Sourdough ciabatta

So what on earth is 70s about sourdough ciabatta? Well, it's a tenuous link I grant you, but Italy did exist in the 70s, and so did sourdough, it just wasn't cool. They call it artistic license, or in this case, license...

My sourdough journey began last Christmas with a voucher from the Bearded Argentinian for a bread making course in Hackney (where else?), although it was June before I managed to go. The course was at E5 Bakehouse near London Fields station, a short Boris Bike-ride away (only once again there were no bikes at the Barbican, so I had to get the bus). It was run by head baker Eyal and I can't recommend it enough - 6 hours of patient tuition, demonstration and hands on practice resulting in 4 bagels, 3 ciabattas, 1 rye loaf, a ball of "Hackney wild" dough to bake at home, a pot of Jeff (my sourdough starter), a banneton proving bowl and a dough scraper. I didn't bother trying to Boris bike home with that lot strapped to the handlebars! 

The Hackney Wild is probably the tastiest loaf we made but takes 4 days to make, and this ciabatta is so delicious, even just dipped in olive oil. You'll need a sourdough starter, either by making one from organic flour and water, or asking someone kindly for a portion of theirs.

Ingredients

makes 3-4 loaves - sounds like a lot but trust me you'll eat it

130g leaven, made from 20g starter, 90g water and 90g strong white flour, left overnight.

250g lukewarm water

3.5g dried yeast (half a sachet of fast acting yeast)

20g olive oil 

330g strong white flour

8g sea salt

Method

- Add the water, yeast and olive oil to the leaven and mix together using one hand and squishing it through your fingers

- Add the flour, mix and leave at room temperature for 20 minutes

- Sprinkle on the salt and mix in, using a bit of water to dissolve it, and leave for 30 minutes

- Drizzle olive oil around the side of the bowl and scrape the dough into a ball in the middle using a dough scraper. Then use a stretch & fold* technique to "knead" the bread for a couple minutes. Leave for 30 minutes and repeat twice more. The dough will become silkier and smoother with each round.

*stretch & fold was the most valuable takeaway from the class for me and you'll probably have to go yourself to learn it. It involves holding the dough with one hand, stretching it out away from you with the other and folding back in. I don't know why this is different from kneading but it works - you can feel the gluten strengthening with each stretch.

 - Oil the work surface, pour the dough out and knock into an oblong. Fold over itself in thirds, turn 90 degrees and fold again. Rest for 45 minutes.

- Now flour the work surface (yes this is all delightfully messy) and stretch the dough out. Cut into 3 or 4 loaves and prove on a lined baking tray for 60 minutes

- Bake at 230 degrees for about 20 minutes

- Enjoy while still warm with the best quality extra virgin olive oil you can get your hands on. I'm also a massive fan of this year's cheese of the moment, Burrata, which seems to be in every menu going but goes brilliantly with this bread

Celery soup (aka Barbican party leftovers)

Remember the stuffed celery from last week's 1970 Barbican party? Well I didn't stuff all of it - I should have done because a) it was surprisingly popular and b) what on earth am I going to do with half a head of celery? Not eat it raw, obviously, it's disgusting. Just as fruit salad shouldn't be classified as pudding, food that takes more calories to eat than you get from eating it shouldn't be classified as food.

So it's back to old favourite Delia and her matching orange-pan-and-cardigan combo on the evening standard cookbook, for some celery and nutmeg soup in the hope that all the other ingredients disguise the taste of celery...

Ingredients 

(for 2, or 1 person twice if no one else will risk it)

Leftover celery

1/2 large onion

2 small potatoes

250ml vegetable or chicken stock (from a cube)

125ml milk

Nutmeg

Method

- Wash the celery well, peel off any stringy bits and chop small. Also chop the onion and potato (no need to peel the potato)

- Cook the onion and potato in some butter for a couple of minutes then add the celery. season, cover and leave to sweat for 10 minutes (look - 3 out of 4 Hobs in a row!)

 - Pour in the stock and milk and simmer for another 30 to 40 minutes, then carefully blend with a soup stick

- Serve with a dollop of Greek yoghurt, grated nutmeg and some toasted flaked almonds. This should just about cover up any taste of celery - enjoy!

Celebrating in 1970

Our flat is in the first Barbican block to be completed in 1969, so when we moved in we danced to a 1969 soundtrack whilst sitting on the floor eating pizza... One year on, we didn't just update the playlist but added a 1970 menu to complement proceedings. Fortunately our friends are lovely enough to eat pizza sitting on the floor and eat random homemade 1970s experiments...

