A good start to the day...

Managed to start making bread earlier than usual this morning, around 7:30. Followed by a quick hair cut in the garden - you don't get to watch frogs hop by and in turn be watched by an unrecognised cat, sat a safe distance away at the edge of the vegetable patch when you go to a hairdressers.

Caught the farmers' market early and came away loaded¹ with chillies, aubergines, some plum tomatoes all hues, salads, some rather rugged peppers, Jerusalem artichokes, leeks and more than I can think of right now. Followed this up with a visit to the Italian market at the other end of town; I hadn't even realised it was on this weekend. Amongst the usual over priced mixture was a good bread stand. Two ciabattas as big as your forearm for £2 and a darker, granary loaf and some deep-fried porcini-filled risotto balls.

Then back home to quickly attack one of the ciabattas, my own bread not being ready for many hours yet. Sat on the patio, the bread, some olive oil and balsamic vinegar forming breakfast beneath the grapevine, whose fruit needs picking soon before the birds get to it.

1. It wasn't so much "me" loaded as Penjamin. She made me add this bit.

And now another cook book!

Dough just arrived from Amazon today. Looks like I've got some holiday reading stacking up nicely.

A cookbook preview

I didn't think Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries was due to be published until October 3rd, the date given by most on-line retailers. Yet I managed to pick up a copy yesterday, some two weeks early, though not as early as a friend, Sara, who knows Nigel¹. She got her copy personally sent several weeks ago. And I had to pay for my copy.

Some intial thoughts on it; very nicely presented, beautifully laid out, great photography, even nice paper and one of those little strips to mark your page, all very old-fashioned in some respects. The writing is it's usual chatty, informal style, filled with asides and comments. Whilst touting some 300 new recipes, it is not a cookbook as a collection of recipes, but more of a journal of buying, growing, sourcing, preparing, eating and enjoying food in all it's stages and all it's forms. From cheese on toast to slow cooked pot meals (and that's just January), it is about real food as made in the home. No allusions to restaurant food, no showy dinner party stuff, just everyday food.

1. The sounds of names dropping...

Cookbook review #1

My bookshelves groan when I come back from a bookshop, as it usually means a new addition to the already stuffed bookcase of cookery books (and yes, I am that sad that I have a separate bookcase just for cookery books). Recent additions have included the latest River Cafe, Two Easy. I must confess to some disappointment with earlier River Cafe books, but with the latest two (Easy and this one) Rose and Ruth seem to have hit their stride, or at least matched pace with mine. It's not that I shy away from non-easy recipes but in these two they seem to hit a better balance of ingredients in the dishes; maybe the focusing in on simplicity forces one to work harder at what remains, somewhat like a short story. There is the usual emphasis on using top quality ingredients, and when there are so few, they need to work that much harder. I feel though that the dishes go further than that - I especially like the starters and simple small dishes (broad bean, pecorino and mint bruschetta from the first easy book is a favourite) that work well as both appetisers and simple suppers.

So this will do to bide my time until the next expedition reaps more weight for the bookcase. Imminent books to look forward to are Dough: Simple contemporary bread by Richard Bertinet and Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries.

Bread and sweetbread

As our regular reader will know, I like bread almost as much as beer (maybe it's because they both use yeast and grains?).

Anyway, my sister recently sent me a book for my birthday, namely "The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Making Classic Breads with the Cutting-edge Techniques of a Bread Master" by Peter Reinhart. It's a good book (but not as good as Dan Lepard's "The Handmade Loaf" - buy it now!!).

What amazed me though was how many of the recipes are sweetened, Something as simple as a wholemeal loaf had sugar, powdered milk, honey, cans of coca-cola (actually not true that last one). Peter classifies loves into enriched, naturally leavened, etc. groupings and a rough scan suggests that half the loaves are enriched rather than un-enriched (nonriched? enpoored?). Can't say I've spent that much time in the US but when I mentioned this to my parents, recently returned from the Big Poo, they agreed. Ordinary supermarket cut-loaf (yuck) made into a savoury sandwich tasted like it was spread with jam, or honey or sugar syrup.

There appears to be a movement to artisan, traditional breads in the US but it would appear from Peter Reinhart's book that even this isn't immune to the US mentatilty of sugar-in-everything.