread-rolls. My friend A-L makes awesome, no-nonsense overnight bread rolls with carrot in them. I found this recipe after I asked her for hers, and thought I'd give it a go in the meantime.

50 g fresh yeast (2 oz)
550 ml lukewarm water
80 g sunflower seeds
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp vegetable oil
250 g carrots, peeled and grated
1000 g plain flour
2 tsp salt
extra sunflower seeds for decoration

In a large bowl, dissolve the fresh yeast. If you are using dry yeast then add this in the step together with the flour. Add the rest of the ingredients and knead everything into a nice and smooth dough.

Cover the bowl with a clean dish towel and set it aside to rise. Let it rise for one hour.

Divide the dough into 24 pieces and make them into nice buns. Place the buns on a parchment paper covered baking tray. Let the buns rise for another 30 min. Heat the oven to 210C. Gently brush the buns will a beaten egg and sprinkle them with some extra sunflower seeds. Bake for about 20 min.


These were quite nice, but I liked the overnight-risen rolls better - both flavour and method!

Pao de queijo (vegetarian not vegan)

We found somewhere in CPH selling pao de queijo! Which was exciting... and also reminded me that (1) they are easy to make; (2) I have never made non-vegan ones, which presumably are even easier than the vegan ones I made before; and (3) we were close to the best place I could think of to find tapioca flour.

I read around a bit on Google, and decided to use this recipe, because it was clear and seemed straightforward.

(makes c 24 medium sized ones)

1 cup milk (used oat milk)
1/2 cup veg oil
1 tsp salt
10 oz / 284 g tapioca flour
2 large eggs
1 packed cup grated cheese (used a mixture of parmesan, pråst and jarlsberg... the internet suggests that pretty much any cheese will do - most recipes use either parmesan or a mix of parmesan and mozzarella... pics of the real Brazilian cheese look quite like pråst - perhaps that's a good local sub?)

Heat the oven to 450F / 232C. Line two baking sheets with baking paper.

Bring the milk, oil and salt to a gentle boil over a medium heat in a medium-large saucepan (big enough to fit all ingredients and mix the dough). Stir occasionally. Remove when you can see big bubbles.

Add the tapioca flour and stir with a wooden spoon until there is no dry flour and the dough is grainy and gelatinous. Beat the dough for a few minutes until it smooths out and has cooled down enough that you can hold your finger against it for a few seconds. There may be a bit of an oily unincorporated bit.

Beat in the eggs one at a time - fully incorporate the first one before adding the second. Beat in the cheese until fully incorporated. It should be a sticky, stretchy, soft dough.

Scoop the dough into approx 2 tbsp sized balls and place on a baking sheet approx 2 in apart (should be 12 per sheet). Try dipping the scoop in water between scoops to prevent sticking.

Put the baking sheets in the oven and reduce the heat to 350F / 177C. Bake for 15 min, then rotate top-bottom and front-back. Bake 10-15 min more, until puffed, outsides dry, and golden brown on the bottoms (mine only needed 10 more min). Cool a few minutes and eat while warm.


I shaped them in the afternoon and let them sit for an hour or so, then baked half of them for dinner. The other half I put in the fridge for a couple of days and then baked, and they were good too. I wanted to try baking from freezing but the freezer was too full.

They were good! And simple and quick (for a bread). I kind of want to go back and try the vegan ones again - I remember them being really good too, and thinking you don't really need the cheese - the texture and savoury deliciousness is all you really need...

Also! I think potato starch might be easier to find and give a similar texture, and so I want to try making some with that instead of tapioca - I found a recipe, I'll add it when I've tried.

