let's cook: gazpacho and bread rolls

Our summer cooking challenge was gazpacho and bread rolls. My attempt is shown on the left and my mum's is on the right. Audrey also joined in with this challenge, but unfortunately I don't have a photo to share.

I think the trickiest part of this challenge was the bread as the gazpacho is pretty quick to make (as it doesn't involve any cooking of course!). For my rolls I followed this recipe from The Comfort Kitchen for no-knead crusty rolls.

I liked the sound of no-knead, and these rolls were easy to make, bearing in mind that you need a few hours in between mixing and baking for the mixture to prove. I made the mixture one day and left it overnight to prove.

When I came to bake them I did find the mixture a bit sticky and think I might have knocked a lot of the air out of the dough when transferring them to the baking tray as they didn't rise as much as I'd hoped. The flavour was delicious though and fresh from the oven they were nice and crusty.





I think I'll try making these rolls again one day as they are so easy that the mixture can be cobbled together one night, and then baked the next evening after work. Hopefully they'll rise a bit better next time too.

For my gazpacho I followed a recipe from an allotment gardening cookbook we have. As expected it was super quick to make. We picked the perfect time of year for this challenge as it was just around the time that our allotment greenhouse tomatoes were fruiting and I was able to harvest enough homegrown tomatoes for the recipe. What a treat!





As I made quite a big batch of the gazpacho I tried out a couple of different consistencies when serving.

For the first portion I used our food processor to blend the mixture so it was a slightly chunky consistency. Ben really liked this texture, but I wasn't convinced (particularly by the appearance).





When we had the gazpacho the next day I used the blender to make a smoother consistency and I think this looked a bit more like traditional gazpacho. It tasted good too!





My mum unfortunately didn't enjoy her gazpacho and thinks it's an acquired taste. She said she's never had 'cold soup' before.

Luckily she wasn't judging, and my brother and dad were. Her gazpacho looks good to me, and the poppy seed rolls look delicious, although I've heard reports that they were a little on the hard side (super crusty!?)





Audrey also made her gazpacho with homegrown tomatoes (bonus points?) and John made a loaf of rustic Spanish bread to accompany it. They were really successful with both, and have since made it again for a dinner party.

It's great that these cooking challenges can lead us to discover new things that we want to make over and over again! My mum might not agree on the gazpacho front, mind.


The scores

Ben was very happy with the gazpacho and the rolls and tried to give me 9/10 for this challenge, but I don't agree as the consistency of my bread rolls wasn't right. They tasted delicious, but were a bit flat, so I docked myself a mark and am going to settle with 8/10.

The review from my dad on my mum's gazpacho was that is was as good as he's had when eating out before, and the flavour and texture deserved 9+. Great score!

However, although the rolls looked good, both him and my brother said that they were a bit too tough to eat, and were probably around a 6/10, so overall they gave my mum 7.5/10. 

Audrey and John both enjoyed their gazpacho and bread and collectively gave themselves a 10/10 - a very successful result!

We all did pretty well this time round.


Next up

My mum has demanded we make something sweet next time as we've done a couple of savoury things in a row now, so we're going for carrot cake.

I've never made a carrot cake before and am on the hunt for a good vegan recipe.

let's cook: stollen

We decided to schedule in a festive cooking challenge this Christmas, partly because my mum was stalling with her sushi, and partly because it would be an opportunity for a side by side taste test as we would all be together in the same place.

The one shown on the left above was my stollen, and my mum's is on the right. My mum's definitely looks the most stollen-like.

The recipe I chose was this one, which was described as 'Nigel Slater's version of the perfect Christmas stollen'. I'm not sure where I went wrong, but I would say mine turned out far from perfect.

We hosted Christmas at our house this year, so Ben and I took to the kitchen on Christmas eve for a bit of a cooking session. A good day to bake a traditional German fruit bread too!





The ingredients list for the filling of Nigel Slater's stollen was definitely a winner: cardamoms, cherries, mixed peel, sultanas, ground cinnamon, flaked almonds and marzipan. It smelt delicious when it was all mixed together in a bowl.

Well, apart from the cardamoms, as I accidentally left them in the pestle and mortar and we only discovered them on boxing day - oops! I must have got distracted by the gravy/nut loaf/mushroom stuffing.

However, I think it was the construction where things started to go wrong for me. The filling was rolled up in the centre of the dough, rather than being mixed in, which meant it ended up as sort of filled tube of plain bread, rather than a lovely moist fruit loaf.






My mum seemed to get on better with her recipe. She followed a Delia Smith one she found in a newspaper (it might be this one). Hers had a long stick of marzipan running through the centre of the mixed-fruit dough, possibly more in line with the traditional Stollen.

It looks good!






So, to the judging...

We did the taste testing after a boxing day stroll and were lucky enough to have five judges presiding over this one. 

I think both of ours fell down for being a bit dense and not as moist as they should be. Although they were both a few days old when we did the testing - especially my mum's, who made hers a couple of days before Christmas.

I would be the first to admit mine wasn't a winning bake and was very pleased to receive a collective mark of 6/10 for my loaf. I think it might have been a bit generous actually.

My mum did much better and got a score of 8/10 for her stollen - success! It definitely did look the nicest.

For the next challenge, we've decided on making a quiche.

