The KitchenMaid

Middle Eastern meatballs

In Lois Daish’s 1993 book, Dinner At Home, one of the chapters is called ‘I Wish There Was Another Name For Mince’. I know just what she means. (There’s also a chapter called ‘Rice, Not Glue’, but we’ll save an exploration of that topic for another time.) Mince couldn’t sound less appetising if it tried. It needs a fancy marketing campaign dreamed up by a room full of consultants on six-figure salaries to change its public image from drab to fab. Alternatively, it just needs more recipes like this one, which I dreamed up to convince the anti-mince brigade in my house.

Middle Eastern meatballs
These are inspired by my absolute all-time favourite meatloaf recipe – a recipe I love so much I wrote it down in a proper notebook. I love all of Paula’s blog, but that meatloaf is a true gem. These meatballs are a good way to a) coax the non-meatloaf-loving eaters at your table to eat mince and b) stretch a little meat into a feast for four.

3 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 onions, finely chopped
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 Tbsp tomato ketchup (or chutney)
3 Tbsp honey
zest and juice of two lemons
a handful of sultanas
a handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
500g good lamb mince
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup cold water
100g stale ciabatta or sourdough, blitzed to crumbs
sesame seeds, optional

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and saute the onion and garlic over medium heat until it is soft and golden. Add the salt, spices, tomato ketchup, sultanas, lemon zest and juice and cook, stirring all the time, for about five minutes, or until it thickens. Remove the pan from the heat and tip the mixture into a large bowl to cool completely. While you’re waiting, line a large roasting dish with baking paper and turn the oven to 200C.
When the onion mixture is cool, add the mince, chopped parsley, beaten egg, breadcrumbs and water to it. Mix gently with your hands – don’t squish it all together, keep it light. Form tablespoons of the mixture into balls and place on the prepared tray. When they’re all shaped, bake the meatballs for about 35-40 minutes, turning them halfway through. If you can be bothered, sprinkle them with sesame seeds about 10 minutes before they’re done.
Serve with hummus, yoghurt mixed with a clove of crushed garlic, some salt, finely diced cucumber and lemon juice, some green leaves and pita breads.

What’s your favourite thing to do with mince?

Post-modern Annadama bread

Have you ever heard the story of Annadamma bread? I hadn’t until recently – and like most fables, it’s a grim tale (though not one of Grimm’s tales, if you know what I mean).
The story goes that it was invented by a hard-working farmer/fisherman/hunter in New England, who had married a hopeless cook. All hapless Anna could make was cornmeal mush (in my house that’s breakfast, but perhaps tastes have changed).
Anyway, one night, when the hero (?) of the piece got home from a long day’s farmin’ and fishin’ and huntin’, he was so enraged by finding another bowl of this waiting for him that he threw in some molasses and flour, muttering ‘Anna, damn her, ‘Anna damn her’ and put the resulting mixture in the oven.
Of course, it was a resounding success, and the moral of the story is, if you want something done right, do it yourself. Or something like that. I shudder to think what became of poor Anna.

Annadama Bread

Post-modern Annadamma bread
This is a very adapted and updated version of a recipe from my prized Time-Life Breads book. which is great on inspiration and history, but some of the recipes are just a bit weird. The original features four times as much molasses, which would render it too liquorice-ish (don’t say that too quickly) for my taste and the instructions seemed very long-winded and impractical. This is a post-modern version, in which no one mutters obscenities about the cook and the bread turns out perfectly. See, dreams do come true…

60g fine cornmeal/polenta
650ml water
3 Tbsp blackstrap molasses
3 Tbsp golden syrup
2 Tbsp butter
1 1/4 tsp salt
600g strong white flour
1 Tbsp dried yeast
a little extra polenta for dusting

