Scottish Morning Rolls

This book by Andrew Whitley of Bread Matters is one of my favourites when it comes to making bread. It is written in a readable, no-nonsense style, is packed with information, and has some great recipes for both yeasted breads and breads made from natural fermentations (sourdough). If you only buy one book on bread making, this is the one to go for.

One of the recipes I make regularly is Scottish Morning Rolls. These are soft and chewy, and remind me of the rolls we used to get from Brison's the bakers when visiting my grandparents in Berwick Upon Tweed. These are perfect for a bacon sandwich. For a real nostalgia trip, fry the bacon in lard and, instead of buttering your roll, dip each half of a split roll in the hot lard before sandwiching together with the bacon. When I was a child we would sometimes forego the bacon and just eat dippy bread, but this delicacy has gone out of fashion in our health-conscious times.

This recipe uses a sponge and dough method: the sponge is made by mixing together flour, water and a small amount of yeast and leaving it to ferment for 12-18 hours. The yeast feeds on the sugars in the flour and reproduces so that the sponge contains enough yeast to raise the final dough.



For the sponge

• 5g fresh yeast 
• OR 2g fast-action dried yeast  
• 130g water
• 50g strong wholemeal flour
• 100g strong white flour

1. Mix together all the ingredients, cover, and leave in a warm place for 12-18 hours.

For the final dough

• 285g sponge
• 350g strong white flour
• 100g strong wholemeal flour
• 5g fine sea salt
• 270g water
• 15g butter or lard

1. Mix together and knead until smooth and elastic - about 10 minutes in a mixer with a dough hook will do the trick, or slightly longer by hand. Shape the dough into a ball, put into a lightly-oiled bowl, cover, and rest for 1-2 hours.
2. Gently ease the dough from the bowl and cut into 8-12 equal pieces. Shape into neat balls, dip each roll in a bowl of flour, then arrange on a baking sheet about 2cm apart. 
3. Cover with a linen cloth and leave to rise until the rolls are just touching. This will take 2-3 hours, depending on the temperature of your kitchen.
4. Put into a hot oven (230℃) and bake until risen and golden brown (12-15 minutes, depending on the temperature of your oven and how big you made the rolls).

Comfort food: macaroni cheese with leeks

There is something especially comforting about macaroni cheese: the smooth, creamy sauce contrasting with the bland, slightly chewy pasta pieces. I am also a big fan of leeks, particularly leeks in cheese sauce. What could be more satisfying than a supper of maraconi cheese with leeks?

This is easy to make. First, put on a large pan of salted water for the pasta. Add the macaroni as soon as the water comes to the boil.

In another pan, warm some milk with half an onion studded with a bay leaf and two cloves (onion cloué - the French call cloves clou de girofle, from the verb clouer, "to nail", making them ideal for our purposes). Leave the milk on a gentle heat, allowing the flavours to infuse, but keep an eye on the pan to make sure it doesn't boil over.

In a third, heavy-based pan, melt a good knob of butter and add a medium leek, cleaned and thinly sliced. Put a lid on the pan and cook the leek gently, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or so. Sprinkle over a tablespoon of plain flour and stir well. Continue cooking for 2-3 minutes, then gradually add the hot milk, stirring until smooth after each addition. Bring to a boil and cook until the sauce thickens. Season to taste with salt, pepper, grated nutmeg, and a pinch of dried mustard. Now stir in some grated cheese (I used a mixture of Gruyère and Parmesan, but a good strong cheddar would work just as well).

Drain the pasta and add to the sauce, stirring to combine. Transfer to an ovenproof dish, top with more grated cheese and some breadcrumbs. Dot with butter, and bake in a hot oven until bubbling and browned on top. The breadcrumbs add a good crunch, a nice contrast to the smooth texture of the pasta. Leeks and mushrooms go together well, so I also tried a topping made by blitzing up dried wild mushrooms with the breadcrumbs. This was good, but the mushrooms were a bit of a distraction - I prefer the comforting blandness of the plain breadcrumbs, so will stick with that in the future.

Venison haunch, chocolate oil

I had friends around for dinner on Friday, which gave me a good excuse to do something with the venison haunch I had been saving in the freezer. I hadn't cooked this cut of venison before, but I thought it would benefit from cooking sous vide. There is very little fat in venison, so sealing in all the juices could only work in its favour (larding is recommended if roasting conventionally).

I took a gamble and cooked it medium rare: an hour and a half in a 54.5℃ water bath worked a treat, yielding beautifully pink and tender meat. (Holding the meat for a while in a water bath at this temperature will do it no harm, so this is also a great way to cook if your guests are driving from Oxford and liable to get stuck in traffic.) Just before serving, I seared it quickly in a smoking hot pan. The chocolate oil was a bit of a gimmick, but worked well with the venison.

