Woodbridge is home to Britain’s Best Bakery (from a recent TV series), but as we found out, also a contender for Britain’s worst coffee.
We chose a walk from the Suffolk Coast & Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty guide.
It started out by taking us past the marina and boatyards. It wasn’t foggy, as the pictures may suggest, but a day when sand from the Sahara blew across East Anglia!
We’ve tried eggs and we’ve tried chicken. Both have been successful, both have produced interesting results not readily obtainable by other methods. But neither prompted me to say, “You must buy a sous vide machine, if only for this”.
But sous vide steak is a game-changer. This is why sous vide is so worthwhile:
For a second try at sous vide cooking, I thought we’d have a go at some chicken thighs. I had to go to an evening meeting, but still wanted a late supper. It was an opportunity to show one of the proclaimed advantages of sous vide cooking, which is to do most of the prep well in advance, so that finishing is just a matter of minutes.
This was much more successful than my first experiment with eggs.
It’s been a long time coming, but the Sansaire sous vide circulator, launched last September on Kickstarter has finally shipped.
Unlike self-contained sous vide machines, which are very bulky, the Sansaire simply clips to the side of a large deep pan or plastic container, and keeps the water at a very precise temperature. It’s neat, and quite elegant:
Happy New Year everyone!
Around this time of year, as part of our family visits, we’ve frequently been to see my sister and her husband. Rolf is Swedish, and is an excellent cook. His yuletide lunch traditionally includes julskinka, the Swedish Christmas ham, and ärtsoppa, the celebrated Swedish yellow pea soup.
They’ve moved to the west country, so are too far away for a casual visit, but they kindly gave us a beautiful julskinka, which was the centrepiece of a post-Christmas lunch party. We still have some left, so for New Year’s Eve we thought it would be in the spirit of things to re-create something of the flavour of Rolf’s Swedish cooking.
Posted in Cooking
Tagged Ankarsrum Assistent, ärtsoppa, julskinka, rye sourdough bread, Swedish yellow pea soup
In the run up to Christmas, I finally got around to sorting out my much-loved Gaggia Classic espresso machine.
It’s a gross indulgence, I know, but I’ve got a fabulous new mixer as an early birthday present!
It’s an Ankarsrum Assistent, aka in different times and places a Verona, Magic Mill, Electrolux Assistent, or a DLX.
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Posted in Cooking
Tagged Ankarsrum Assistent, bread making, Electrolux Assistent, Electrolux DLX, Magic Mill, Verona
We went to St Albans Farmers’ Market on 10th November, Remembrance Sunday. We joined the crowd for the Remembrance Day parade. These are always moving occasions, with everyone behaving properly. No-one broke the silence.
Before and after the Phoenix Baking School, that is.
To accentuate the positive, I’ll start with the “after”. The second attempt after Aidan Chapman’s course was pretty successful:
We’ve had the first pictures of our adopted piglet:
© Karen Nethercott @Samphireshop 2013
We’ve subscribed to the My Little Porkie scheme run by the Karen Nethercott at the very wonderful Samphire.
So in around 6 or 7 months’ time, we’ll be taking delivery of quite a lot of meat, and making bacon, sausages, and paté. And maybe the odd pork pie, although I doubt they’ll reach the standard of Samphire’s delicious offerings.
I’ve toyed with the idea of converting our rarely-used barbeque into a smoker. This might just be the incentive to do it.
Via Twitter, I’ve just seen Kev Marriott’s blog, which has given us a degree of confidence in the project! If our experience is as good as Kev’s obviously was, we’ll be very happy.
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