The menu

(in photos from top to bottom)

- Devilled eggs: providing huge amusement to Dr Hill with piping bag "egg farts"; note sprinkling paprika over them hides terrible piping technique

- Ham & mushroom vol-au-vents and Salmon & cream cheese vol-au-vents: incredibly easy with shop bought puff pastry

- Crunchy crisp chicken: photographed twice as so amazing, from Zena Skinner

- Stuffed celery: one of the surprise favourites of the evening

- Cheese and pineapple hedgehog underpinned by half a grapefruit as instructed by Auntie Katherine

- Porn star martinis which sound so 70s they count

- Garlic potatoes (from the familiar Delia's evening standard cookbook; basically baked potatoes stuffed with Boursin, no photo as I was making them during the party and forgot)

- and of course Prawn cocktail (detailed below)

You'll be relieved to know that I'm not going to do the recipes for all the dishes, and Zena Skinner's crunchy crisp chicken will get its own post as it rightly deserves (yes, it is chicken coated with actual crisps!).

Prawn cocktail recipe

Marie Rose sauce:

Tomato ketchup

Mayonnaise

Worcestershire sauce

Tabasco

I wasn't in a measuring mood, so the sauce is roughly half and half tomato ketchup mixed with mayonnaise, with a couple of splashes of Worcestershire sauce and a few drops of Tabasco. Build the cocktail with some crispy lettuce, plump peeled pink prawns and the sauce either on the side or over the prawns. Or a combo of the two as below (dropped some prawns in the dip). Top tip: buy a small packet of fancy looking prawns and add them last and everyone will assume all the prawns are posh and you are an incredibly generous hostess.

Enjoy with a dollop of nostalgia and sprinkling of closest friends.

Tackling Zena Skinner with a sausage plait

I don't really remember Zena Skinner, but she was quite a formidable TV chef in the 70s, and her cookbook arrived with a batch of retro recipe books from eBay. 

I bet you can't wait for a recipe from the mixer & blender book... As with many older cookbooks, pictures and photos are used sparingly, as in practically non-existent, which makes recreating some of the designs a bit more challenging! (see also Pringle shaped biscuits from the Scandi post...) This week, another not-for-anyone-attempting-to-diet dish, the sausage plait, worryingly not included in the "meat" chapter but in the "savoury" section, which does make me question the quality of Zena's sausages.

Ingredients

For 2 hungry people with leftovers

250g puff pastry (or half a pack of a pre-made block)

4 sausages - we had some venison sausages in the freezer but any good quality tasty banger will do

1 small red onion

1 egg, beaten, to glaze

Did you spot the trick ingredient? The recipe suggested cheese, which is why there's a block of wensleydale on the board above, but once I'd made the plait cheese seemed a bit excessive, so I made some gravy instead.

Method

- Roll the pastry out to form an oblong about 15cm by 20cm. Squeeze the meat from the sausages, season and form into a roll. Put down the centre of the pastry then sprinkle the chopped red onion on top and  squidge in a bit

- Here comes the technical it: cut slits in the sides of the pastry at an angle as shown below

- Fold the strips alternatively over the sausage filling so it looks a bit like a plait (?!). Tuck in the ends and glaze with beaten egg

 - Bake in the oven at 220C for 25-30 minutes until the meat is cooked through and the pastry is golden

It was delicious with mashed potato, cabbage and gravy, and I can think of several variations with different sausages and stuffings, flavouring the pastry with fennel or caraway, and even adding a bit of cheese...

Bourbon on the rocks: FourHobs' first travel blog

We're touring the Yorkshire Dales this week, so little opportunity for cooking but plenty of opportunity for dramatic photos. I decided I can post about the trip in FourHobsinarow for two reasons: holidays in the UK were definitely 'a thing' in the 70s, and I'll feature some favourite 70s foods...

Like Bourbon biscuits. Bourbon creams, as they are sometimes known, were actually invented in 1910 and weren't called Bourbons at all. But why let facts get in the way of a story - I bought a (large) packet to fuel our excursions around various sights across the dales and the lakes, so this first travel post from FourHobs features Bourbon biscuits in precarious Yorkshire situations. Viewers may find some of the following images disturbing.

Surrounded by grykes on Malham's limestone pavement

Bourbon over troubled water

Trapped by some ferocious stinging nettles

Predator Bourbon

Do not touch this Bourbon

Bourbon on the rocks, halfway up Pen-y-ghent 

Bourbon at 674m above sea level; the summit of Pen-y-ghent 

Thistly Bourbon

Melting in the (one day) heatwave

Bourbon at an angle

Should I stick to cooking?! Or am I in desperate need of another holiday...

