Best Bread Ever (and Butternut Squash Soup)

This is quite possibly the best homemade bread recipe, ever.

I think I would be able to sell this in the Cambridge market square.

In 2006, Mark Bitmann aka The Minimalist of the New York Times published a recipe for No Knead Bread by master baker Jim Lahey. Apparently it created an enormous amount of hype amongst foodbloggers worldwide...

So I may be 6 years late to the party, but now it's my turn to jump on the No Knead bandwagon. This recipe is amazing! I love the fact that the method is so simple, the ingredients don't have to be weighed out precisely, and most of all, the end product looks and tastes so good.

Since it's been documented everywhere, I'll be brief with the recipe. For more details, check out the original article here, the video here, and the ever so slight modification that I used here.

No Knead Bread

Ingredients:
3 cups flour (I used bread flour - it has a high protein content)
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 tsp regular instant yeast
1 tsp salt

1. Add flour, yeast and salt to a bowl and give it a swirl to mix. Add the water and mix until roughly combined. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for 12-18 hrs.
It will look like a shaggy mess - this is fine.

2. At this stage, the mixture will have grown and be very soft and bubbly. Move onto a floured surface and bring the edges into the centre. Flip over onto a floured cotton towel (so that the side with the gathered folds is at the bottom). Place towel with dough into a bowl and let rest for 2 hrs.

3. After waiting 1.5 hrs, place a heavy pot into the oven and heat to 220-230 deg C. When the 2 hr rise is over, throw the dough from the towel into the superhot pot, (hopefully the folded side will now be back on top). Immediately put the lid on the pot and put back in oven for 30 mins. After that, take the lid off and bake for another 15 mins or until browned nicely.

In summary, you dump stuff in a bowl, leave it, leave it some more, dump it into a pot and bake it. Done. How much easier could it be? I've decided to make this bread on a fortnightly basis at least, starting the dough on Saturday night, and baking on Sunday night so that I have fresh bread for the start of the working week!

Whilst I'm at it, here's a recipe for butternut squash soup we made the other day:

Butternut Squash Soup

Ingredients:
2 medium-sized butternut squash
2 carrots and 2 onions chopped finely
300 mL double cream
1 chicken stock cube
random herb/spice assortment: nutmeg, sage, thyme (salt and pepper)

Fry carrots and onions in olive oil and/or butter over medium heat until soft. Then add chopped chunks of the squash, together with the nutmeg, sage and thyme. Fry for 10 mins or so, until the squash starts to soften.

Add enough water to just about cover the squash pieces, throw in the stock cube and boil for 30-40 mins or until squash is soft.

Blend the whole mixture with a stick blender, then mix in the cream. Salt/pepper to taste. Serve topped with some cracked black pepper and a bit of cream, or with some freshly baked bread!

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First blog post in months - finally found the motivation thanks to this bread. I've been bread crazy lately... feels more like biochemistry than normal cooking, with all the talk about % hydration and gluten. So many interesting factors, actually it might be more like methodology, optimising a reaction. Speaking of optimising, I still haven't nailed Focaccia Pugliese despite several attempts. I think I have to increase the hydration significantly.

Hope you're all well!

Bibimbap House, Cambridge

Follow me on Twitter! https://twitter.com/HungrytheAte

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Pork Bulgogi Bibimbap (£9.50)

When I wrote about going to Little Seoul a while back, I had incorrectly thought that it was the only Korean restaurant in Cambridge. In fact, there's another restaurant on Mill Rd with an interesting approach to Korean food...

N and I decided to pay Bibimbap house a visit for lunch recently, and were pleasantly surprised to find only one kind of item on the menu - Bibimbap! (not surprisingly) In some way, I almost prefer a restaurant that does not offer many options because it means they have confidence in whatever it is they specialise in serving.

Bibimbap House only do 7 different kinds of bibimbap, from your standard bulgogi bibimbap to japchae bibimbap and even the infamous ham (read: spam) and kimchi bibimbap.

We order the regular bulgogi bibimbap and the pork bulgogi bibimbap which both come as a nice set with miso soup and two of my much beloved sides. Unfortunately, they weren't my favourite sides - a mash potato salad and some vegetables - I'd much prefer some kimchi, or those fish cakes, or the jelly things, or those marinated potatoes... yum yum. I should probably learn their names.

The bibimbap itself was tasty and sizzling hot, full of gochujang goodness, although the rather large looking bowl was actually deceptively shallow. I very much liked the two bulgogi types, more watery than I'm used to at other Korean restaurants and not so sickeningly sweet, which made it better than usual!

