Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category
Monday, March 1st, 2010
It’s been around for a while, but I first read about Jim Lahey’s ‘no knead bread‘ in a Saveur magazine when I was in New York last year. I’d already got the bread baking bug, and the idea of a loaf that required no kneading seemed a bit odd, even a bit sacrilegious. I did a bit of research on line, and found out that everyone raves about the loaf, and it basically put Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery on the map.
Anyway, it definitely got me interested. How could a loaf requiring so little work be so good? Life just isn’t like that. So I gave it a go. The loaf is cooked in a cast iron pot, a bit like an Australian damper, so you’ll need a Le Creuset or something similar for it to work.
Ingredients
3 cups (430g) flour
1½ cups (345g or 12oz) water
¼ teaspoon (1g) yeast
1¼ teaspoon (8g) salt
Olive oil
Rye flour (for dusting)
Method
Mix all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together for a minute or so to form a ’shaggy’ dough. Transfer the dough to a larger bowl oiled with some olive oil. NB. the dough will expand to around 4 times the size, so make sure your bowl is big enough. Cover with clingfilm and let the dough develop for 12-18 hours at room temperature.
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Tags: Baking, Bread, Cast Iron, Home, Jim Lahey, Le Creuset, No Knead, Strong White Flour
Posted in Equipment, Reading, Recipes, Reviews, Travel | No Comments »
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
As mentioned in the previous post, I was down in Cornwall for Christmas. My mum always puts on a great spread while we’re down there, but with seven mouths to feed she has her work cut out, and seems to spend too much time in the kitchen. That being the case, for the last few years I’ve given her the night off and cooked a meal for the family.
This year I cooked a slow cooked shoulder of lamb with Cornish style boulangère potatoes and spring greens. The lamb is cooked in a tangy herb, lemon and anchovy marinade (I have to leave out the garlic as my dad can’t stand it, but have included it in this recipe), and the classicly French boulangère are given a South West twist with the adition of Cornish cruncher cheddar cheese.
Ingredients
For the lamb:
2.5 kilo shoulder of lamb
2 lemons (juice and zest)
10 -15 tinned anchovy fillets
Bunch of rosemary
5 large cloves of garlic
Olive oil
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Tags: Anchovy, Boulangere, Cheese, Cornish Cruncher, Lamb, Lemon, Potatoes, Rosemary, Shoulder, Slow Cook, Spring Greens
Posted in Opinion, Recipes, Travel | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 4th, 2010
Happy New Year from Hand To Mouth. Hope you all had a good one.
I had the good fortune to be in Cornwall for Christmas, and then Paris for New Years. Good food was eaten accross the festive period, more on this in subsequent posts, but first of all something for the bread geeks out there.
Whilst in Paris I made a pilgrimage to Poilâne. It may not be a familiar name, but if you love good bread it should be. It’s a bakery in Saint-Germain, and makes the most insanely tasty ‘miche’ or traditional French sourdough loaves. Set up by Pierre Poilâne, a young baker from Normandy in 1932, the shop has been knocking out these beautiful large round loaves ever since to Parisians hungry for something a bit more interesting than the regular baguette.
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Tags: Bakery, Bread, Farine Bise, French, Grey Flour, Paris, Poilâne, Saint-Germain, Sourdough
Posted in Opinion, Reviews, Travel | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
I was first taken to Mangal 1 6 or so years ago by my friends Lou and Liam who lived down the road in Hackney at the time, and I’ve been going back ever since. Back then it had a real impact on me because I’d never really been anywhere like it in the UK before. It’s completely unpretentious, a bit ramshackle, and when you step through the door you feel like you’re in a different country.
You immediately get hit by the heat and smell of grilling meat from the massive open barbecue style grill that is slap bang in the middle of the restaurant. And that’s what the Turkish ocakbasi restaurants are all about. Meat and fire. The menu is dominated by kebabs, mostly lamb and chicken, although you can also get quail and offal too. I suggest you go with a few friends, because you’re going to want to try everything, but I can heartily recommend the following. (more…)
Tags: Cacik, Chicken, Grill, Kebab, Lamb, Mangal, Ocakbasi, Sac breads, Salad, Sumac, Turkish
Posted in Opinion, Reviews, Travel | 1 Comment »
Sunday, November 8th, 2009
During the Summer holidays of my second year at university I went backpacking with my mate Ed around Egypt, Jordan and Israel. One of the most vivid memories I have from that trip was when we were staying in Islamic Jerusalem. We were sleeping on the roof of a pretty grotty hostel, but every morning we’d look forward to going to this local bakery for breakfast. This place wasn’t a cafe, but a proper working bakery. As well as supplying bread to local restaurants and shops, they guy who owned it was also kind of famous for his ‘breakfast pizzas’.
They were made on dough base that was smeared with tomato puree, then topped with a triangle of Dairylea style processed cheese, and an egg. They were then baked in a bread oven until the egg was cooked all the way through. Like the hostel, the pizzas were pretty basic, but I remember them being very tasty, and after we’d been there a couple of times, the guy let us make our own and put them in the oven.
This breakfast pizza is a more sophisticated version of the above, and uses some of the same basic ingredients as the pizza recipe featured in this earlier post.
Ingredients (per pizza)
Around 200g pizza dough
Tomato sauce
2 cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced
Teleggio cheese
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Tags: Bacon, Breakfast, Cheese, Dough, Egg, Ham, Israel, Pizza, Taleggio, Tomato
Posted in Recipes, Travel | No Comments »
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
Back to New York, if only briefly, for a quick bit about what might be my favourite place to eat breakfast in the World. Serious claim I know, but Williamsburgh’s Egg is amazing. So amazing in fact that the New York visit prior to this one I think we had breakfast there 3 times out of the 5 days we were there. We only managed twice this time, but if I lived in the neighborhood I’d have to stop myself eating here every bloody day of the week.
Egg is a really unassuming place tucked on a little side road off Bedford Avenue in Williamsburgh. It’s light years away from the city’s brash diners (that I also love) and has a really relaxed almost ‘hippyish’ atmosphere. The owners have their own little farm on the outskirts of New York state, which supplies as much produce to the restaurant as possible. (more…)
Tags: Breakfast, Brioche, Cheese, Chili, Egg, Eggs Rothko, Farm, Fennel, New York, Sausage, Williamsburgh
Posted in Opinion, Reviews, Travel | 1 Comment »
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
Hand To Mouth is back from New York. As usual I ate well in the city that never sleeps, but I also came back with a nasty dose of the flu which has had me on my back for the last three days. Not sure if it was the swine variety or not, but that’s irrelevant, as this post is ALL about the beef.
Going to Peter Luger’s pretty much as soon as I get off the plane in in NY has become a bit of a tradition. The routine goes. Land in NY. Head to Williamburgh. Dump bags at my mate Matt’s place. Head to Luger’s with him. Eat large quantities of meat. Drink a couple of beers. Sleep. Come round smiling the next day.
Peter Luger has been rated New York’s number one steakhouse for twenty four years in a row. For a town that prides itself on good food, that’s a serious accolade. They have two outlets, one in Williamburgh and one in Long Island, but it’s no chain; it’s an institution. (more…)
Tags: Bacon, Brooklyn, New York, Peter Luger, Porterhouse, Salad, Steak, steak sauce
Posted in Opinion, Reviews, Travel | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Hand To Mouth is off to New York for a few days for a mate’s wedding. I feel a bit like I live in the States at the moment. Maybe they’ll give me a green card. See you on the other side.
Tags: Eat Me, New York, Travel, Wedding
Posted in Travel | No Comments »
