A day in the kitchen.

England finally seems to have realised that it's no longer July, and has given up a seemingly indefinite summer to a week of heavy rain and thunderstorms! Autumn is my favourite time of year, so unlike those bemoaning the lack of sunshine, I'm quite glad of the chance to wrap up and cook some of my favourite foods.

With my housemate away for the weekend, and it only being a couple of weeks until payday, I couldn't afford to do anything particularly exciting this weekend, so instead I spent all day in the kitchen! I'm an avid fan of the Great British Bake Off, so will take any excuse to try some of their recipes, and I also planned to batch-cook for the week ahead.

First of all, I wanted to try out Richard's toffee apple doughnuts from Advanced Dough week on Bake Off. I actually wanted to make his rhubarb and custard ones, as they looked amazing, but the recipe isn't online yet, so I thought I'd give these a go.

The full recipe is online here, but first you begin by making the dough

                       

I've made dough quite regularly before for bread, but this is 'advanced dough' and so my first batch was an utter disaster. I'm not 100% sure what I did wrong - I have a feeling that I retarded the yeast at the very beginning of the process - but the dough was basically liquid and didn't prove at all. Fortunately, batch two was a little more successful.

Richard's recipe did call for an electric mixer and a dough hook. I barely have a whisk, so this may be why my dough wasn't as good as I hoped, even on the second batch. I kneaded it by hand for 15 minutes instead, which worked, although it wasn't quite right.

The next step is to make the apple filling for the inside of the doughnuts.

                        

It's a mixture of apple, sugar. butter and cinnamon - quite nice on its own, as it tastes like grown-up baby food haha! Doesn't look too inviting once it's been blended, but fortunately it's not on display.

                                       

Then, once that's done, it's time to make the caramel. This was the part I was the most worried about - I was pretty sure I was going to ruin the pan! The recipe is quite vague here, and just says 'melt the sugar.' As I'm not a baker, I didn't know if this meant literally putting sugar in the pan over the heat, or adding water to it first. Fortunately, Google provides all the answers, and you are of course supposed to add water. Once the sugar is golden brown, time to whisk in the butter and the cream.

I forgot at this point, that I don't actually like salted caramel, so I followed the recipe and added the salt. If I were to make it again, I'd leave it out as I can't stand the stuff and means I now can't eat half the doughnuts haha! I'm sure it's very nice if you like it though.

                        

                                

At this point, my dough had proved enough to create the actual doughnuts. As I say, my dough wasn't quite right I don't think (although I don't know what was wrong with it. Can anyone help me out for next time?) but I just about managed to create blobs from my dough, with the addition of a little extra flour. They weren't quite spheres, as the recipe dictated, but they were around the right shape...

I then had to leave the balls to prove for another hour. They were supposed to double in size, but I saw no real difference, so I clearly did something wrong! Bread is incredibly easy to bake and prove; doughnuts are not, and I don't really know why. More research needed, clearly.

The next job was to deep fry the doughnuts. As I don't have a deep fat fryer, I did them in a pan, which scared me a little, I'm not going to lie! I had the oil at too high a temperature at first (I must invest in a cooking thermometer...) so this happened after 1 minute of cooking...

                                      

I soon got the hang of it though, and soon all my irregular shaped blobs had cooked. I still didn't actually know if they tasted like doughnuts, as they didn't really look like them at this point!

                      

Fortunately, they tasted ok, and with the addition of some cinnamon and sugar, and the salted caramel, they actually look vaguely like they're supposed to! (I'm not going to put a picture of Richard's here for comparison, mainly because I can't actually find one, but also because it's embarrassing haha!) Bring on the rhubarb and custards!

Whilst my doughnuts were proving at various points, I also batch-cooked a couple of meals for the next week. Fortunately, I've made these before, so they were much more successful!

First up is one of my all-time favourites - spicy chickpeas! Pretty much what it says on the tin - onions, garlic, potatoes, chickpeas, tomato puree, spinach and spices. It's a quick and easy recipe, freezes well, and is very filling! Here's how you make it:

  

Fry 2 onions and 2 garlic cloves (my favourite smell in the world!), then once soft, add turmeric, ground coriander, cumin seeds and chilli powder. Add veg stock and 300g potatoes (boiled) with the tomato puree, then simmer until the sauce has turned thick. Wilt in some spinach, and voila!

                          

I also had some halloumi to use up, so made a very quick and easy halloumi and quinoa salad, recipe available here. It also gave me chance to laugh at my favourite cheesy(!) joke (sorry).