Black garlic dill dough balls

We went to the big Yayoi Kusuma show at Louisiana one evening last week. It was amazingly busy for a cold Wednesday night. But it was a super fun show. We'd seen some of her work at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh and at Louisiana before, but I was only really familiar with her reflecting rooms and polka dots. Turns out there was a whole lot of other stuff I didn't know about, which was just as great if not better. I really enjoyed her nets, and her pumpkins (especially the large bronze ones). And her earliest work: colourful paintings and beautifully precise botanical sketches. Although it felt very much of its time, her 60s NY stuff - pasta handbags, cut-out dresses and nude happenings - was interesting to see too. I wasn't very familiar with that period of her work, and it was all very smart and humorous. S got inspired by a little footnote listing the performers at one of her happenings - someone called Dill Dough...

So on the train back we decided that we should buy some dill and experiment with Dill Dough recipes. At the weekend we bought dill from a shop in København NV. And last night I was in the kitchen making fritters and decided it was time for dill dough. We still had anytime dough in the fridge from our latest pizza efforts. I also decided to include some black garlic, which we had bought on a whim the other day and is really interesting. It doesn't really taste like garlic at all - sweet and tangy - perhaps more like miso? Somewhere inbetween yeast extract and miso? Anyway, I mixed some of that in too...

1/3 quantity of pre-made dough
2-3 tbsp chopped dill
4-5 cloves black garlic, chopped
1-2 tbsp flour, as needed
butter to finish

Take the dough out of the fridge and add the dill and black garlic. Mix and knead a little to combine. Shape into bread roll shapes (this made 4 but it's flexible depending on dough quantity / ball size preference). Space on a baking sheet covered with baking paper and prove in a warm place for about 30 min. Preheat the oven to 200C and bake the dough balls for 20-30 min, until they sound hollow when tapped on the base. Take out of the oven and smear a little butter on the top of each one to melt. Best eaten still slightly warm.

Veg onion soup

It's been a busy few weeks. We got our new place, we moved, got furniture, all of that. Then three weeks after moving in, there was a big storm with lots of heavy wet snow. It snowed all night and when we went out in the morning we found several huge (approx 80 cm diameter) branches broken off a tree in our yard. One was blocking the small road beside our place. So then we have been busy clearing that up and sorting it out - finding a tree surgeon, then dealing with all the fallen wood - we've been chopping it for next year's firewood.

Yesterday we finished tidying up (stashing needly bits in the bushes), then started stacking the wood and chopping it. S with an axe, me with a saw. It got dark but we carried on chopping in the garage. At some point he suggested I go in and make french onion soup instead. We'd bought a whole lot of onions at the best and biggest Turkish supermarket in town (Istanbul in København NV), and that had given him an idea... I went in and got going, using the recipe from trusty Delia's veg collection. What we hadn't realized before was that it takes about 3 hours to cook. So it was about 21:00 by the time we got to eat. But it was good.

1 lb 8 oz / 700 g onions, thinly sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
2 oz / 50 g butter
2 cloves garlic, crushed
½ tsp sugar
2 pints / 1.2 l veg stock
10 fl oz / 275 ml dry white wine
salt and pepper

for the croutons:
6-8 1 inch / 2.5 cm diagonal slices of French bread (used bits of pumpkin seed bread as that's what we had)
1 tbsp olive oil
1-2 cloves garlic, crushed
8 oz / 225 g Gruyère, grated (used blue cheese instead as that's what we had)

Heat the oven to gas mark 4 / 350F / 180C. Prep the onions.

Place a large heavy-based saucepan on a high heat and melt the oil and butter together. When this is very hot, add the onions, garlic and sugar, and stir occasionally until the edges of the onions turn dark – about 6 min. Reduce the heat to low and leave the onions to cook slowly for about 30 min, until the base of the pan is covered with a rich, nut brown, caramelised film (bake croutons during this time - see below). After that, pour in the stock and white wine, season and stir with a wooden spoon, scraping the base of the pan well. When it comes to a simmer, turn the heat to low and leave to cook gently without a lid for about 1 hour.