And to top it all off, (presumably) the son of one of the chefs was at the table next to us, wolfing down a meal himself whilst playing his DS.

Yes, I like this place.

Bibimbap House
60 Mill Road, Cambridge, CB1 2AS
01223 506800

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Simple Doughnut Balls!

Hi I'm Francis, the host of this show, "Cooking with Dog".

It's not what you think.

Today, we are going to prepare simple "doughnut holes" following a youtube recipe from Francis.

Sift 100 g of plain flour and 2 tsp of baking powder into a bowl.

In a separate bowl, whisk 1 egg, 2 tbsp brown sugar, roughly 1/4 cup milk and 1 tbsp melted butter. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and mix to form a batter.

The milk/flour ratio is important - you can adjust it so the batter is liquid enough to be mixable, but not runny.

(I tried this once with the 2 tbsp milk in the original recipe and ended up with what looked like dry chicken nuggets...)

Heat oil to 170 deg C. Drop a little bit of batter into the oil - it is the right temperature if it bubbles but not too vigorously. When ready, take a half spoonful of batter and scrape it into the oil to form small balls.

A little misshapen sometmies - the batter was slightly too runny.

Once the dough balls have grown in size and are browned on the outside (a few minutes), leave them to cool on a rack.

These doughnut balls are delicious when still warm and crisp on the outside. Eat as many as you like at this stage - they taste surprisingly like those asian fried dough things "haam jim beng???" (咸煎饼) or even "you tiao".

Once cooled completely, place them in a plastic bag and shake together with your desired coating (sugar, cinnamon, matcha etc.)

Identify the magazines for 10 points.

Serve with your favourite ice-cream!

Matcha doughnuts with black sesame ice-cream.

For a black sesame ice-cream recipe, it was basically the same as my green tea ice cream recipe, except with ground toasted black sesame seeds.

Trinity BA Feast, Michaelmas 2011

Good old Harry has his Christmas pants trousers on this evening...

BA Feast - the highlight of the Trinity culinary term. Five courses, sparkling cocktails in the Master's Lodge, ample wine, £22. Really £22??? 

I've always been sceptical about the cost of BA Feast, given that a normal Trinity BA formal costs £8.25. Does the food quality and overall experience really justify a more than doubling in the price? At my first ever BA feast, I decided to find out for myself.

Trinity College engraved knives... I'd seen the TCK silver cutlery, but this was new to me.

Starting with a collection of prosecco-based cocktails in the Master's Lodge was not a bad start at all - bucks fizz, bellinis and kir royale all went down well (bar a rather major scheduling error, ahem).

Fennel veloute (amuse bouche)

Upon arriving in hall, first off the bat was the amuse bouche of fennel veloute, served in (my favourite) charming little blue and gold Trinity coffee cups. Whilst there were claims of "this just tastes like chicken" from some, the soup was a very warm welcome opener after braving the cold Cambridge winter weather outside. Quite mild, very light on the fennel to be honest, but definitely pleasant and almost reassuring.

Tuna carpaccio

The starter was a tuna carpaccio - startingly large, beautifully thin pink slices layered on the plate topped with a Trinity's standard leafy garnish thing. I don't think this is standard for carpaccio, but the tuna was lightly seared at the edges with a herb/salt/pepper crust which worked really well. I was expecting more lemon and oil marinade, but actually the fish on it's own was great quality and best enjoyed as is! A rarity for Cambridge...

Beef wellington ; Honeyed baby carrots, roast kumara, green beans

For main course was beef wellington, which I've actually never had before. The meat was tender enough, perhaps slightly too well done, although with differing degrees of cooked-ness, depending on which cut you got. Still pretty delicious, although from all reports, it was more tender last year and with a more significant layer of pâté.

Molten chocolate souffle with strawberries and whipped cream

Inspired by the Shok's doppleganger, I decided to put molten chocolate souffle on the menu for dessert! Nitpicking slightly, the centre could have been even more molten, but I think the kitchens did a great job here, especially having to make 110 of these in one sitting.

After a special request to the Catering department, we managed to get a pretty nice selection for the cheese course. Of special note was the Saint-Marcellin cheese which was very mild but had a beautifully creamy texture almost like goats cheese. General consensus was that the black cheese platters were most impressive!

And to finish, coffee and chocolate truffles - definitely beats the regular chocolate mints they provide at regular formals.

Wow. Whilst the regular BA formals strike me as better value for money, the feast was definitely worth the money we paid for it. One major contributing factor was the atmosphere of the dinner - with a significantly lower number of people (110 vs 190), it really felt far more comfortable and relaxed, with no rush or competition for food and wine.

Definitely a great night, and still a little tipsy whilst writing this!