What did the cheese say to itself in the mirror?
Hallou - mi! ;)

                                     

So there you have it. My day in the kitchen with some successful, and not so successful results! I did come to a few conclusions after today though:

1. I need some bigger pans (I had to use two for the spicy chickpeas), some better kitchen equipment (blender, dough hook...) and a dishwasher, as I washed up 4 separate times today!

2. I'm getting old if I'm considering asking for said kitchen equipment for Christmas.

3. Despite my working class roots, I am most definitely middle class, as these recipes wouldn't look out of place in a Waitrose!

Next week? Veggie Chilli and Parkin! Happy Autumn :)

Food and Travel

Two of my favourite things are food and travel, so whenever I get to combine the two, you can guarantee a happy Sophie!

Europe is the best place I've been for food (so far!), and I still can't decide if I prefer France (wine, cheese, bread and pastries) or Italy (wine, cheese, pizza, pasta, ice cream!)

Food, for me, captures the essence of the place you're in, and is one of the best ways to experience the different countries, cultures and ways of life. I love how many different things are eaten around the world, and I think it's a key part of travel! My housemate loves to travel (she's been to far more places than I have) and yet the food doesn't really interest her. Our other friend, however, has just been to China and posted so many pictures of food - I loved it! From scorpion to Sicheuan Hot Pot, I wanted to be in China experiencing it with her, and to me it's one of the best bits about travel. I think you're either a foodie or you're not, and I definitely am!

Africa has not been the most exciting place for food (although parts do have some pretty good recipes!), with the exception of Zanzibar, which had some pretty amazing seafood! I was quite a picky eater as a child, and I still don't eat much meat, but I've tried to broaden my tastes as an adult, and I'm glad I have. 

I'd never eaten seafood before I went to Zanzibar, apart from trying it a couple of times as a kid and declaring my disgust. My parents once tricked my brother and I into eating calamari at a tapas restaurant by claiming they were onion rings, and that was enough to put anyone off!

I played it quite safe in the rest of Tanzania, but in Zanzibar I went on a boat tour around the archipelago. I was sat on a mound of sand, literally in the middle of nowhere, and the guides were BBQing fresh fish right in front of us, so I decided not to be such a wuss and try whatever was put in front of me. I went from no seafood to eating octopus, prawns, crab, lobster and a meaty fish which I think was barracuda, although I could be wrong. 

I wasn't (and still am not) a big fan of shellfish, and I found the octopus quite tough with very little taste, but I was surprised to find that I LOVED the lobster and the barracuda! They had a whole lobster for each of us (they're so fresh and abundant out there, it's not an extravagance) and they'd cooked the barracuda with some amazing spices, and it was quite honestly the best meal I've ever tasted.

Since then, I've been determined to try everything once, including goat and pigeon in Mali (although if I ever go to SE Asia, I might have to draw a line at scorpion...), although nothing else has become a firm favourite. I haven't really travelled anywhere particularly foody yet, however, so there's still time!

Mali definitely wasn't great for food. It's one of the poorest countries in the world, and apart from an ex-pat community of missionaries and volunteers, it has little to no tourism. Most of the food out there was rice, meat and sauce, as well as a touch of the French influence with fresh bread every morning, and an attempt at patisseries. 

I was there for three months, and I survived mainly on eggs and bread. The only food really safe to eat was bananas, and they went off incredibly quickly in the heat. Watermelons were safe too (anything with a skin on basically) but they were harder to come by. I gave myself food poisoning on my first day there (I still have no idea what with, I didn't eat anything exciting!) and a couple of other volunteers had a literal bug in their stomachs, so we all had to be very careful what we ate. The first meal I had when I came home was vegetable chilli as I was craving vitamins!

(Actually, one of the best foods out there was aloco (fried plantain). I did have a go at replicating it when I was back in the UK, but with little success unfortunately!)

I love food like chickpeas, pulses and spices, so I'd love to go to north Africa (Morocco etc) to try the food there. Here in the UK, there's a show called the Great British Bake Off that I'm a bit obsessed with (very clever people having bakes judged weekly to find the star baker! #quicksynopsis) and I've always wanted to try my hand at some of the recipes.

I love cooking - I'm not amazing at it, but I can usually follow a recipe, so when bread week appeared on GBBO, I really wanted to try them all! It was a toss up between Martha's bread (a sunflower with a whole cheese baked inside the bread, and chutney in each of the petals) and Iain's (moroccan plaited loaf with a bessara dip) but as Iain's was more something I'd eat normally, I decided to give it a go! (Recipe available here).

Apart from being so worried about the plaiting that I forgot to include the goat's cheese, I think it turned out alright! Will definitely be trying my hand at other bakes in the future!

I love trying recipes from all around the world - it's another way of being an armchair explorer until I actually get to go there - so if you have any recipes to share, please share them in the comments!