Pasta!

Today I decided to try out my MagiMix and new pasta machine so I made a batch of standard egg pasta. I used the recipe below.

Fresh egg pasta

300g "00" flour (or flour suitable for pasta making)
3 whole eggs

Whizz the flour in the food processor to work some air into it. Beat the eggs together and add about two-thirds of the mixture. Continue adding egg until you have a sticky breadcrumb texture. It may take more egg, or it may be less – it depends on the moisture in the atmosphere and in the flour. Mould the crumbs into a ball of dough and knead in your hands until it is all consistent and smooth. Wrap in clingfilm and leave for about 30 minutes. This helps the gluten to develop so that the dough is much more stretchy when you come to run it through the pasta machine. When it is ready, divide the dough into four and work with one quarter. Wrap the other pieces back in the clingfilm as you don't want it to dry out.

Run the pasta though the machine on progressively smaller settings to stretch it thin. I also tested out some other attachments which cut the pasta into taglietelli or linguini. It's supposed to be thin enough to read a newspaper through (or as the Italians say, thin enough to read a love letter through!).

I also made ravioli with a cheese and rosemary filling:

To store the pasta, toss it in bags with semolina (to keep the strands separate) and freeze for up to one month.

Leith's buttermilk bread

Days two and three of the Leith's cookery course were so much fun! We made sweet sable biscuits (using the magimix - I am now the proud owner of a MagiMix 4200!), buttermilk bread, beetroot and goats cheese tart, and most excitingly, we learnt how to fillet fish! I filleted a mackerel rather well, if I may say so myself. The last time I saw a mackerel was on the Parasites and Vectors module of my biology degree where we had to pick little (still live) worms out of the fish's gills and body cavity. It put me off mackerel for years. This time though, I didn't go looking for those, I just set about getting the lovely flesh off the bones. Sadly no pictures of that, but I do have the recipe for wonderfully sweet buttermilk bread, which was a lot of fun to make.

Buttermilk bread

15g fresh yeast
100ml milk, scalded (sometimes the proteins in the milk can react with the yeast so it is best to "scald" the milk - heat it until a skin forms but do not boil it)
1 teaspoon caster sugar
450g strong plain flour
2tsp salt
30g butter
190ml buttermilk
1 egg, lightly beaten
beaten egg to glaze

Dissolve yeast with a little milk and sugar in a small bowl. Sift the flour with the salt, then add the butter to the scalded milk. Stir the buttermilk into the scalded milk, add the yeast mixture and pour about two-thirds of the liquid into the dry ingredients. Mix vigorously and continue to add liquid until you have a sticky dough.

Lightly flour a worktop and turn the dough out onto it. Careful not too add too much flour or it drys out the dough. Keep your hands clean and free from bits of dough as you knead. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it is smooth and elastic. Put the dough back in the bowl and cover with a piece of lightly greased clingfilm. Leave to rest in a warm place until it has doubled in size. If you like, you can leave it in the fridge overnight (it just slows down the rising action of the yeast).

When the dough has risen, knock it down and knead for a minute or two. Grease a 1kg loaf tin and shape the dough into an oblong and place in the loaf tin. Cover and leave to prove until it has nearly doubled. Brush the top with beaten egg, or dust with flour.

Bake the loaf for 30 minutes or until it is golden and firm.

Turn the loaf onto a wire rack to cool. It should sound hollow when tapped. If it doesn't, turn it over and put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes.

We all sat down to a delicious three-course lunch on the third day, consisting of bruschetta canapes (above) crab soup (with buttermilk bread), duck breast (where we learnt how to render the fat) with madiera sauce, followed by champagne and strawberry jelly. I'm not in this picture, as I took it!

Leith's cookery course. Day one: Citrus polenta cake

Today I started a cookery course at Leith's School of Food and Wine in Hammersmith. It's a 3-day course entitled Elegant Entertaining. I was so excited to be there that I almost cried several times during the morning demonstration! If you know me, you know that it's not unusual for me to feel like that, but it does indicate my pure joy at cooking beautiful food. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow, which will be a whole day of cooking (today was half demonstration and half cooking). First we made this lemon poppy polenta gluten-free wonderfully moist cake. Then we made pasta! I expect I'll go on about that more later. I am now going to buy a pasta machine. And a MagiMix.

