Meatfree Monday – Seed and grain bread for egg mayonnaise sandwiches

The Bear was about to set off on his travels again and would be getting up at some ridiculous time in the morning so he could get to the airport. What that means is that he doesn’t really feel like eating too early in the morning and would rather have something to eat at a more normal time.

What THAT means is that he is loitering around an airport and picking at stuff. Now I’m sure that what is served at outlets or in the Business Lounge will meet with all Food Health guidelines… it just doesn’t meet with mine. Obviously, food produced on an industrial scale, for sale at some point in the future is going to be packed with preservatives or dodgy fats that we don’t want and would never have in freshly made food. He knows not to risk my wrath by buying a plastic wrapped muffin or going to a fast food outlet for a burger and he does try to get something looking vaguely healthy but the fact remains, he has to eat at some point while he’s travelling. He could try looking a sandwiches but, even there, there are problems.

A simple egg sandwich, for example, will be made with bread that has preservatives, the eggs will probably not be free range (as I’m sure they would be plastering that fact all over their packaging), they are likely to be using margarine instead of butter and goodness knows just when they boiled the eggs.

So I decided to make sure he could have something to eat that he could carry easily, would taste nice and be good for him.

His favourite sandwich is an egg mayonnaise one so I decided to do that.

First I needed to make good bread and as he is particularly fond of seeded or granary loaves, I decided that would be just the thing to bake.

I got a packet of Allinson’s Seed and Grain Bread Flour, which is white flour with wheat and barley flakes, kibbled rye, sunflower seeds, millet and linseed. Healthy, tasty, nutritious and perfect to make into a lovely sandwich.

There was a recipe on the back that looked good and I thought I would follow that as I had never used that flour blend before. It looked quick enough, too.

First thing was to preheat the oven to 230 degrees C/450 degrees F, whilst measuring out 650g/1lb 7 oz of the flour, 10 g/2 tsp of salt, 5g/1 tsp sugar and a 7g sachet of yeast.

That was mixed together first to get an even distribution of all the dry ingredients, then 15g/ ½ tsp of soft butter or 15 ml/1 tbsp of vegetable oil was rubbed through.

400ml/ 14 fl oz of warm water was added and mix to make a soft dough.

The recipe says to knead it for ten minutes on a floured surface – I did it in the mixer with a dough hook and added extra flour to get it to come together.

Well I did give it a knead myself…just to show willing and besides I like to feel the dough and by feeling you can judge when it is properly ready.

Look at how the dough looks now… smooth and bouncy. If you’ve ever patted a baby’s bottom.. well that’s what it should feel like!

It had to be put in a greased tin (they suggested two 1lb loaf tins but as I wanted it for sandwiches I put it in a long 2lb tin

and covered it with a tea towel for 30 minutes until it doubled in size.

Into the hot oven it went for half an hour or so

Perfect. When I knocked the bottom it sounded hollow which means it had cooked properly.

It looked and smelled delicious. We might have shared the end crust with some butter on…. just for checking purposes you understand.

The next thing was the filling. I always use free-range eggs and buy these from our local farm shop so I know exactly where they come from and just how fresh they are.

Boil them for four minutes then immediately tip away the boiling water and start filling the pan with cold water because otherwise you get that horrid black ring round the eggs and that terrible sulpherous smell.

I like the eggs to look like this – mainly cooked but with just a hint of soft yolk.

The eggs were  chopped then two slender spring onions are also chopped and added. I wish we still had some chives left but with Autumn rapidly approaching they are all gone now.

A tablespoon of Hellmann’s Mayonnaise and a pinch of salt go in next (Hellmann’s switched their production to free range eggs so that’s good, otherwise I would have had to make my own, which I have to say is really easy…. but this was easier!)

White pepper enhances the egg mayonnaise mix really well,  so a shake or two was added to taste.

And that was it for the afternoon. I was going to get up early the next morning and make the sandwiches. The egg mix went into a lidded box in the fridge and the bread was put to one side.

Next morning, at around 5.30 am, I got up to sort things out. The bread cut well and is ideal for sandwiches. It was a good even texture and the seeds and grains made it slightly dense, which is a good thing for a sandwich. You need the bread to hold together and not collapse, spilling your filling everywhere. Especially when the person about to eat it is in a business suit… This might have happened on another occasion.  not this time, though. That bread looked like a winner in the samdwich stakes.

It’s important to spread the bread with butter as this makes a waterproof layer and stops the filling seeping through. And butter is important because, well, it just is. I believe in butter and I do not believe that some weird kind of vegetable fat with emulsifiers added to it could possible make anyone believe it wasn’t butter.

Butter is cream shaken up until it turns to butter. A pinch of salt can be added but that’s all. No chemicals, no E numbers. Nothing but creamy milk and salt. Healthy, that is, I’m sure of it. Anyway, we don’t have any margarine or spread or whatever it is called. Butter it is and that’s an end to it.

Delicious. And I always make sure I spread to the edges. I hate it when you get a sandwich and there’s just a tiny dot of the filling in the middle.