Best laid plans beaten by the weather

The return of the cold weather will not be welcomed by our farmers. Last week's newsletter from Riverford, best laid plans beaten by the weather, complained that their cauliflower, cabbage, leeks, and purple sprouting broccoli have hardly moved on, so they are having difficulty balancing the root vegetables in the weekly boxes. Instead, last week's box contained aubergines and red peppers from Spain and broccoli from Italy.

Although unseasonal, these made a refreshing change: should I dip aubergine slices in flour and fry in olive oil? what about aubergine fritters, coated in a light batter? or an Italian-style aubergine Parmigiana? In the end I opted for this baba ghanoush recipe from Riverford. Right now, some dough is proving for flat breads to be cooked under the grill tomorrow.

As for the peppers, I made a batch of pepperonata, following a recipe from Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book. Thinly slice an onion and finely chop 1 or 2 cloves of garlic; cook in olive oil until just starting to colour. Deseed and finely slice the pepper and add to the pan; cover with a lid and allow to stew gently for 10-15 minutes, stirring from time to time. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes and simmer gently, uncovered, for 30-40 minutes, by which time most of the liquid will have gone. Season to taste with salt, pepper, sugar, and a splash of red wine vinegar. This is delicious hot or cold - I used half of this batch to make some individual tartlets (pictured).

Of course, there were root vegetables to be used up too, and the parsnips went into another of Grigson's recipes:  curried parsnip soup - sweet and spicy, and the perfect way to counter the winter weather.

Chicken breast, crisp chicken skin

This chicken breast was cooked sous vide for 55 minutes in a 63.5℃ water bath (I'm following the times for safe pasteurization given in Douglas Baldwin's guide to sous vide cooking).

To crisp the skin, it was sandwiched in baking parchment between two baking trays (to keep it flat) and cooked in a 200℃ oven for 45 minutes. (I tried crisping the skin with a blow torch, but just ended up with burnt rubber; I must be doing something wrong.)

The carrots were also cooked sous vide (85℃ for 1 hour), while the cabbage and potatoes were cooked conventionally.

I served this with a white wine butter sauce, following a recipe I learned at Ashburton Cookery School. This is similar to a beurre blanc, but contains reduced chicken stock and a splash of double cream which acts as an emulsifier, making the sauce more stable (McGee has an illuminating section on cream and butter sauces, worth a read if you're interested in the science).

Cooking the carrots sous vide kept their shape and retained all their flavour. The chicken was succulent and very tender; it was tasty, but definitely benefited from this creamy but slightly sharp sauce.

White Wine Butter Sauce Recipe

For 2 portions:

• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 50g butter, cut into small dice and kept chilled
• 100ml white wine
• 300ml chicken stock
• 50ml crème fraiche or double cream
• Salt and peper

1. Melt a little of the butter in a small saucepan and add the shallot and a pinch of salt. Sweat gently to soften the shallot without letting it colour.
2. Add the wine and increase the heat, letting it bubble and reduce until the wine has almost gone.
3. Add the chicken stock and simmer until it has reduced by two thirds.
4. Stir in the cream and cook gently until the sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.
5. Gradually whisk in the diced butter. You should end up with a sauce the consistency of double cream - adding more butter will give you a thicker sauce.
6. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Pork belly, Jerusalem artichokes, and mushrooms

The pork belly here was cooked sous vide for 12 hours at 82℃. Before vacuum packing, it was boned and rubbed with ground fennel seeds, rosemary and salt. If I'd had some, finely grated lemon zest would have been  added to the mix. After cooking, it was chilled in an ice bath and refrigerated until needed.

To serve, it was pan-fried to brown then heated through for 10 minutes in a hot oven. I haven't quite mastered the art of crisping the skin without it colouring too much (and coming close to burning) - some more experimentation needed there.

The mushrooms and Jerusalem artichokes were cooked en papillotte following this recipe from Riverford Organic, omitting the goats cheese. The greenery on the side is shreded leeks and savoy cabbage, blanched for 3 minutes in boiling water then tossed with a knob of butter and some black pepper. I've found that a teaspoon of Dijon mustard mixed into cooked cabbage just before serving gives it a real lift, but I omitted that here as the mushrooms and artichokes were cooked with lemon juice, which I didn't think would go well with the mustard.

In the past, I have braised pork belly with aromatic vegetables, then cooled and pressed it overnight before finishing as above. This "twice-cooked" pork belly is a great dish, but the sous vide version wins hands down on texture and succulence. The only downside to the sous vide method is that you don't get the delicious stock that comes with a slow braise. To make up for this, I roasted the bones with some onions and made a dark pork stock, which I then enriched with the gelatinous juices from the sous vide bag and sharpened with some sherry vinegar.