Put the polenta in a small saucepan and gradually add 500ml of the water, stirring all the time. Set it over medium heat and bring to the boil, stirring often, until it is very thick (about 5-10 minutes). Remove from heat and add the molasses, golden syrup, salt and butter. Beat well and set aside to cool briefly.
Put the flour and yeast in a large bowl and stir well. When the polenta mixture is lukewarm, beat this, plus the remaining 150ml of water, into the flour until a soft, sticky dough forms. Cover the bowl with a cloth and let rest for 10 minutes, then turn the dough out onto an oiled worksurface.
Pick up one side of the dough, stretch it up, then bring it down again on top of itself. Repeat from the opposite corner. Do this from each opposing corner, then scrape the dough from your hands and walk away. Leave the dough to rest for 10 minutes, then come back and repeat the pick up and stretch process again. Then leave it again for 10 minutes. Do this process once more, then scoop the dough into a well-oiled large bowl. Cover with a cloth and leave in a warm place for about 45 minutes, until nearly doubled.
Heat the oven to 200C. Tip the dough out onto the bench and knock back gently, pressing it out into a rectangle. Gather up into a round ball, tucking the ends underneath and leave on a polenta-sprinkled, baking paper-lined tray for 25-35 minutes – if you poke it gently with your finger and the indentation stays hollow, it’s ready to go in the oven. Slash the top of the loaf – a cross-hatch pattern will get you the checkerboard crust in the photo above and sprinkle with a bit of polenta – then bake for about 40 minutes, or until the bottom sounds hollow when you tap it. Slide onto a rack to cool completely before slicing.

Elizabeth David’s potato bread

“Any human being possessed of sufficient gumption to track down a source of fresh yeast – it isn’t all that rare – and collected enough to remember to buy at the same time a pound or two of plain flour, get it home, taking a mixing bowl and a measuring jug from the cupboard, and read a few simple instructions can make a decent loaf of bread.”

So wrote Elizabeth David in Queen magazine in 1968, railing against the dearth of ‘decent bread’ then available for sale in England. For the most part, I agree with her about breadmaking being simple and enjoyable – which was why I was so disappointed when her Potato Bread didn’t turn out so well.

Elizabeth David’s potato bread

Bread is the theme for this month’s Random Recipes challenge and after a few off-piste experiments of my own lately (honestly, beetroot bread IS really good), I was thrilled to land on ‘At Elizabeth David’s Table’ when randomly selecting the recipe. This is a really beautiful book, compiled by Jill Norman (David’s long-time editor), a kind of Technicolour dreamcoat version of the original humble paperbacks.

However, I think the recipe for potato bread needs a little tweaking because it’s almost inedibly salty. (I’m sorry, Mrs David, but it is!) Being an obedient follower of both Elizabeth David and Dom of Belleau Kitchen, I stuck to the recipe very faithfully, but next time I’d halve the salt.

I won’t try to ape Elizabeth David’s inimitable recipe-writing style here, but here are the basics. She uses “a minimum of 20g salt” – I suggest 2 tsp is ample. Saltiness aside, it’s lovely bread.

125g mashed potato (about 1 medium potato), warm and dry
500g strong white flour
1 1/2 tsp dried yeast
20g salt
150ml warm water (use the potato cooking water, if you remember)
150ml warm milk

Put the flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl (or the bowl of a freestanding mixer). Add the potato, rubbing it in as if it were butter. Alternatively, use the paddle attachment on your mixer. Add the warm milk and water and mix well, then, knead until soft and springy (or use the dough hook). Grease the bowl with a little oil, then return the dough to it. Cover with a teatowel and leave in a warm place to prove until nearly doubled (David says this will take ‘rather longer’ than usual, possibly because the salt is doing its best to slow down the yeast).
Knock the dough back and knead lightly, then shape and put into a well-greased 1.5 litre loaf tin. Cover again with a damp cloth and let rise until the dough reaches the top of the tin (about 30-40 minutes).
Bake at 220C for about 40 minutes, ‘taking care not to let the crust get too browned or hard’.

Are you an Elizabeth David fan? Which is your favourite of her books?

Shocking pink beetroot bread

Do not adjust your screen: this bread really is THAT pink. I’ve been having a little bit of fun in the last couple of weeks, experimenting with adding vegetable purees to bread dough. I told the Small Girl I was going to do a magic trick and waved my ‘wand’ (a wooden spoon) over the teatowel-wrapped loaf while chanting the following:

Ala kazam, ala kajink

Make this bread purple-y pink!

As you can see, it worked a treat. Unfortunately she wasn’t that keen on eating it – and I admit, the colour is pretty arresting – but the bread is lovely. Here’s how to play the same trick at your house.