To make the croutons drizzle the olive oil on to a baking sheet, add the crushed garlic and spread the oil and garlic all over. Place the bread slices on top of the oil and turn over each one so that both sides are coated with oil. Bake for 20-25 min till crisp and crunchy.
 
Sprinkle the grated cheese thickly over the croutons and grill until the cheese is golden brown and bubbling. Put soup in bowls to serve, with a crouton or two on top of each.

Oat buns

We have eaten so much good Danish bread. There is endless variety: traditional rye made with sourdough; versions with chia, carrot, potato for moistness. Various focaccia and baguette type things. And everything in between (lots of nuts and seeds!). Last weekend we went to Relæ with Y+M, and fell in love hard with the sourdough bread they serve there - it's from Manfred's, their other place over the road (also had the best beer I have ever had). S especially became a little obsessed. So yesterday we returned to Jægersborggade to try and track down that bread (after a very successful mission to a secret secondhand store). It turned out to be pretty easy: they were selling the bread as wholes and halves for quite a reasonable price, right from the restaurant. So we went home happy, with a bag full of tasty, stretchy, crunchy, wonderful sourdough (not to mention the radio, DVD/CD player, three jackets, one shirt and waterproof trousers we'd picked up earlier...).

So anyway, yesterday for some reason I was looking at the side of a packet of oats and became intrigued by the recipe there. Thought it was about time I tried to follow a recipe written in Danish. With the help of Google translate I figured it out. And realised we had pretty much all the ingredients. Including grahamsmel, which I hadn't been able to identify previously. So I made these oat buns, using up some slightly out of date fresh yeast, testing the grahamsmel, and with freshly made yoghurt. I think I could understand the recipe! One thing I noticed, that I remembered from some Swedish hagebutten soup stuff Anna had given me once upon a time, is that Scandinavians seem to measure volume in decilitres (1 dl = 100 ml) rather than millilitres.

(makes 10 rolls)

25 g yeast (gær)
200 ml (2 dl) lukewarm water (vand)
250 g plain flour (hvedemel) (used white spelt instead)
75 g graham flour (grahamsmel)
250 g oats (havregryn)
100 ml yoghurt
1 tbsp (spsk) sugar (sukker)
2 tbsp oil (olie)
1 tsp (tsk) salt
more yoghurt and some sesame seeds to finish

Dissolve (opløs) the yeast in lukewarm (lunkent) water, and add (tilsæt) the flours, oats, yogurt, sugar, oil and salt.

Knead (ælt) to a smooth (glat) and supple (smidig) dough (dej). The dough should be soft (blød). Form (form) the dough into a ball (kugle).

Let (lad) the dough rise (hæve), covered (tildækket), for about 45 min. Knock (slå) dough down (ned) and shape 10 buns (boller).

Set (sæt) buns (bollerne) on a baking sheet (bageplade) with baking paper (bagepapir) and let them prove (efterhæve) for about 30 min.

Brush with yogurt or water, then sprinkle (drys) with sesame seeds.

Bake at 200C / fan (varmluft) 180C for 12-15 min.


Came out tasty enough but not very well risen - perhaps the yeast was past it? Perhaps spelt flour was a bad substitution?

Real Seelen

I first made something like Seelen for S (from this recipe) a few years ago, and he loved them! He didn't stop talking about them, and I made my approximation a few times since he liked them so much. They are regional bread from where he grew up in Germany, and apparently they are hard to get even elsewhere in Germany.
But I could never track down white spelt flour in the USA, not even in the fanciest grocery shops (or Eastern European ones). Not long after coming here, we went to Lidl (another German thing S loves), and found white spelt flour there! And pretty cheap too. So we decided that real Seelen were in order.

