Dorset apple cake

Needing to find a use for a really big cooking apple from a friend's garden, I decided on a cake, and used this recipe from the Channel 4 website. As always, there were differences, due variously to availability or otherwise of ingredients, personal preference, and lack of competence:

• I didn't have quite enough butter, and the remainder was made up with vegetable oil.
• My giant apple was a shade underweight too. Remainder made up with a tasty eating apple from the Dig box.
• No lemon. Zest of a very old tangerine I found skulking in the bottom of the banana tree (yes, I continue to call them tangerines.What of it?) Juice of a bottled lemon.
• I get a bit confused about sugar. The types of sugar I have are brown sugar, and white sugar, both of which I used.
• Ground mixed nuts, not almonds. There may have been some almond in there.
• No cinnamon? I should coco. 2 tsp of cinnamon, my good man.
• I don't even know what dredging is, so that didn't happen.

I reckon it could have withstood 15 minutes or so further baking (at fan 160°C) which I suspect may have given it a bit more solidity. That said, it was in two silicone loaf tins, not the recommended cake tin, and furthermore I don't know the first thing about baking so who am I to say. As it was, it needed to be cut into fairly thick slices to maintain its integrity. This was, of course, a real shame.

It was tasty. Exceptionally scrumptious and moist. I may do it again the next time a really big apple rolls into town.

No more Globe

Well, I said a few posts ago I would write about Globe Delivery, the local takeaway, but I wasn't expecting it to close down in the meantime.

I think it's closed down, anyway. You might think it'd be easy to put a note on the outside of the shop; something on the website; even just a sentence on the wall of the Facebook group, but that's never been the Globe way. They've always had two main roles; to provide delicious food from various world cuisines, and to baffle and frustrate those who might wish to buy it from them. During the nationwide freeze in January, during which various people found it difficult to get to work for a few days, Globe stayed shut for several weeks. They once shut for two or three months due to an 'electrical fault', clearly of unprecedented and inexplicable severity. For about the last year, whenever you tried to order by card, the machine was out of order, unless you claimed not to have any cash and said you would have to order from elsewhere, in which case, it was miraculously and instantly fixed.

However, the food was delicious. They offered Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Indian, Thai and Japanese food, and seemed to do all of it extremely well. The pizza wasn't the normal deep-pan, stodgy takeaway fare, but thin, crispy and Pizza Expressy. The starters were all lovely, with the Suppli and Chiles Con Queso particular favourites. The jewels in the crown, however, were their burritos and wraps. It's hard to get a good burrito round these parts (the only place that springs readily to mind is Barburrito on Piccadilly Gardens) and Globe's were as good as I've had. I really want one of their Beef Chimichangas right now. Them boys was tasty.

It's difficult to see why it would have had to shut down, if well-managed. It was always busy, and everyone I know loved Globe. Friends from further afield in Manchester were known to come round purely on the proviso that there was Globe in the offing.

Farewell, Globe, you magnificent idiots. You are already missed.

More vegetable stew

Meat Free Monday is a campaign to raise awareness of the environmental impact of meat production and consumption. It encourages everyone to go meat free for one day a week and is a JOLLY GOOD IDEA.

This week I actually remembered about it. I bought lunch in the work canteen; an egg mayo sandwich, Quavers, a banana and a slice of sponge cake.

And it was all yellow.

In the evening I volunteered to tackle the new surfeit of vegetables, and settled on a veg stew, because you can just bung everything in it, innit. That's the magic! The magic of stew! I used this as a foundation, but I didn't have some of those vegetables, or those beans, and ended up changing it a fair bit. Makes round about enough for four. I served it with brown rice.

