Recipes
Bacon sausage bread
If you like a bacon sandwich and/or a sausage sandwich what better idea than combining the two in a bread as Niamh Shields has done in her Bacon: The Cookbook. Stroke of genius!
"Bacon is as intrinsic to Irish food culture as potatoes, black pudding and Irish stew" writes Niamh, who blogs as Eat Like a Girl. "Traditionally, an Irish family would have a pig that they would raise for the year. That pig would then provide meat for the following year. In Ireland, a whole pig could be and was cured as bacon so that it could be preserved for longer. This is less typical now, but joints of bacon for boiling and roasting, bacon chops and bacon ribs are still common and Bacon and Cabbage is a core national dish that everyone loves. Bacon is so much more than a rasher, or streaky bacon. Although we love those too.
"This is one of my favourite recipes in the book and you absolutely need to make it. A soft bread dough, butter or lard and egg enriched with a little milk, so like a porky brioche but not as sweet and rich. You can use butter or lard, and if you have some bacon fat to hand, absolutely mix that in.
The bread is made in a more or less typical way, and proved twice. The second time you prove it is after you shape it as a sausage-and-bacon braid. Brushed with egg wash before baking, it gets a lovely bronze sheen.
For special occasions, double up the amounts and shape it into a circle. During the festive season you can fashion a bow of crisp-fried sage leaves and redcurrant berries and you have a Bacon Sausage Bread Wreath.
Bacon Sausage Bread
Makes: 8 slices
For the bread dough:
330g (11½ oz) bread flour
5g salt
100g (3½ oz) room temperature butter or lard
7g (¼ oz) fast-action yeast
3 large eggs
50ml (2fl oz) milk
For the bacon and sausage filling:
15g (½ oz)/1 tbsp butter
1 red onion, finely chopped
400g (14 oz) sausage meat (or the equivalent in sausages with the meat removed from the skins)
1 tbsp fresh sage, finely chopped
6 slices smoked streaky bacon
1 egg for egg wash
sage leaves, to serve (optional – they look great and are very tasty too)
METHOD
1. Start by preparing your bread dough, using either a dough hook or by hand. It is important that your lard or butter is at room temperature, and therefore soft and easy to work with. This makes it much easier to mix.
USING A MIXER WITH A DOUGH HOOK: Put all of the ingredients for the bread dough in your mixing bowl and mix at a low speed until it has formed a dough. If it feels sticky add a little more flour, a tablespoon should do it, but add more if you need to, slowly and mixing well every time. When it is no longer sticky but before it is dry and flaky, it is good. If it feels too dry, add a tablespoon of milk at a time (flours vary so both of these things can happen). Continue to knead with the dough hook for 5–6 minutes until the texture is no longer rough and it has an elastic quality.
BY HAND: the same as above but it takes longer to knead (approximately 10 minutes).
2. Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and allow the dough to double in size in the warmest part of your kitchen or in your airing cupboard. This will be faster in the summer and slow in the winter; I usually put it near a radiator in the winter to help push it along. This proving stage usually takes an hour to an hour and a half.
3. Prepare your bacon and sausage filling. Melt the butter in a frying pan over a low heat and gently sauté the finely chopped red onion in it for about 10–15 minutes until soft, stirring occasionally. Allow to cool and combine with the sausage meat and sage and mix well with your hands.
4. When the dough has doubled in size, knock it back by punching the air out of it and allow it to settle for 5 minutes. Remove the dough from the bowl to a floured board and divide into three equal amounts. Roll into sausage shapes roughly twice the length of one of your smoked streaky bacon strips and just as wide. Flatten each log so that the width doubles and lay two strips of bacon on each so that the surface is covered with bacon from top to bottom. Now divide the sausage meat mixture into 3 and place the sausage meat on top of the bacon in a strip. Pull the dough up around the bacon and sausage meat gently and press it closed as best as you can and lay the three strips next to each other. Bread dough can take it, don't worry.
5. Join the three strips of dough together at the top and pinch them together so that they all originate in the same place. Tuck the ends underneath what will become your loaf, and again, press them firmly underneath, without squashing the top, aiming to hide the messy bits and secure the braid. Braid the three strips by pulling the outside strand over the centre one, and repeating with the other side until you have a braid. These look best if done a little tightly. Join the ends as neatly as you can, and tuck underneath, just as you did the start. Place on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and allow to sit at room temperature while you preheat the oven.