They don't take too many ingredients or special equipment, so it seemed do-able, even without my own kitchen. Finding the other ingredients was actually kind of a challenge. We had salt, that was fine and easy. I thought caraway might be easy too as it seems quite popular - there is a caraway seed cheese I see everywhere and want to try, but it only comes in gigantic blocks so haven't yet. But we didn't find caraway in any of the grocery shops we checked. The Turkish market had a bewildering selection of spices though, leading to a fairly lengthy debate between S+I over whether cumin (spidskommen) and caraway (kommen) seeds were the same or not (they're not! but he wouldn't believe it!). Anyway, we got the caraway there, and the next challenge was yeast, Again, I checked near the flour on the shelves of various grocery shops, until S found some in the fridge in a wholefoods shop - of course! Fresh yeast is the way here, dried yeast seems to be hard to find.

So, real seelen - not only with white spelt flour, but also with fresh yeast!

(makes 12 - I doubled the recipe as I had 1000g flour, 42g yeast, and no scales... and S loves seelen)

1000g white spelt flour
42g fresh yeast
600 ml warm water
4 tsp salt

For sprinkling: caraway seeds and coarse sea salt

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and knead all ingredients for about 10 minutes to get soft and fairly sticky dough.  Leave to rise in a warm place for about 60 minutes, kneading briefly after 20 min and after 40 min.

When the dough has risen turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and split in two.  With wet hands shape one piece into a square of about 20 cm.  Use a wet knife to cut the dough into six strips. Transfer the strips onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper.  Repeat with the other half of the dough (you'll need two baking sheets). Irregular shapes are fine, even good.  Cover with a clean dish towel and leave to rise for another 20 minutes.  Heat the oven to about 240C / 460F and place a bowl of water on the bottom shelf.

When the Seelen are ready to go into the oven wet them again with your hands and sprinkle with caraway seeds and coarse sea salt.  Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.


They definitely look different -lighter, more golden, with a very slight sheen. Perhaps a little more dense. But the taste is dominated by the caraway and salt so I find it hard to make out a difference in taste from the spelt. No complaints though, and it took us only two days to demolish the whole lot!

Flourless oat and seed bread

This was one of those recipes that cropped up one too many times. Eventually I could no longer resist and bought some psyllium seed husk, despite the fact I am supposed to be only using things up in the pantry these days. It is a sort of a gluten-free bread, but with no flour at all - it is packed with seeds and oats and the binding is purely by chia, flax and psyllium seed husk.

I made this shortly before leaving for Scotland (ten days ago), and froze some slices. I remembered it on the journey home and looked forward to its deliciousness all the rest of the way.

The first time I saw this recipe was here (thanks to LB), and the deciding time, the one that precipitated me making it at last (and the one I followed), was here.

2 1/4 cups (235g) oats (GF oats if you want it to be properly gluten free)
1 cup (160g) sunflower seeds
1/2 cup (65g) pumpkin seeds
3/4 cup (90g) almonds, roughly chopped
3/4 cup (120g) flax seeds
1/3 cup (25g) psyllium seed husks (I bought from Trader Joe's)
3 tbsp (25g) chia seeds
2 tsp (12g) sea salt
2 tbsp (40g) maple syrup
1/4 cup (55g) olive oil
2 1/2 cups (600g) water

Oil a loaf tin. If you like, toast the almonds, sunflower and pumpkin seeds. Put all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, then add the oil, maple syrup and water and mix well with your hands. Transfer to the oiled loaf tin and put in the fridge for somewhere between two and 24 hours (overnight might be convenient).

Take the loaf tin out of the fridge and let come to room temp. Heat the oven to 400F / 200C. Bake for about an hour, then take out and let cool a bit before tipping out onto a cooling rack and allowing to cool completely (at least two hours).


This reminds me of a seedy soda bread I used to make - dense and full of crunch and delicious toasty seeds. Basically, if you like toasted seeds, you'll like this. Toasts well (including from the freezer); good with hummus or avocado. I pretty much decided that toasting seeds is unnecessary faff. Lots of substitutions possible - the flax, chia and psyllium have to stay but the sunflower and pumpkin seeds could be mixed with other seeds, the almonds switched for hazelnuts or other nuts, dried fruit would probably be interesting, honey or brown sugar instead of maple, coconut or other oil instead of olive...