 
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
1 (big) clove garlic, peeled and chopped
2 medium carrots
1 kohlrabi
2 medium potatoes
1 beetroot
1 small courgette
A small pile of broad beans, removed from their pods, if pods is the right word
2 big tomatoes, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
1 normal sized tin baked beans in tomato sauce
½ tsp thyme
1 tsp Marmite
2 tsp Bouillon powder or 1 vegetable stock cube
A big squeeze of tomato puree
salt and pepper to taste

• Pre-heat oven to 160°C
• Heat oil in a large casserole dish.
• Fry the onion and garlic together for 5-10 min on a low heat.
• Scrub and sandblast/peel all vegetables.
• Chop kohlrabi, potatoes and beetroot into 1cm cubes. In they go.
• Slice carrots and courgette. In they go.
• Add tomatoes, puree, thyme, marmite, broad beans and baked beans.
• Add stock/bouillon and enough water to cover, stir it about, lid on, oven, 45 min. I added too much water so finished off with 10 minutes' intense hob action and a little cornflour to thicken.

Vegetable stew

K made this and jolly nice it was too, but I'm just experimenting with uploading photos from my fancy-schmancy new phone.

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Dough

After an exhausting, fun and somewhat unusual day catwalk-modelling and lugging stuff about in the Arndale (for Bike Fabulous), I went for some eats with some Friends of the Earth. Initial plans had been to go to the Cedar Tree in the Northern Quarter (a delightful Lebanese restaurant containing a... questionably delightful grotto set into one of the walls) but the Cedar Tree was full (with no room even in the grotto) so we ended up nearby in Dough.

I'm not sure how long Dough has been there, because I'm not very observant and I'm not cool enough to be allowed in the Northern Quarter that often, although I vaguely recall it used to be an architect's office. It's an Italian chiefly specialising in pizza, quite large, yet still spacious and roomy, though the selection of 80s music played put me in mind of a singles bar frequented by middle-aged divorcees. They have a reasonable selection of lagers (some relatively exotic) but no proper beer, and there is wine, and a selection of expensive Bellinis, whatever a Bellinis are. The crossroads location and large picture windows make it ideal for watching the girls in their summer clothes pass you by, especially if you're Bruce Springsteen.

The menu covers all yer usual classics but there's some real odd stuff on there and I decided to 'go inauthentic' with the West Indies pizza, a dish that would surely have the inventor of the pizza, Julius Pizza, spinning in his mausoleum. It was topped with curried lamb, red onion and peppered banana, which is clearly wrong, but was no less delicious for it.

The Friends of the Earth all had lettuce pizzas. I don't know if they enjoyed them; they were too pale and weak to be able to tell me.

Afterwards we tried to take our drinks downstairs, but discovered that when the chairs are all up on tables, there's a reason for that, and were shooed next door into the adjoining bar, Apotheca, which had a fine selection of beers but was too noisy.

Very little

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley. After a flurry of initial blog activity I have been busy, busy, busy, and generally too busy, and too gosh-darn hot, to cook properly, although I made a rhubarb clafoutis and have eaten SEVERAL sandwiches. This evening, feeling somewhat akin to a baked potato and in no mood to do anything at all, thank you very much, I succumbed to a takeaway from Globe. Globe is simultaneously the best and the worst takeaway in Manchester. More on that later, I daresay.

Vegetarian shepherd's pie

Housemate K returned today having vowed to tackle the household vegetable mountain. We get a weekly delivery from Dig Food, who do good, locally sourced organic veg boxes, but we've been variously busy or away for a while and are faced with somewhat of a surfeit.

She made a very tasty vegetarian shepherd's pie, which made a significant dent. She then catalogued the remaining veg and filed them according to the dewey decimal system.

Her recipes and tips may well appear here from time to time, or she may just decide to do a blog of her own; she's quite competitive like that. Anyway, the secret to this, apparently, was roasting the carrots and parsnips first. Other stuff was added (Tomatoes? A secret blend of herbs and spices?) and mash, and cheese, and heat, and then we ate it.

Lemon chicken with egg-fried rice

This took under an hour, which considering I've not made it before (well, the lemon chicken bit, anyway) is nothing short of phenomenal. A normal person who doesn't keep returning to peer at the (very simple) recipe and moving stuff around the kitchen for no reason could probably do it much quicker. The hour also included a fair bit of boiling/marinading time, during which you could accomplish something useful, like dusting the mantelpiece.