Beetroot Bread

Beetroot bread
Last year when I interviewed the lovely Ruth Pretty for work she showed me her prized collection of Time-Life ‘Foods of the World’ cookbooks and recommended that I look out for them. I think she cast a good spell over me, because I went through a particularly good period of finding gems in charity shops or on Trade Me immediately afterwards. One was a Time-Life Bread book, sadly not from the same edition as Ruth’s, but edited by Richard Olney and absolutely loaded with amazing recipes and bread knowledge. There’s a recipe dating from 1654 in the book that uses pumpkin, which inspired me to try beetroot. The 1654 recipe uses a lot of yeast and lets the bread rise for hours – I just adapted my normal recipe and it worked out fine. This makes a very springy, soft loaf. The beetroot taste is discernable, but not as shocking as the colour might suggest. A tablespoon of fennel seeds would be a nice addition, especially if you’re going to eat the bread with salmon and cream cheese.

500g beetroot, topped, tailed and halved
500g strong white flour
1 1/2 tsp dried yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
60-90ml warm water

Prepare the beetroot first. Boil it for 20-30 minutes, until easily pierced with a knife. Drain, then puree in a food processor or with a stick blender. Set aside to cool. You can do this well in advance, but the puree should be at room temperature when it comes to making the bread.
Mix the flour, yeast and salt together in a large bowl, then stir in the beetroot. Mix well, adding a little water, until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough. Cover the bowl with a cloth and let it rest for 10 minutes.

Lightly oil the worksurface, then tip the dough out onto it. Pick up one side of the dough, stretch it up, then bring it down again on top of itself. Repeat from the opposite corner. Do this another three times, then scrape the dough from your hands and walk away. Leave the dough to rest for 10 minutes, then come back and repeat the pick up and stretch process again. Then leave it again for 10 minutes. Do this process once more, then scoop the dough into a well-oiled large bowl. Cover with a cloth and leave in a warm place for about 45 minutes, until nearly doubled.
Heat the oven to 200C. Tip the dough out onto the bench and knock back gently, pressing it out into a rectangle. Roll this up into a large baguette-sort of shape, or shape to fit a large loaf tin. Leave on a lined tray (or in an oiled tin) for 25 minutes, then bake for 30-35 minutes. Tip onto a rack to cool completely before slicing.

Sophie’s sort-of Sicilian spaghetti

At the moment I’m deeply involved in The Leopard, the famous Italian novel that charts the decline of a noble Silician family during the late 19th century. At a really basic level it’s a bit like a (less violent) version of The Godfather, or The Sopranos. Maybe all life is like that. Anyway, apart from the epic themes of struggle and change and death there are some great descriptions of feasts eaten and given. It’s one of those books where you know it’s all going to end in tears, but you’re compelled to keep reading. I highly recommend it.

Sicilian spaghetti
I made this on Friday night, having opened the pantry and fridge and thought: ‘I only went shopping yesterday, why is there nothing to eat?’ It’s a really good storecupboard sort of dinner and is child-friendly too, especially if your child has a thing for dried fruit, tuna and nuts. I watched Sophie Grigson make it on TV once, about 15 years ago, and I’ve been making it ever since even though I’ve long since lost the notes I made of whatever quantities she used. This is how I made it on Friday night and it was a huge success.

1 red onion, finely chopped
3 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 x 180g tin of good quality tuna in olive oil
two handfuls of raisins or currants
two handfuls of pine nuts, toasted (I use roughly chopped toasted almonds instead, or sunflower seeds if we are especially poor)
1 cup black olives, stoned
a generous amount of fresh parsley, finely chopped
extra virgin olive oil
enough spaghetti for three people – for us that’s about 250-300g)

Put the onion and red wine vinegar in a small bowl and leave to steep while you get on with organising everything else. Put the water on to boil for the pasta, and add everything except the spaghetti to the onion mixture. Toss together, add a slosh of olive oil and season to taste.
Cook the spaghetti until it is al dente and drain, then toss it through the sauce. Take a block of Parmesan to the table and let diners add it as they wish. Threaten any non-eaters with a horse’s head in their bed. Serves three.