Chickpea bread

I made this beetroot soup the other day and it was just as good as I remembered. Although I used candystriped beetroot because that's what I had and the colour was way off - very drab compared with real beetroot - I prefer the beetroot-coloured kind for almost everything. Anyway, the soup went beautifully with this bread - an interesting loaf with chickpea flour in it I'd bookmarked a while ago and finally got round to making.

50g unsalted butter (used ~35g olive oil)
500g strong white bread flour, plus extra for shaping
175g chickpea flour
2 tsp salt
1 tsp fast-action yeast
300ml warm water

In a large mixing bowl, rub the butter or oil into the flours and salt, then add the yeast and water (I needed to add a couple of tbsp more water). Mix to a smooth dough, and leave for an hour without kneading. Now lightly knead the dough for 10 seconds only, then leave for another 30 minutes. Tip the dough on to a floured worktop and pull the edges into the centre six or seven times, to make a giant Kaiser roll shape. Flour the bowl, then place the dough seam side up in it. Leave to rise for an hour, then heat the oven to 220C/200C fan-assisted/425F/gas mark 7. Transfer the dough onto a floured baking tray(still seam side up). Bake for 20 min, then reduce the heat to 200C/180C fan-assisted/390F/gas mark 6 and bake for 25 minutes more. Move to a cooling rack to cool completely before cutting.


This is fairly dense and has a distinct chickpea flavour. In a good way, though. Really excellent with something wet like the soup for dunking it in.

Pumpkin soda bread

This is an adaptation of classic Delia. I first made the original a long time ago, in an effort to use up a whole pumpkin lantern - after souping most of it, why not make some quick and easy bread to go with the soup? That recipe contained cheese and eggs; this is an up-to-date, animal-free version.

8 oz plain flour
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
6 oz raw pumpkin or squash (peeled weight), grated
~2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
~3 tbsp white miso paste, broken up into small (~1/2 tsp) pieces
1 oz pumpkin seeds (and some extra for the top)
1/2 oz sesame seeds
2 tbsp ground linseed mixed with 6 tbsp boiling water
1 tbsp fake milk (plus a little more, if needed)

Heat oven to 375F. Grease a baking sheet fairly liberally with olive oil. Put flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl and mix with a fork. Add grated pumpkin, thyme leaves and miso (in small pieces) and toss together, then mix in the pumpkin and sesame seeds. Beat the milk into the linseed mixture, then add this to the pumpkin-flour mixture. Mix until it comes together into a sticky dough, using your hands towards the end (add a little more milk if needed).

Transfer the dough to the greased baking sheet and press into a 6 inch, flattened round. Make a cross on top using a blunt knife, then sprinkle with flour and pumpkin seeds. Put in the oven and bake for 45-50 min, until it is golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped. Remove from the oven and let cool for ~ 30 min. Best eaten warm, although perfectly fine at room temperature or toasted.

Miso, membrillo and toasted sesame seeds

I cut the membrillo into pieces last night - half for me, half for L; a bit extra for her to give back to M... Then half of our bit into pieces to store in the freezer for future use and the other half to eat right away / to keep in the fridge. I think it should keep quite a long time in the fridge, but just in case that doesn't work out the frozen stuff is back-up. We managed to make quite a big dent in it last night alone - S is a big fan. He was eating it on lightly toasted bread slices with manchego. I decided that the membrillo was amazing on the aforementioned toasted bread, over a smear of white miso and below a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds - sweetness, tang, crunch, saltiness and toastiness.