Scandinavia part 2: pancake cookies that look like Pringles

As well as their famous meatballs and infamous Allen keys, IKEA also do a pretty mean almond and chocolate 'Daim' cake, so following last week's potato dumplings, I had a look at the sweet section of the Scandinavian Cooking book. Like Daim cake, the baking chapter is heavily dominated by almonds but with a disappointing representation from the chocolate contingent. I plumped for Pancake cookies, which are coated in almonds and curled around a rolling pin whilst still warm. I assume the end result is supposed to look like a Pringle, but there are precious few photos in the book and nothing at all on the Internet for guidance (now wondering if the author just had an obsession with almonds and these aren't traditional Scandi biscuits at all...).

Ingredients:

200g butter

133g sugar (I used golden caster sugar)

2 eggs

112g plain flour

1/2 cup mixture of chopped flaked almonds and sugar for the topping

Note: aperol spritz not an ingredient for the cookies, just for the cook

Method:

- Melt the butter and let it cool. Cream until light and frothy then add the sugar and eggs

- Stir in the flour

- Drop teaspoon sized blobs onto a greased baking sheet leaving room for them to spread (can't recommend Lakeland's Magic Carpet enough for this kind if baking). You probably need to do this in batches but the baking time is really short and thus method leaves plenty of time to sample the raw cookie dough. Several times.

- Bake for 5 minutes at 180C, take the cookies out of the oven and sprinkle with the almond and sugar topping

- Return to the oven for another 5 minutes. Have another sample of cookie dough. 

- When cooked and starting to brown, remove the cookies from the oven and shape them by curling them round a rolling pin. Some of the topping will probably fall off. Leave to cool.

- Repeat until all the dough has been cooked or eaten, then lick the bowl

Delightful with a cup of tea or aperol spritz (note, not the same glass of spritz as in previous photo)

Scandi part 1: giant stuffed gnocchi

I love Scandinavian design (IKEA excepted) and some of their dishes are pretty tasty (meatballs being the one good reason to go to IKEA), but I hadn't cooked many, if any, recipes from our Nordic neighbours until I found this 1976 book written for the US market - I think we picked it up at a secondhand book stall in Cambridge.

There are so many tempting recipes, and unsurprisingly a lot of pickled herring involved, that I've made two dishes, a savoury one this week and a sweet one for next week. Spoiler alert: neither of them contain herring.

I've noticed that 70s dishes are not conducive to dieting, and this week's recipe is no exception. Not that I'm dieting, but I do know this is a popular pastime amongst my extensive readership and I can only apologise. Potato dumplings stuffed with bacon and onions are not likely to feature in any weight loss plan, which of course means that they are absolutely delicious.

Ingredients:

For 4 people

4 very large potatoes

112g plain flour

1 egg

1 onion

250g streaky bacon

Butter

Allspice

Salt & pepper

A note on potatoes: the book helpfully notes that these dumplings can't be made with an American baking potato like the Idaho, because the potato dissolves when you boil the dumplings. I've no idea what an Idaho potato is, so turned to Felicity Cloake in the Guardian for her analysis in making the "perfect gnocchi" which this seems to be a giant stuffed version of. She recommends Desiree potatoes, or King Edwards at a push. I could only get King Edwards and they did work - just (it was a nerve-wracking few minutes of boiling and they did dissolve a bit), so get Desiree's if you can.

Method:

- Peel, boil and mash the potatoes 

- Peel, chop and sautéed the onion in butter until soft

- Fry the bacon until crispy then chop into small pieces and mix with the cooked onion, seasoning with a bit of allspice 

- When the mashed potato has cooled, add the flour and egg to make a soft dough, and season with salt and pepper

- This is where is gets messy! On a floured surface, roll the dough into long sausages, about 5cm wide, and cut into 5cm pieces - like giant gnocchi. You should get about 16 dumplings (and 4 per person is plenty!)

- Actually, this is where it gets really messy (and the Bearded Argentinian had to act as guest photographer) - poke a teaspoonful of the bacon & onion mix into the middle of a dough ball and seal the potato around the stuffing

- When all the dumplings are stuffed, carefully lower them into boiling water and cook for 10 minutes. You might need to do this in batches then keep them warm in the oven. Any less than 10 minutes and they'll just taste like potato next to some bacon and onion, rather than getting a gnocchi-like consistency, but it is nerve-wracking watching the potato start to dissolve...

- Serve with a drizzle of extra vigil olive oil and kale dressed with something tangy like lemon or balsamic vinegar to cut through the richness.

Låt oss äta! (thank you google translate)