Sliced in two so it’s easy to eat

And wrapped in a sandwich bag so he can throw it away afterwards.

So, the Bear left for some other country and I went back to bed, happy knowing that he would have something to eat without having to buy an overpriced, low quality sandwich.

Was it worth it? Yes, it was.

Making the bread took quarter of an hour mixing and kneading. The bag of flour cost less than £1 and there’s still a well over a quarter left. What I used made a 2lb loaf so there’s plenty left for sandwiches for me for work. I suppose the two slices I cut for him would work out at maybe 15 or 20p. The eggs cost £1.65 for a half dozen, but what I used on his sandwich was probably less than one egg so there’s another 28p. Maybe adding in 10p for the other ingredients and you have a perfect additive free sandwich for 58p or thereabouts. Even if you add in 20p for using the oven it is still incredibly cheap when you consider that in an airport the average cost of a sandwich is £2.80. And if you wanted decent bread and free range eggs? That would be another £1 or so added onto it.

For all of you who are wary of making bread (and you know who you are) this was a simple, quick and very tasty loaf. It saves an incredible amount of money for what is really very little work.

Go on – get baking!

Beans and Egg on Toast – the Bear’s favourite homecoming meal.

The Bear travels a lot.

All over the world. And wherever he travels  he eats. He has a great time sampling different foods and styles of cooking but whenever he gets back from his travels he always asks for one thing in particular. I would and could cook him anything at all, no matter how involved or time consuming, because I am so pleased that he is home again….. and all he ever wants is his favourite.

I think it happens to us all when you have been away from home for too long. All you want is something that is inextricably tied to memories of home, something that can only be made at home… you’d never be able to get a restaurant to make it for you. They could try but they’d never get it right. Restaurants are fine… they are great in some cases but eating out every night? After a while you need something simple. Once when I had been travelling round the south of India for weeks, eating the most delicious food and learning to make dal, I was preparing to come home and all I could think about was my mother’s cooking.  In an internet cafe in Bangalore (this was only a few years ago but BlackBerry’s weren’t on the market yet) I emailed work and asked the lovely Lolly to phone my Mum and tell her I was on my way back and to please make fish pie for my homecoming! And when I eventually got back, there it was, delicious and perfect and exactly what I needed after so long away.

Homecoming food should be comfort food. It should make you feel surrounded with love. It shouldn’t be – it can’t be – challenging, it has to be familiar.

So that’s what he gets.

And what is it? It’s beans on toast with a fried egg. But, like the advert says, it’s not just ANY beans on toast with a fried egg… it’s the Bear’s Beans on toast with a fried egg!

There are specific ingredients, though, that make this special. It wouldn’t be the same if I used supermarket bread, no matter what premium range it came from. It wouldn’t be the same if I used any old beans and just plonked them on the toast. And it certainly wouldn’t be the same if I used ordinary eggs and just fried them any old way.

The bread has to be made by me and it has to be No-Knead Bread because that not only tastes good but it has the perfect texture. It doesn’t dissolve when you pour the beans over it. Go and follow that link for a step by step look at making it. I have to start it the day before I need it but that’s good, when I start the bread I know my Bear will be home soon.

Those eggs? They are the gorgeous free range eggs from our local farm shop. Free range makes such a difference and the quality of their eggs reflects this. They are large with golden yolks and taste simply delicious.

And the beans? Well, they just HAVE to be Heinz.

So far so good.

And now to start it. The thing about beans is that they can – even the best of them – be a bit watery. We don’t like that. We like them heated gently and slowly till they become rich and thick.

….. and with a knob of butter added to them to make them taste even better.

The bread has to be cut thick, but not too thick and toasted

…..before being spread with salted Normandy butter

…. and piled high with beans. See how thick they are? How tasty they are too…..

The eggs are cooked in oil with some chilli oil poured in (ohhhh… how good that makes the eggs taste. Just a bit of a bite to them!)

And then you put the eggs on top.

It really is delicious. The yolk spills out and mixes with the beans and the toast mops up all the delicious dribbles.

It still needs just one extra thing though for the ultimate, homecoming comfort food….Heinz tomato sauce……

And that’s why you can’t get that in a restaurant. 

There are so many specifics and the biggest of them all is that the cook has to make a tomato sauce heart over the top.

Perfect homecoming food that says welcome back and come on in, you’ve been missed.

Sabrina cracks an egg scandal!

One of the joys of blogging (both writing and reading) is that you get to know so many people and learn so much about food and recipes; triumphs and disasters and the passions that drive people to cook. Blogging provides us with a way to communicate with each other. We can share in what we cook and eat and also what we think.

One of the things I am most passionate about is the use of good ingredients. I buy and use my vegetables as I need them, to make sure they are fresh and local whenever possible; if I eat meat then it has to be from an animal that has been treated well; if I use eggs then they have to be free range. I would never knowingly use battery farmed eggs – I have seen what a battery farm does to hens and it is cruel and disgusting. I love getting my eggs from our local farm and I can always see and taste the difference – the yolks are large and golden and the whites are clear. Whatever I make from them reflects the quality of the eggs.