Gluten-free bread

I went to the woods today with A, D and K. We planned to have a picnic in the woods. I wanted to take something straightforward to eat, considered making these cookies again since everyone liked them and I wanted K to try them. But fancied something savoury. I realised I had never made a yeasted GF bread - I have made some excellent accidentally GF breads, but never one that was intended to take the place of a regular bread, to be sliced and toasted and so forth. I decided to try this recipe as a first pass (note, I had eggs from A's CSA needing used so the egginess was fine this time).

(makes one loaf in large loaf tin)

2 tsp dried yeast
pinch of raw sugar
1/2 cup (125ml) fake milk
3/4 cup (185ml) water
2/3 cup (115g) brown rice flour (subbed TJ's GF flour mix for brown rice flour and potato starch)
1/2 cup (85g) potato starch (subbed TJ's GF flour mix for brown rice flour and potato starch)
1/3 cup (60g) cornmeal
1/2 cup (62g) millet flour (ground millet seeds in spice grinder)
1/2 cup (56g) ground almonds
2 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp fine desert salt
2 eggs, beaten lightly
4 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp cider vinegar
sesame seeds to sprinkle on top

In a small bowl combine yeast and sugar. Add warm water to the fake milk so that it reaches body temperature. Pour the milk mixture over the yeast/sugar and mix to combine. Set aside for 5 minutes to ferment.

Place all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and mix well with a fork. When the yeast starts to bubble, add it to the dry ingredients along with the remaining ingredients and mix to form a smooth batter. It will not become kneadable (more like cornbread batter), but will thicken slightly after you have mixed it for a few minutes. Pour into a greased loaf tin with a lined base, scatter the top with sesame seeds and set aside to prove.

Once the dough has nearly risen to the top of the pan (around an hour) turn your oven to 220C/425F. Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown, then turn the oven down to 180C/350F and cook for a further 20-25 minutes or until done (should sound hollow when turned out and tapped). Cool on a wire rack. Slice when cold and store in the fridge.


I had trouble turning it out of the pan - would recommend lining the base. It bakes up well, with a nice crust. Slightly sweet - I might leave out or reduce the honey as the cornmeal is sweet on its own. Quite moist - perhaps it was slightly under (could also explain difficulty turning it out?). Pretty satisfactory though, and I always enjoy mucking around with different flours. I sliced it and took it to the woods along with some lentil dip and muesli muffins. Also ate some with this amazing Speculoos-cocoa vegan (but not GF) spread I found on a foray to TJs - too pretty to eat for about 5 sec (above), then too good to leave alone.

S's Abendbrot: tomato toasts

Apparently, in Germany the evening meal (Abendbrot) is most often just bread, with cheese / meat / whatever (Abend = evening, Brot = bread). So S likes when we just have bread and whatever for dinner. It's not such a bad idea: it's quick and a good way to use up stuff. And adaptable. The other night I made a couple of dips (red lentil dip and baba ghanoush) and roasted some veg, so the rest of the week we've been eating dips with carrot sticks and toast, avocado on toast, and these - S's current fave - tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, basil, salt+pepper on toast. I'm guessing this is not exactly what most Germans eat for Abendbrot, but take a German vegetarian out of the fatherland for 10 years and look what happens. They are more like bruschetta. Really quick and really tasty, especially with our current crop of garden tomatoes (S says they are the best tomatoes he's ever had: praise indeed as he does love tomatoes), plus basil also from the pot garden and juicy CSA garlic.

4 thickish slices robust bread (he favours TJ's rustic sourdough)
1 garlic clove, peeled
1-2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
~4 medium-sized ripe tomatoes, chopped or sliced
small bunch of basil, washed and torn into pieces
fresh ground sea salt and black pepper

Toast the bread. Rub it with garlic. Drizzle with olive oil. Arrange tomatoes over it. Sprinkle with torn basil leaves and finish with a good grinding of salt and pepper. Cut into smaller pieces if you like, and eat straight away.

