• Blog

    Chicken & Yogurt, Lentils & Tomato

    3 September 2024 - By 

    Two recipes here, not necessary to combine, but they work well enough together. The lentils is a very traditional way to cook puy, with a lovely sharpness from the lemon and dukka at the end. The start here is the roast tomato, simple, but excellent. Sprinkle with sugar and roast for plenty of time (45 or more minutes) and you get freshness and intensity. The yogurt dish is essentially a curry, and I’ve never made anything like this before. Strengthening the yogurt with flour really creates a creamy sauce, even though in this case I used 0% greek yogurt. You…

  • Blog

    Soft and Chewy Oat Cookie

    3 September 2024 - By 

    This is my favourite cookie, I think. You get a different texture depending on the time in the oven. 12 minutes for prominently soft cookie, 14 or 15 for a more firm, chewy cookie. Excellent with raisins, also works with chocolate chips. This is not a softer, chunkier, slightly cakier traditionally chocolate chip style cookie, so definitely look elsewhere for that. But for a chewier, dense, flavoursome cookie this is it. From Dan Leopard, Short & Sweet, Pg. 248

  • Blog

    Brownies Part Four

    22 August 2024 - By 

    Modifications to KAF fudge brownies 171g 70% cocoa chocolate, 24.3g fat per 100g (41.55g fat in this amount) 115g butter ~1 Tbsp Dutch process cocoa powder Only light brown muscavado sugar  1/4 tsp baking powder A bit of instant coffee powder Double boil the butter, chocolate, cocoa powder, sugar. Stirring, gently heating and resting for as long as I could be bothered to dissolve the sugar before mixing with the egg in an effort to produce the shiny top. This is more fat than the original, due to momentarily forgetting that I was halving quantities at a key moment when…

  • Blog

    Coconut rice

    16 May 2024 - By 

    This is not right… But it is the basis of something very nice. Using coconut oil and coconut water to put this together is a very effective way of making this coconutty. It does not need sugar, it does not need as much oil as described, saturated as mine ended up being sick that I had to add a whole bunch of stuff to failure the oil. Also a good move, seafood, chicken, veggies, it’s very accommodating. But yes, use only as much oil as required to saute at the beginning, no more. The timings probably work for whole rice,…

  • Blog

    Spaghetti Carbonara

    3 May 2024 - By 

    This is how Carbonara should be made. Just outstanding. I’m going to do this regularly. It still needs care in heating the egg yolks, it seemed like I ruined it with the initial double boiler and whisking with it solidifying and slightly congealing, however continue to whisk with the pasta and starch water and it covers together. Beautiful. From https://theshortli.st/recipes/carbonara

  • Blog

    Brownies Part Three

    2 May 2024 - By 

    The Gellatly Brownie Really, really excellent. Dense and fudgy, although it is possibly getting the advantage of being the first one I’ve not over-baked. In fact if anything I underbaked this one… Possibly does need 25 minutes. It is also cocoa-less, the brownies that use only chocolate already having established themselves as being my slight preference, and it uses only caster sugar which is interesting for two reasons: One – I’ve been following US recipes that specify “granulated sugar”… I think caster is significantly superior than what I understand as chunky granulated sugar as it dissolves so much more quickly…

  • Blog

    Brownies Part Two

    30 April 2024 - By 

    Using the previously mentioned showdown written up here as inspiration for the next step in the brownie perfecting process, I decided to try the King Arthur’s Flour recipe as well as the Supernatural recipe. KAF Such a different technique, beating the eggs with the cocoa to being with, then feeding into that the melted butter. A few notes, I would use caster sugar in the future as you’re looking to dissolve it in the butter, so why not speed that process up a little? I also used a shot of real espresso, because if you can then why not? The…

  • Blog

    Brownies

    23 April 2024 - By 

    Starting with Tasty: https://tasty.co/recipe/the-best-fudgy-brownies Which everyone seems to love, however I halved the quantities and didn’t sufficiently reduce the baking time, so they were overcooked rendering them officially “not brownies” and basically just underwhelming chocolate cakes… The chocolate flavour didn’t blow me away, so I didn’t rush to repeat and instead moved to Babish: https://basicswithbabish.co/basicsepisodes/brownies Specifically the chewy, fudgy version. Which itself may have been a mistake as I’m now thinking the final, melty version may be close to a decent brownie conclusion… Nontheless. The fudgy brownie has a lovely texture, provided by the oil, but is so low on…

  • Full Recipe

    The Rice in the Machine

    17 April 2024 - By 

    Quick technique guide on making long grain rice in the Malaysian rice cooker and in the multi cooker. In both cases I washed the rice until not cloudy, then left it to soak for a short period. I then drained the rice and weighed it again in order to know how much water had been absorbed. This was included in the water added to cook with, giving total accuracy. I made this initially with 1 to 1.5 ratio rice to water in grams. However that wasn’t cooked through, so I threw in another 45g, left it on “keep warm” for…