And we had a couple of new sign-ups to the challenge on boxing day so this one might be more of a group bake-off. Things are going to get competitive!

let's cook: stuffed bread

Our cooking challenge is off to a strong start this year - with both of us making our stuffed breads in the first week of January. Last year we had four different cook-offs: dips, tart tatin, gnocchi and jam & scones. Let's see if we can better that this year!

I think this one was a good challenge - neither of us have done much bread-making before so it was a bit of a skill test - but also a creative one in terms of deciding on a filling and shaping the bread.

I made a couple of Mediterranean style pesto and sundried tomato mini plaited loaves, and my mum went made a giant plaited bread ring with a Moroccan filling: olives, goats cheese and a spicy onion mixture. Sounds tasty to me.



I used this great recipe from Mediterranealicious as a basis for my bread but made my own pesto for the filling and added some sundried tomatoes. The pesto was super quick. Here's the recipe if you want to try it out.

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Super speedy basil pesto

Ingredients

2 packed cups of fresh basil leaves
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
½ cup grated parmesan
¼ cup pine nuts
2 crushed garlic cloves

Instructions

Put all the ingredients in a food processor and mix.

Season with salt and pepper to taste.



The recipe above makes enough pesto for the bread, with some left over to use another day (we had it with linguine the following day and it was delicious!)

When it came to making the bread I ran into a bit of difficulty as the dried yeast I had in the cupboard had expired I think - I tried twice and it just would not activate, and my first two batches of dough refused to rise.

I went out and bought some instant yeast sachets though and that did the trick. I left the dough for an hour in a warm place and it rose enough that I was sure the yeast was doing it's job. From the sound of it, my mum's yeast was super active as she said her dough kept growing and growing!

Once the dough and the pesto were ready I rolled out the bread mixture into an A3 sized piece, covered with the pesto and some chopped sundried tomatoes, then rolled it lengthways to create a long tube. I strayed from the recipe instructions here and chopped my rolled up dough in half to make two smaller loaves.

The fun bit was cutting the rolled dough in half lengthways to reveal the filling, then twisting the two halves around each other to make the plait.



I thought it might untwist itself as it baked in the oven, but luckily it came out looking the same shape as when it went in. I really like the outcome here - the shape is really nice and the fact that there is so much filling on display makes it look pretty tempting.




My mum said she got on quite well with her recipe too - which was from a Bake Off book. I think she was a bit suprised by how big it turned out, but it looks like a successful bit of baking, and the flavours sound great!

So....to the scores:

We both ended up eating the bread warm from the oven with some baked Camembert (great minds!) Judging by the picture my mum and brother enjoyed theirs over a game of Scrabble.



It's lucky my mum had my brother there as a judge as my dad had two bites and decided he didn't like the flavours (typical!) My mum scored a generous 9/10 from Tim though, with the score being bumped up to 10 because it was served with cheese.

Ben also gave me a very generous mark of 10. I'm wondering now if this is possibly partially due to the cheese too? Either way it was a great result all round - full marks for us both!

Maybe one of the most successful cooking challenges to date?



Next time we'll be making Bakewell tarts.
I think I might do an iced one. Yummy.

let's cook: dips and dippers

Cooking challenge time again! This time we decided to venture into dips.

The aim was to produce two different dips, as well as something to dip into them. I was a bit tardy on this one (the house move got in the way a bit) and my mum made hers ages ago but I finally got round to it yesterday. It was nice to spend some time baking in our new kitchen.

My mum chose to make a black olive tapenade and some houmous, accompanied by cheese straws, as pictured below.



She had never had tapenade before, and wasn't sure what it was meant to look or taste like so I think she did pretty well. The cheese straws look tasty too!

I also chose a black olive tapenade as one of my dips. Luckily, I found this perfect tapenade recipe on the Guardian website so I think I was onto a winner from the beginning.



It came out really well. Super strong flavours!

I also made this artichoke and lemon dip from a recipe found on BBC goodfood.



I think this one was my favourite. It's full of winners: artichoke hearts, parmesan, pine nuts, garlic. Mmmm....

It was good for the challenge element that we decided to make dippers I think, as dips do not really require that much effort. Just a bit of blending. I decided to try and make some grissini as an accompaniment.



I found a recipe here which I used as a base, but wanted to try some different things out, so experimented with adding rosemary from the garden to some of the batch, and salt and black pepper to others.

I also tried out some different sizes, and tried twisting some into spirals. I think they came out fairly well. I had to bake them in about 4 different batches (due to limited baking tray space) so there is some inconsistency in colour and texture - they are all a bit wonky when you see them together. Or should I say rustic?



I think this was one of my favourite cooking challenges to date though, and it was timed just right for a nice spring evening snack.



Now to the scoring...

Unfortunately my mum only had my fussy dad as a judge, who refused to try the houmous or the tapenade as he "doesn't like dips" so she had to do her own judging. She gave the houmous 9/10, and the olive tapenade a 6/10 as it wasn't as smooth as she had hoped.

My dad helped scoff the cheese straws though and he gave them 9/10. The only negative was that they were possibly slightly on the crumbly side for dipping.

Ben was very kind and gave my dips and dippers full marks. Emily and Beth tried them today too and they agreed. Thanks guys!

I would maybe knock a mark off for garlic overload, but I'd definitely make them again.



Next time we will be attempting Tart Tatin. I'm excited about this one!
Hopefully my mum can find a better judge...

inventions

what is the BEST thing since sliced bread?

Answers most welcome! x