Roasted potato and herb focaccia

Since we love potato bread (and S loves dill and salt), this bread immediately looked like it would be a hit. Definitely a weekend bread, as the protocol is a bit long... We had most of the ingredients, including 00 flour and salad potatoes. But I didn't have dill, so used some herbs I did have from our garden instead - thyme and chives. Think next year I will try and grow dill and coriander (I did plant coriander seeds but they didn't sprout) - they are the two we use most besides the ones I'm already growing (mint, chives, thyme, basil, parsley).

450g salad potatoes, washed (used red-skinned ones)
olive oil and sea salt flakes
1 tsp yeast
100ml low-fat yoghurt (used coconut kefir)
50g honey
175g pitted green olives (used 1 tin of black olives in brine, drained)
1 small bunch dill, chopped (used chives and thyme)
625g Italian 00 flour
2 tsp fine sea salt

Chop the potatoes into cubes, toss them with oil and a little salt, roast for 30 minutes (@ 400F) until barely cooked, then leave to cool (did this a day in advance).

In a large bowl, mix 375ml water with the yeast, kefir / yoghurt, honey, olives, herbs and cold potatoes, then mix in the flour and salt to make a sticky dough. Leave for 45 min, then knead the dough gently for 10 sec. Repeat this three more times at 45-min intervals, then line a baking tray (used roasting tin) with paper and press the dough out so it half covers it. Leave another 45 min, then stretch the dough to cover the rest of the tray. Sprinkle with salt flakes and leave for about 30 min while you heat the oven to 200C / 390F. Bake for 35-40 min, until a deep golden brown on top. Let sit for 10 min when you take it out of the oven, then lift out of the tray and off the paper and leave to cool on a rack.


I think this was a real focaccia-type dough: it was very wet. Interesting to work with - hard to knead properly - was glad it was a minimal-knead protocol. Came out lovely and soft as a result, with a nice loose, moist crumb. The kefir was definitely a good yoghurt substitute - I love the taste of it (you can't taste the coconut in the finished bread). Glad to find a good use for the last of my 00 flour - had almost exactly the right quantity. The protocol was really, really long (~5 hours not including the potato-roasting time!) - it was fairly simple but I don't think this will become a regular bread for us just because of the time. Even though it was quite delicious and I am intrigued to try it with dill / other additions instead of potatoes...

Morels!

Morels (Morchella esculenta)

Morels were starting to seem like a mythical beast. I had heard tell of their wondrous beauty and tastiness, but had spoken to no one who had actually seen them in New England: even the author of our mushroom book writes that he has never found them round here.

With no idea where to look, it seemed like there was slim chance of finding any. The book suggested old apple orchards, so last weekend we hiked up to an old orchard in Concord, NH to look for morels. We found soooooo many dog ticks (or rather they found us), and thus failed to really do much of a hunt, let alone score any shrooms.

This weekend we were not even thinking of looking for morels. We'd had an epic weekend adventure, with lady's slipper orchids and snakes and a surfer on a standing wave and dinosaur footprints and alpacas and so so much. Seb and I just took a little walk at the place we were hanging out by a lake with our friends' family, and all of a sudden we spotted morels! Big, beautiful, yellow-light brown ones: about 6 inches tall. The first few we saw were a little decrepit, but we found a couple more in good condition.

I was excited to get them home! The three morels were not much, just enough for a snack. I decided just to saute them with a tiny bit of garlic, some parsley and mirin, and eat them on little toasts.

(serves two, as snack or starter sized portions)

1 tbsp olive oil (plus a little more for drizzling)
3 morels, carefully washed, cleaned and chopped
1/4 of a small clove of garlic, finely chopped (optional)
1/4 tbsp curly parsley, chopped (plus a pinch more to finish)
1/2 tsp mirin
1/2 tsp fake butter
salt+pepper
2 slices of baguette

Make sure the morels are well cleaned: I washed them under the tap and then patted them dry with paper towels, then chopped off any substandard looking bits and checked them carefully / removed any dirt.