Citrus polenta cake
Adapted from Leith's Baking Bible


3 eggs
130ml sunflower oil
130g caster sugar
zest of one orange
zest of one lemon
105g ground almonds
75g polenta
3/4 tsp gluten-free baking powder
1 1/2 tbsps poppy seeds


For the syrup:
Juice of one orange and one lemon
55g caster sugar


Heat the oven to 180 C. Grease a 23cm cake tin and place a disc of greased greaseproof paper in the base.

Beat the egg yolks, oil, 110g of the caster sugar (or just reserve about a tablespoon from the original 130g sugar) and the orange and lemon zest until smooth. Add the ground almonds, polenta, baking powder and poppy seeds to the egg mixture. Fold to combine.

Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks in a clean bowl then beat in the remaining caster sugar. Fold into the cake mixture. Turn into the prepared tin and bake in the centre of the oven for 35–40 minutes. A wooden cocktail stick inserted into the centre should come out clean when the cake is cooked.

Cool the cake in the tin while making the syrup. Place the orange and lemon juice in a small saucepan with the caster sugar over a low heat. Heat until the sugar dissolves then bring the mixture to the boil. Allow to cool for 10 minutes.

Pierce the cake all over the top and pour the syrup into the holes. Leave to settle for a few minutes before turning out of the tine and up the other way (so the holes are now on the bottom). If you wish, you could make more syrup to drizzle over the top.

It's really good with creme fraiche and raspberries.

Banana nutmeg waffles

The waffle story began, rather unexpectedly, in Iceland. Hubbie and I went there on holiday to look at geysers and the blue lagoon. When we awoke in our hotel on the first morning and went downstairs for breakfast, the smell of waffles wafted (I wonder if the smell of waffles has anything to do with the word "wafted"?!) up the stairs. We were very pleased to see a waffle iron and batter and made ourselves some waffles - we've been talking about them ever since and Hubbie bought me a waffle-iron for Christmas (romantic isn't he?). This morning I made banana waffles. It is a failsafe recipe and we always have bananas in the house.

Banana nutmeg waffles 

Makes 4 waffles. This recipe came from here and is in American cup measurements, but all you have to do is go and buy cup measurers, and it opens up a world of possibilities! I modified it slightly by adding wholemeal flour – I think it adds sweetness.


3/4 cup wholemeal flour
1/2 cups plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 pinch ground nutmeg
1 cup semi-skimmed milk
1 egg
2 ripe bananas, sliced


Preheat waffle iron. In a large mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Pour milk into a jug or bowl and add the egg and sliced bananas. Mash the bananas into the milk using a fork and mix the egg. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir to combine. The mixture is much thicker than normal pancake batter so don't be tempted to add more liquid.


Spray preheated waffle iron with cooking spray. Pour two tablespoons of the waffle batter onto the hot waffle iron.  Cook until golden brown (about 2 minutes in my electric waffle iron). Serve hot with fruit and syrup.

Chocolate-orange-fondant chocolates

I experimented a bit making chocolates at Christmas but I've been wondering for a while if there is a way to make a creamy chocolatey centre to a chocolate without using cream. My brother and his family are vegan so I was primarily thinking of something they could eat. On the plus side, if the chocolates do not have cream, they will probably keep for a lot longer. Here are the results of my experiment!

Chocolate-orange-fondant chocolates


90g good quality dark chocolate


For the filling:
60g good-quality dark chocolate (this adds up to one 250g bar so you can just go ahead and melt the whole thing, then use about a third of it for the filling)
Zest of half an orange
3 tsp Cointreau or Grand Marnier
1 tsp orange extract

Melt all of the chocolate (I'm a bit naughty and use the microwave instead of a bain-marie, but if you do, just be careful the chocolate doesn't overheat and burn and use a low setting). Pour about one third of the chocolate into a mould and as it sets, stand the mould upright for a few minutes, then on it's side and keep rotating to try and coat the walls of each chocolate cavity. This way, the filling should be encased in chocolate all the way round and is not tempted to escape out of the sides. (I got my mould from Lakeland, but they're probably available online.)

