Rosemary and Olive Bread

I make a pot of soup once a week. It’s my cheap and healthy lunch for at least three shifts a week at work, and helps avoid inadvertently spending a fiver in M and S food every lunch time. I was trying to change this to salads for the summer, but they don’t keep as well (I’ll often take a few days worth of soup in to work at once) and so just aren’t so easy.  So I go for lighter soups instead.

I try not to have bread all the time, (carbs etc. etc.) but sometimes it just can’t be helped.  I was having a lazy afternoon yesterday so decided to make some bread. It’s a pretty stress free, relaxing process.

The basic recipe I use is the one below, so see that for specific amounts:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2060/easy-white-bread

It’s nice to make plain bread, but, predictably enough, I like to add stuff. 

Blitz up a few sprigs of rosemary (leaves only) and half a dozen olives. You don’t want a paste, some chunks of olives are nice.  Put this in the bowl with the strong flour, yeast and salt and give it a good mix together.  Then make a well in the centre and add the oil, and the water in a couple of batches. I use my hands to mix it together, as bread dough is like glue so you want to be cleaning it off as few things as possible.

Then on a well floured board knead it for at least ten minutes. Kneading means pushing, squashing, rolling, generally beating all hell out of it with your hands. It’s a messy process, your hands will be covered, but rub them together to get the dough off and try and get it included.  The thing is, a slightly sticky dough will actually rise much better than a dry one. It really is important to knead it for as long as you can be bothered, do ten minutes then add another minute.

It's a pretty messy process

Lightly oil your bowl and put the dough in (by now it should be all in one piece and a bit elastic), and cover with a damp tea towel and put it in a sunny spot for an hour.

 It will start this size:

And end up about double the size:

Now “knock it back” or lightly knead again. I find putting it on the board and punching it a few times to knock a load of the air out of it is a good start. You don’t need to mess around with it for anywhere near as long as before. Then either shape it into loaves or rolls. I decided to go for rolls this time. 

Put on some oiled trays and leave for another hour. (I'm not bothered that they're a bit rustic. They're for dipping in soup)

They should double in size again.

Preheat the oven at 210/220 degrees and then pop them in.  Loaves will take longer than rolls, these were ready in about 25 – 30 minutes.

Test them by knocking on the bottom, they should sound hollow.

Put on a wire rack to cool. I don’t have a wire rack, I do have an oven shelf on a chopping board.

And they’re good to go! I will be making some soup later; just mushroom, so ridiculously easy.  If anyone’s bothered just ask, and I’ll put up that recipe too.

So this week, I will be having mushroom soup with rosemary and olive bread, yum!

In other news, I love this cookery programme and I love Grace Dent’s TV reviews, so I strongly recommend you watch The Good Cook on iPlayer, and read this review:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/jul/23/the-good-cook-grace-dent-tv-od?CMP=twt_gu

Pasta adventure

I love pasta. I love most forms of carbs, but I almost never get sick of pasta. Even after being a student for five years and eating it at least twice a week. It’s a comfort food, a hangover cure, and so versatile it can be anything.

Right. Got that out of my system.

Despite this, I have never made my own, so today’s the day. My lovely sister and her husband gave me a pasta machine for Christmas, so I’ve been rather lax at trying it out.

I decided to follow Jamie Oliver’s recipe for the actual pasta, and make my own filling and sauce. I don’t use cookbooks often, but I do have a copy of The Naked Chef. He looks about twelve on the front, so God knows how long I’ve had it, and it might be the first time I’ve followed a recipe from it.

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/a-basic-recipe-for-fresh-egg-pasta

(one tip I would say for this, he suggests using either a bowl or a clean board. I used a board and nearly made a right mess. Use a bowl.)

While the pasta dough was resting in the fridge, I started on the filling (spinach and ricotta) and the “sauce” which is a sort of pesto.

I put some spinach on to steam: it takes very little water and no time at all. As soon as it was done I left it in a sieve to drain and cool while I got to work on the pesto.

I then toasted some pine nuts. It always bothers me how expensive pine nuts are, but nevermind. I burnt the first batch, and had to redo them because I wasn’t paying enough attention, so made it even more expensive for myself.

Then I shoved a couple of cloves of garlic, a load of olive oil, and the juice of half a lemon in a food processor with as much basil and parsley as I could fit. 

Pulse it/blitz it until it looks like this:

Normal pesto would have the pine nuts in and some parmesan I think, but I just sort of fancied doing it like this.

Then I made a salad and a dressing. Any salad stuff you’ve got to use up.

The dressing was just olive oil, salt and pepper and some lemon juice, shaken up in an old jam jar. (or mustard jar in this case.) Don’t dress the salad till just before serving.

Chop up the cooked spinach, add a pot (or two) of ricotta, some grated nutmeg, some black pepper and some salt (if you didn’t salt the spinach when cooking it). 

Then I rolled. And rolled, and rolled and rolled. It’s quite labour intensive making pasta isn’t it? 

Then I spooned out the ricotta mixture, used water to seal round the edges and carefully pressed down the edges, trying to get all the air out of the middle. I ended up with loads of ricotta mixture leftover, I’d appreciate suggestions for what to do with it!

 Then boil some salted water in a massive pan. Add the ravioli and cook for a few minutes, then drain carefully and assemble! 

Grate some parmesan over the top, or if you’re too cheap to buy parmesan, grana padano. (it’s a bit cheaper, but not quite so good).

I think it worked out pretty good, but perhaps just a touch too thick. Lesson to learn: roll the pasta to the thickness you THINK you need, then roll it at least one notch thinner.

Whilst making this I listened to: 6Music. Liked the montage of clips of Rebekah Brooks and David Cameron and the Jam’s “News of the World.”