I adapted the lemon chicken recipe from Fresh Chinese by Wynnie Chan (Hamlyn), without necessarily having all the right ingredients (I've no cornflour in, for example), so if you want to do it properly, best read that.

Serves one, but there were easily enough chicken pieces to set aside for a roll for tomorrow's lunch.

2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 clove of garlic, chopped, crushed and generally mangled
2 small pieces of unwaxed lemon rind
Juice of ½ lemon
1 chicken breast fillet, cut into strips as thin as you can manage
1¼ tbsp plain white flour
A fair bit of olive and sunflower oils
3-4oz jasmine rice
½ small onion, chopped
Soy sauce

• Cook the rice. Jasmine rice takes half an hour. Other rices take less, which is desirable, and maybe some take more, which isn't. Rinse with cold water and set aside.
• Meanwhile, combine the garlic, lemon rind, a little lemon juice and just over ¼ of the egg mixture in a bowl, and marinade the chicken strips in it for 15 minutes, then add the flour and mix thoroughly.
• Now you want some kind of big, heavy non-stick pan, and some kind of wok. Put about 1 tbsp oil in the pan, and more than that in the wok, and whack 'em both on a high heat.
• Add the onion to the wok and stir frenetically for a minute or two, then add the egg until fairly scrambled, and then the cooked rice, keeping on stirring the while, and a few dashes of soy sauce.
• Meanwhile, tip the chicken strips into the pan and spread them out. Give them two minutes on either side until nicely browned, then stir fry for about another minute. Add the rest of the lemon juice, stir it about, and that's that. Serve the chicken strips atop the rice, in a bowl, maybe. I've got a bowl with a picture of a pig on it but I don't generally eat out of that one.

Soft white rolls

The breadmaker is often viewed as one of the most-purchased and least-subsequently-utilised items in the modern kitchen, along with the pasta machine and the prawn pudding broiler, but I wouldn't be without one. The household breadmaker belongs to my housemate, K, but the day she finally loses her patience and ups sticks, it's high on my list of essential purchases. I can't remember the last time I bought bread in a shop. Generally I just bung in the ingredients and put it on the basic loaf setting, and bingo, a few hours later there's a hot tasty loaf o' crusty bread with a paddle in the middle, simple.

I've never yet got round to making proper, non-cheaty bread solely by hand, but I came a step closer recently with the recipe for soft white rolls included in the breadmaker's manual, because you just use it to make the dough which it's then your responsibility to do something with. Crivens!

You put in the following ingredients, all together, water first, yeast last. If you weren't using a breadmaker I imagine you could achieve the same effect by mixing it all together in a bowl and then, erm, doing something. Looking at the manual, the breadmaker kneads it three times and lets it rise at 30°C and 38°C in the two gaps, so I'd do that if I were you.

Water (tepid)                  1¼ cups
Skimmed milk powder     1 tbsp
Butter (melted)                2 tbsp
Sugar                              2 tbsp
Salt                                 1½ tsp
Strong white bread flour  3¼ cups
Fast action yeast             1½ tsp

When the dough's ready, you can knead it and shape it into six rolls, but it will stick to you like a limpet so sort out the other stuff you'll need first otherwise you'll get dough all over the Goddamned kitchen.

• Oven on, 190°C
• Greased baking tray
• Floured surface for kneading
• Full flour shaker or open bag of flour (add a fair bit at will while kneading, so dough becomes less sticky)
• Non-sharp spatula or similar implement(s) for scraping your hands
• A sink half full of hot soapy water
• Your biggest and most impressive knife (for dividing up the dough).

Once divided, they go on the baking tray, as far apart as you can to allow for expansion, and then cover for 20-25 minutes (with a damp teatowel, foil, a newspaper etc. If using a newspaper, try and get one you've bought yourself rather than one you found lying around on the bus, because hygiene is important). Then into the oven it all goes, for 15-20 minutes. And there you have it. They look and taste much as you'd expect, that is, if you were expecting them to be tasty.