To make the filling, transfer another third of the melted chocolate to a separate bowl and add the filling ingredients. The chocolate "froze" (when it changes texture and sets) when I added the alcohol so make sure you add it gradually. Although, having said that, I quite liked the change in texture. To try to unfreeze it, I just heated it a bit more – gently – then added a teaspoon or two of water and stirred vigorously (although it will never really go back to how it was once this has happened).

Pop a blob of the filling inside each chocolate cavity and then fill with the remaining melted chocolate, taking care that it makes it's way round the sides of each blob of filling. Place in the fridge and turn out when set.

I added gold dust to the top of my chocolates (actually to the bottom of the mould, with a clean paintbrush), which is available in Waitrose. I also bought edible gold leaf to decorate my chocolates, which is made of - you'll never guess - gold! Who would have thought that pure gold is edible? It doesn't taste of anything though...

Peppery Thai basil noodles

My husband and I went to New York in April and after visiting this church (we thought we might see Tim Keller! We didn't, but it was still pretty cool) we went for a late dinner in Greenwich Village. We only had four days in the city and we wanted to make the most of our time there, so a look at the Village area at night was better than nothing.

We came across a very good value Thai restaurant (our wallets were feeling a bit battered!). We chose noodle dishes and were both disappointed by our choices - mine was too bland and my husband's was too spicy. Once we had swapped, I was in heaven! He had chosen a very peppery basil noodle dish which I have attempted to re-create (I say "attempted" to be modest - it was pretty darn tasty!).

Peppery Thai basil noodles
To serve one


1 carrot
2 chesnut mushrooms
small handful of curly kale (or your favourite greens) 
40g buckwheat (or your favourite) noodles
1 tsp black peppercorns
2 tsp red peppercorns
2 tbsp fish sauce (or nam pa)
3 tsp sugar
3 or 4 sprigs of fresh basil (I used regular basil but I'm sure it would taste even better with Thai basil)

Peel the carrot and chop into thin sticks. Boil a half-full kettle. Spray a wok with cooking spray or 1 tsp oil and add the carrots once the pan is hot. Chop the mushrooms and curly kale into thin slices and add them to the pan when the carrots are starting to char on the edges. Keep moving everything around the pan by flipping it, or stirring.

Add the noodles to a bowl with the boiling water from the kettle and leave for 5 minutes or until tender. Grind the peppercorns in a food processor or pestle and mortar. Drain the noodles and add to the wok with a few tablespoons of the water the noodles were soaking in. Add the peppercorns, fish sauce, sugar and basil and stir thoroughly.

Wholemeal blueberry pancakes

I fancied eating some yummy pancakes on Saturday and I had some leftover blueberries so I made wholemeal, American-style pancakes and ate them with leftover strawberries and golden syrup - yum!

I actually ended up making half this amount, because I'm trying not to be greedy at the moment. I did manage to use half an egg... Sadly, the other half was wasted, but at least it didn't go on my waist (haha!).

Wholemeal blueberry pancakes

This recipe is adapted from the BBC Good Food website.

200g wholemeal flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 egg

300 ml milk

Blueberries (as many as you like! within reason...)

oil for the pan

Mix together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and a pinch of salt in a large bowl. Beat the egg with the milk, make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and whisk in the milk to make a thick smooth batter. Gently stir in half the blueberries

Heat a teaspoon of oil in a large non-stick frying pan. Drop a large tablespoonful of the batter per pancake into the pan to make pancakes about 4 inches across. Make three or four pancakes at a time. Cook for about 3 minutes over a medium heat until small bubbles appear on the surface of each pancake, then turn and cook another 2-3 minutes until golden.

Carrot salad

I think this is a bit of an 80's salad but I have recently realised how wonderful this simple dish is. I remember my mother always making it for our annual family barbecue. And for me, the best thing about a barbecue is, by far, the salads. This one is winning for me at the moment. Carrot and vinegar make a perfect pair and the raisins add even more sweetness.

Carrot salad

200g carrots

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

30g raisins (it's even nicer if the raisins are soaked in water overnight first, but not essential)

Peel and medium-grate the carrots (make sure you reserve all the lovely juice). Add the raisins and vinegar and mix well.

I'd like to experiment with adding coriander (a classic flavour combination) or cumin for a more spiced version. I'll keep you posted.