6. Preheat the oven to 200°C/180° Fan (400°F). Beat the egg and gently brush the surface of the braided bread with it. Bake your bread for approximately 25 minutes until golden brown. Best eaten warm and the leftovers (if any!) make a terrific French toast.
What to drink: Got to be a good strong cup of breakfast tea IMO!
All content copyright Niamh Shields from Bacon the Cookbook
Flourless Dark Chocolate Cake with Turkish Delight, Halva & Dates
If you're looking for a cake to bake for Mother's Day - or any other special occasion - I can't think of a more glamourous recipe than this one which comes from one of my favourite cookbooks of 2020, Claire Thomson's brilliant Home Cookery Year.
"Truly a great cake, fudgy and moist" enthuses Claire. "The egg whites are whipped as for a meringue, then folded through with chunks of Turkish delight, pieces of halva, chopped dates and dark chocolate. Cardamom works its characteristic and ethereal magic with all of these ingredients.
SERVES 8–10
6 egg whites
200g (7oz) caster (superfine) sugar
125g (4½oz) ground almonds
¼ tsp ground green cardamom seeds
pinch of salt
300g (10½oz) halva, crumbled or chopped into small pieces
200g (7oz) Turkish delight, ½ finely chopped, ½ chopped slightly bigger to decorate
150g (5½oz) dried pitted dates, finely chopped
200g (7oz) 70% dark (bittersweet) chocolate, finely chopped
TO DECORATE
100ml (3½fl oz) double (heavy) cream
150g (5½oz) 70% dark (bittersweet) chocolate, finely chopped
30g (1oz) pistachios, roughly chopped
rose petals, optional
Preheat the oven to 170°C/150°C fan/325°F/Gas Mark 3.
Grease and line a 24cm (9½in) springform cake tin with baking paper.
Using an electric stand mixer fitted with the whisk, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Gradually add the sugar, beating continuously, then continue to beat for 5 minutes, until you have a thick and glossy meringue.
Fold in the ground almonds, cardamom, and pinch of salt, then add the halva and the finely chopped Turkish delight. Next, add the dates and finally the chocolate.
Stir briefly until just combined. Spoon into the prepared cake tin and bake for 1 hour–1 hour 10 minutes, until the cake is set and firm to the touch (it will still be moist in the centre, so a skewer will not come out clean).
Cover with a loose square of foil if the cake catches too much before it’s ready.
To decorate, first make a ganache. Pour the cream into a saucepan and place over a high heat. Bring to a boil, then remove from the heat. Little by little (but still fairly rapidly), whisk in the chocolate, so that the cream doesn’t cool too much and will melt all the chocolate.
Once all the chocolate has melted, allow the ganache to cool for 10 or so minutes in the pan, by which time it will stiffen a little to a thick pouring consistency.
Transfer the cooled cake to a large serving plate and pour over the chocolate ganache, allowing it to drip down the sides.
Decorate with the chopped pistachios and the remaining Turkish delight. Some fresh rose petals will add extra va-va-voom, if you have them.
What to drink: I'd be perfectly happy to drink coffee or tea with this cake but given you could serve it as a dessert you might want a sweet wine with it. Andrew Quady's Elysium black muscat, an exotically scented sweet red would be perfect or possibly a well-chilled glass of pink port.
From Home Cookery Year by Claire Thomson (Quadrille) Photography: Sam Folan. You can follow Claire on Instagram at 5oclockapron
Max’s (well, actually Felicity’s) chocolate pots
One of the things that’s compensated for not being able to go to restaurants, as I explained here, is cooking with friends on Zoom.
With one of the groups I hang out with, however, we all cook individually but choose a theme. Last week it was French bistro food a tribute to Bar Buvette, a much-loved Bristol natural wine bar and restaurant that closed last year and which we all very much miss.
They used to have an absolutely awesome chocolate mousse on the menu which a number of us recreated. We thought it came from Max (Ososki) the owner but turns out it was my Guardian colleague Felicity Cloake’s.
