I used to bake every week but somehow I got out of the habit. Work got busy, life got busy..... I'm sure you know the deal. I really miss baking days. Once you know what you're about, home bread baking is a bit like a working meditation. Provided you stick to the formula, and create a baking plan, all it requires is for you to help it along while you get on with other things. The reward is bread and baked goods like no supermarket ever sold.
I first read about Empty the Shelf bread in the River Cottage Handbook No 3 Bread by Daniel Stevens. This was one of the first bread books I purchased when I started baking bread and it is dusty, dogeared and full of pencilled notes where I have made changes to suit personal taste and local conditions. Just what a good cookbook should be. I don't use it so much now. Despite my embarrassing collection of bread books, my favourite bread guru is still Daniel Leader and my regular bakes are mostly adaptations of breads from his Local Breads book.
When I feel lazy and need bread Daniel Steven's recipe is my fallback position. It's not a lovingly tended, overnight retarded sourdough but is a great everyday loaf. We call this bread Dredge Bread because it's a chuck together loaf using yeast, leftover sourdough starter and a combination of whatever we can dredge up. Bag ends of flour and a cup or so of seeds and grains from mostly empty jars that are lurking on the pantry shelves, not enough to do something substantial with, but too good to chuck out.
Today's mix for Dredge Bread is a combination of rye, spelt and unbleached bakers flour at about a 1:2:7 ratio and a combination of sesame and flax seeds, quinoa and a half bottle of rice seasoning, a Japanese mix of seaweed flakes, salt, a little sugar and ground rice. It makes a great topping on grilled salmon or with steamed rice and tamari but it has passed its 'best before' so in it goes and I will cut back on the salt to compensate.
I love this bread because you chuck everything in the bowl and mix, knead, rise, proof and bake.
Two loaves of bread, minimal input and less stuff in the pantry. Too easy. Didn't even have to leave the house.
Good fresh grainy bread is always a great match with pate which sounds like a plan for tonight's dinner. In the fridge we have a fillet of smoked trout, but all the pate recipes I can find want horseradish. Guess what, no horseradish. Plenty in the garden, but not today. Grating fresh horseradish requires internal fortitude and a gas mask! It's a story for another time. Next best thing in keeping with the seaweed in the bread theme, Japanese mustard and/or wasabi and maybe some yuzu to give the lonely lime in the fruit bowl some punch as there are no lemons on the tree at this time of year.
So I worked with a combination of a half packet of left over cream cheese, some butter, chopped chives from the garden adding the yuzu, wasabi and Japanese mustard pastes gradually in pea sized amounts, then the pepper and lime juice until the flavour balance was right. I didn't add salt as the pastes are quite salty in themselves.
The final result was really pleasing. A delicate trout flavour enhanced by the heat from the wasabi and mustard while the yuzu provided a citrusy punch offset by the milder citrus notes of the lime juice.
Together with steamed beans and carrots from the garden and a salad of today's freshly dug dutch cream potatoes, combined with the preserved manzanilla olives from last year, parsley, spanish onions from the store cupboard, yellow teardrop tomatoes and the first of the peas all dressed with a red wine vinaigrette.
As evening approaches the thunder is rolling over the hills, the temperature is dropping rapidly and rain is in the air but the wine is cold and the meal is a feast of garden and pantry.
PS. The Seed Whisperer has just come in from the garden laden with strawberries. Guess what's for dessert.
Trout Pate
Yield: Approximately 1 1/2 cups of pate
125 gms softened cream cheese
30 gms softened butter
1/2 teaspoon each wasabi and Japanese mustard paste or to your taste
3/4 teaspoon yuzu paste
juice of half a lime
2 tbsp finely chopped chives
finely cracked black pepper
1 smoked trout fillet approximately 160gms
Mash the cream chesse and butter until smooth and well combined. Add the yuzu, Japanese mustard and wasabi pastes gradually tasting as you go. Add the flaked trout, chopped chives, juice of half a lemon and a grind of black pepper. Mix gently to incorporate trout. Taste and adjust seasoning. Scrape into a serving dish and cover. Leave in fridge for an hour so let flavours develop.
Serve with fresh grain or seed bread and salad as a meal or with crackers as a dip.
No comments:
Post a Comment