The Manchester Kitchen

Bread: The Journey Begins.

I wouldn't consider myself a truly accomplished chef by any means, but I feel I can throw a few things together that taste pretty good, if I do say so myself. So I feel I am pretty confident to tackle most things in the Kitchen, but bread, bread scares me.

You see, its all a bit scientific for me, by which I mean with most other forms of cooking you can guess most of the measures, weights etc, but for someone like me, bread is like some form of advanced mathematics.

Which is how I get round to my skills as a chef. Like I said by todays standards I am quite capable in the kitchen, but I can't help but feel that in the world we live in now, skills such as bread baking have been pushed aside, for example my grandma could bake bread by the age of 12, yet no doubt she would not consider herself a great chef.

I guess my point is that can we claim to be 'skilled' in the kitchen, if you cannot bake a simple loaf of bread?

And so it begins...

 

You will need;

1/2 Kg Strong Bread Flour,
1 x 7gm Packet of Active yeast,
300 ml lukewarm water,
1 tsp salt,
1tsp sugar,

How it happened;

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, salt, make a well in the center of the flour,
Stir in the yeast and water and mix into a soft dough by hand.

Empty out onto a clean, floured surface and knead for 10 minutes (trust me it needs the 10 minutes, its hard work getting past the first 6 minutes but after that your on the home straight, it will be worth it).

Shape the dough and place into a clean bowl and cover with a damp tea towel. 

Place it somewhere, ideally warm and moist, an airing cupboard or the cupboard next to your oven. I placed mine in my airing cupboard and it worked great.

Leave to rise for about 45 minutes depending on your conditions, or until doubled in size, covering it with cling film is a good way to speed things along.

Once the dough has doubled in size, take it out and knock it about for a bit, basically bash the air out of it.

After that place it in your loaf tin, or on to a baking tray (whatever your using) and cover and repeat the proving (letting it rise) process again. This will help to improve the texture of the finish of the bread.

Once it has proven for another 45 minutes or doubled in size, place gently (you are trying to keep as much air in as possible at this point) into a preheated oven, gas mark 4 or 180'c for about 25-30 minutes, you can check is if it ready by tapping the base, if you hear a hollow sound its ready, if not pop it back in.

Once cooked place on a cooling rack and try and resist eating the whole lot in one sitting :)

Simple Lunch;Spaghetti with Chili, garlic and lemon.

Well it feels as if spring has finally, erm, sprung, so for lunch I fancied something a bit lighter. With my bread proving in the airing cupboard (thats coming in a post later), and me not wanted to leave it like a doting father, it was a store cupboard lunch today.

So I came up with this recipe for a simple pasta lunch:

Spaghetti with chili, garlic and lemon.

You will need;

1 Red Chili finely sliced,
1 Clove of Garlic, I like to grate it on a fine grater to avoid and garlic bits,
Enough spaghetti for 1 (or 2 if your greedy like me),
The juice of half a lemon,
Parmesan, a couple of good grates,
1 pan of boiling salted water
oil for frying.

How it happened;

Finely slice your chili and grate for garlic (slice if no grater can be found) and  place in a frying pan on a low heat, you don't want to burn the garlic as this will ruin the taste, simple cooking it through will be enough. Fry until slightly colored, now place to one side.
Place your pasta in a large pan of boiling salted water, cook until al dente.
Drain the pasta once cooked, reserving a little of the cooking liquid, and add the lemon juice, chili and garlic.

Serve with Parmesan and season with freshly ground black pepper.

Enjoy.

Krispy Kreme Manchester

It's here! It's finally here!

The new Krispy Kreme shop in Piccadilly Gardens is open!

Words cannot express the taste, let me just show some photos!

Bill's Roasted tomato and fennel soup.

Today is the 11th of April, we should be well into the joys of spring here in Manchester, although as with most seasons, it comes with a large side order of rain.

This pseudo-spring that I find myself in has given me the taste for a bit of soup.

So I began scouring my book shelf for a suitable recipe to satisfy me, I came across my copy of Bill's Food by Bill Granger.

I have only cooked a handful of recipes from this book and have aways found them to be to my taste; his food is simple and straight forward, some may say a little conservative, but always delicious.

With my mind set on a soup of the roasted tomato and fennel variety I set out to gather my ingredients, I say gather, I mean go to the green grocers at the end of my road. I was in luck, vine tomatoes were on special offer, I was able to purchase 3lbs for £2.10. The signs looked good. The fennel on the other hand was quite expensive, 1 medium sized bulb costing £2.15. I don't really mind as its a local shop (for local people) and I do feel better going there than to a large chain supermarket.

The soup.

You will need,

3lb vine-ripened tomatoes
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 small carrot, finely sliced
1/2 small fennel bulb, finely sliced
1-3 Red chilies finely sliced
60ml extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 200 (400F/Gas 6). place tomatoes, garlic, carrot and fennel in a roasting tin. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour 30 minutes.

After 1 hour 30 minutes, I removed the foil and roasted them for another 30 minutes.

Finally,transfer the roasted vegetables to a food processor, failing that I used a hand blender.

Serve in a bowl.

Soup(erb).   

The Manchester Kitchen!

Woo first post!