Here’s Max’s version as written on a scrap of paper. You can find Felicity’s version, with an account of why she made it that way, on the Guardian website.
Max's chocolate pots (before we discovered they were Felicity's)
Serves 6
250ml whipping cream
100ml whole milk
150g dark 70% chocolate
40g dark muscovado sugar
3 fresh organic egg yolks
Simmer cream and milk
Add choc to cream/milk
Let sit for a minute then whisk vigorously until mixed
Leave to cool for about 10 minutes
Whisk yolks and sugar until voluminous
Pour chocolate over yolks and sugar and mix in well
Pour into coffee cups or ramekins, tapping each one to remove air bubbles
Cover and refrigerate
Serve with creme fraiche
So you see, really easy. And insanely delicious. Trust me.
What to drink: I know I’m an advocate of pairing wine with everything but honestly I wouldn’t in this case. Maybe a black coffee. Or a brandy if you’re feeling particularly indulgent.
Max and her partner Peter Taylor run the wonderful Auberge de Chassignolles in the Auvergne which hopefully will be up and running again before too long.
Penne in walnut sauce
If you've run through your pasta sauce repertoire several times during lockdown try this delicious penne in salsa di noci (penne in walnut sauce) from Christine Smallwood's lovely new book Italy: The World Vegetarian. It's really simple - as she says basically a walnut pesto.
Christine writes: Walnuts are found throughout Italy, as are beautiful bowls and other wooden objects made from their tree’s wood. The nuts are found in various dishes and the first pasta I came across with a walnut sauce was a ricotta-filled ravioli, but linguine, spaghetti and penne (as here) are all good choices, too.
A walnut sauce is often made with cream, but I like it as more of a pesto, albeit with walnuts and parsley instead of pine nuts and basil. Some people blanch their walnuts to remove the papery skin, but it is not essential.
Penne in Salsa di Noci
SERVES 4
NOTE: THIS RECIPE CONTAINS NUTS
300g shelled walnuts, roughly chopped
30g vegetarian Italian hard cheese, finely grated
20g parsley
½ garlic clove
1 teaspoon salt, plus extra to season
a pinch of black pepper, plus extra to season
about 8 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra to serve
350g penne pasta
Reserve a small quantity of the chopped walnuts for garnish. Put the remainder, along with the cheese, parsley, garlic and salt and pepper in a blender or food processor. Blitz to combine. Add enough oil to make quite a loose sauce. Transfer the sauce to a pan large enough to hold the cooked pasta and set aside.
Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and add the penne. Cook according to the packet instructions until just al dente. Reserve a few spoonfuls of the cooking water, then drain. (I found I needed quite a bit to loosen the sauce so keep back at least half a cup (about 125ml)
Loosen the walnut sauce with a little of the reserved pasta cooking water and adjust the seasoning, if necessary. Add the pasta to the pan with the sauce and stir to coat. Serve immediately sprinkled with an extra drizzle of olive oil and a few sprinkled chopped walnuts.
What to drink: You don't want anything too obviously fruity for this dish - a dry Italian white like a Soave, Orvieto or Vernaccia di San Gimignano would be ideal and, having tasted it, it would also go with an orange or skin contact wine) I also like the idea of drinking a savagnin or Jura chardonnay with it but haven't tried it
Extracted from Italy: The World Vegetarian by Christine Smallwood (Bloomsbury Absolute, £20). Photography by Mike Cooper.
A refreshing punch for a New Year's Day brunch
A fresh, zesty citrus-based punch that’s packed with vitamin C. It obviously tastes best if you squeeze the fruit yourself but bought freshly squeezed juice is fine if you’re short of time.
Serves 4-6
250ml freshly squeezed orange juice (about 4 oranges)
150ml freshly squeezed pink grapefruit juice (1-2 grapefruit)
250ml chilled organic lemon drink (like Duchy Original's Lemon Refresher or Luscombe Sicilian lemon drink) or traditional lemonade
Slices of orange and lemon to decorate
Simply pour the orange and lemon juice into a jug, top up with the lemon refresher and stir well. Add a few slices of orange and lemon to the jug and serve.
* If you have some Grand Marnier add a tablespoon - no more! Of course it no longer makes it non-alcoholic but it does make the punch extra-delicious.
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