Heat the oil in a frying pan. Add garlic (make sure to use just a smidge: the morel taste is quite subtle), and fry for a minute or so, until just starting to brown. Add the chopped morels and fry for a few minutes more, until they have released their juices and reabsorbed them. Meanwhile, heat a dry frying pan and toast the baguette slices, a couple of minutes on each side, until crisp and slightly browned. When the morels start to look lightly browned around the edges add the mirin and fake butter and fry for a minute more. Finally, add the parsley and salt and pepper to taste. To serve, drizzle the toasts with a little olive oil, spoon the mushrooms over and sprinkle with a little more chopped parsley.


Gentle washing seemed to be fine: these guys are not very porous and were quite tricky to clean so the washing helped. This was a tasty little plate, although I wondered if the garlic, small amount though it was, might have been too much: the morel taste was quite subtle. They had a good, firm texture, and tasted slightly sweet and gently mushroomy. They were good. Wish we had more now, my how greedy I am.

Vegan 'Brazilian' 'cheese' bread

Brazil is pretty high on my list of places I want to visit. But I'd never even heard of Brazilian 'Pão de Queijo' (cheese bread) until I went to our friends' (C+J who we made spaetzle with) place for brunch on Sunday and found another friend, B, who frequently travels to Brazil for work, putting these in the oven. They are little, golden, savoury bread-buns, made using tapioca (cassava) flour - so they are accidentally gluten-free and have a wonderful sticky-gooey, almost mochi-like crumb inside a crusty exterior.

Obviously the real thing is full of cheese, and also eggs. But I felt like a vegan version should be attainable, and was even more convinced when I did an internet search and found that the breads are sometimes made with potato as well as the tapioca flour - I have had a recent run of success with putting mashed potato in baked goods - Kartoffelbrot in particular is a firm household favourite. I found a vegan recipe already in existence here, and it looked good, pleasingly simple and similar to what I had in mind, so I pretty much followed it... although obviously I couldn't resist throwing a few extra things in the mix (and yes, I did just happen to have potatoes, tapioca flour and nutritional yeast lying around at home: our pantry is getting a little out of control but I kinda love it).

(makes approx 17 small bread-buns)

(total time approx 1 hour, halved if you have mashed potatoes made already and you do small buns)

2 1/2 cups tapioca flour (glutinous rice flour also works)
2 cups mashed potato (or yucca)
~1 tsp salt (to taste)
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup veg oil
1 tbsp baking powder
2-3 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tsp chilli flakes (optional)
1-2 tbsp sesame seeds (optional)

Heat the oven to 350F. Mix the tapioca, salt and nutritional yeast / chilli / sesame seeds (if using) together in a medium bowl. Heat the water and oil in a small pan. When the water has boiled, add it to the bowl, stirring rapidly. It's OK if it doesn't all come together. Add the mashed potato and mix/knead until a smooth dough forms. Add the baking powder and continue mixing until it is well incorporated. Oil your hands and shape the dough into small balls. Place them on a baking sheet and bake until golden: 30-40 min (depending on size). Delicious warm, still good the next day, freezing possible if they are not all eaten straight away (unlikely).


The vegan ones are just as good as the non-veg variety: really savoury and crusty and I absolutely love the salty, gooey interior. These did come out quite gooey - I like it, but perhaps adding a little xanthan gum would give a more defined crumb? Or maybe a little less water? Or more mash?

Note: I made this a second time, and used ~1 3/4 cups of tapioca flour (all I had left) plus ~3/4 cup glutinous rice flour. I also used more like 2 1/4 cups of mashed potato. They came out even better than the first time - less gluey in the middle, more of a consistent crumb. Obviously I changed a couple of things so not a well controlled experiment, but my suspicion is that the extra potato did it.

Another note: I tried the real deal from a Brazilian bakery at the weekend; these are really, really close. I would never be able to guess which were the veg ones and which were nonveg.