 The eggs may be different sizes

Some of them are real whoppers… but they are always fresh and they are always free range.

Now, because I cook so much, I rarely buy anything that is ready made. When I do, it is from premium ranges and I expect, from a premium range, that they will be using premium products. I do not expect to find that battery hen eggs have been used in there. I normally make my own mayonnaise but when I don’t I use Hellman’s – delicious and smooth Hellman’s… made with free range eggs.

So it can be done and it can be done on a very large scale… goodness knows how many millions of gallons of mayonnaise are made by Hellman’s but they manage it. A mainstream product using free range eggs. Well done, Hellman’s.

It was, therefore, a huge surprise to read my friend Sabrina’s blog  (she of the famous and delicious Sabrina’s Chicken) and see that she has discovered that Gü, makers of so-called premium chocolate puddings, were using battery hen eggs in up to 90% of their puddings. These are puddings that promote themselves as top end luxury products. You expect the best – you certainly pay the best prices for them. You do not expect to find they are using cheap eggs from hens crammed in cages, producing eggs till they die, still in their cage. Why don’t they make this clear? This lack of transparency makes me look at them in a new light. No longer a high quality company with high quality products… but a disappointing sham.

Please follow this link to Sabrina’s Passions and read about her battle to get Gü to admit they are using battery eggs. I suppose the fact they are owned by a major battery egg producer might have something to do with it……

And just remember – just because something promotes itself as a premium product doesn’t mean they are following through with premium ingredients.

This is all about choice – if you don’t mind where your ingredients come from then don’t look any further. I choose to look and explore for the best option and it is disingenuous of  Gü to try and hide the facts.

The moral of this? Always read the ingredient list if you buy something ready made… or better still? Make it yourself!

Cheese and chorizo omelette…. Or, supper from scraps

It was half way through the working week and it felt like it should be the end of the week. I got in from work, too tired to go to the supermarket on the way back  and was desperately craving something tasty and filling to eat. Looking around the kitchen I found various bits… some ends of cheese, a couple of limp looking spring onions,  the last bit of a chorizo, the end of a pot of cream, two wafer thin slices of  Parma ham and, of course, eggs.

I love eggs. I really do. I could happily eat eggs every day.

Some times I do. I mean… they are packed full of protein and they have been shown to have no real effect on cholesterol. If you eat eggs for breakfast, the high protein levels make you feel full for longer, which is just the thing you need to stop you snacking mid morning. Eggs for supper stop you having cravings late at night.

So, it seemed just right to have an omelette. I had that lovely chorizo which neede using up

And  I had that cheese… so Cheese and Chorizo Omelette it was going to be.

There was  the last of the Emmental and Gruyere cheese that I had used in Omelette Arnold Bennett and some farmhouse Cheddar.  The sorry looking spring onions weren’t bad once I had trimmed them down and refreshed them in ice cold water.

I microplaned the cheese and sliced the spring onion.

Dry frying sliced chorizo releases the oil and cooks the outside to a sort of caramelised bronze. Once the slices were browned on both sides, I took them out and left them to cool.

A knob of butter softened the spring onions (I really can’t stand raw onion … it gives me a headache)

I briefly whisked the eggs with a fork and added the last of the cream. That’s what you can see in the egg mix. I didn’t bother to whisk it all in smoothly (it was very thick cream) but I knew that with cooking it would all melt in with the cheese.  That was all poured in over the softened spring onions.

My mother always calls them scallions and I don’t know why. I really should ask her.

Look how gorgeous it looks… I scattered over some sweet smoked paprika because I love the taste and that would be echoed by the chorizo. Don’t add it before the omelette has started to set because otherwise you get a diffuse pinky orange looking omelette. I still like to see the creamy golden yellow of the eggs.

Slices of chorizo would be too much but it is easier to cook them in slices. Once they were cool I cut them in half and scattered them over the still soft egg.

Then a layer of cheese and those two remaining slices of Parma ham, torn into pieces..

I stuck the pan under a hot grill for a minute and the cheese softened and melted over everything… the eggs puffed up a bit more and then…..

Then, it was supper made from scraps.

A truly delicious  omelette. The cheese and chorizo worked perfectly well together and I had not only used up stray items in the fridge but I had made supper in less than twenty minutes.

It really did taste gorgeous. I really must make sure I have more scraps in my fridge.

Broccoli and Stilton Pastryless Pie

At long last the days are becoming brighter and the weather seems to be improving. Today at work I had the windows open as it was getting rather hot, sitting behind glass with the sun shining in. It’s time, I think, to start freshening up food…. making it lighter and more summery.

Time, in fact, to make something like a pastryless pie.

I often make this because it is perfect with a light, dressed green salad for supper and also because it is absolutely ideal to take to work for an easy packed lunch.

A pastryless pie is, in effect, a quiche without pastry. The quiche filling is baked inside strips of ham. What that means is that if you are baking it to share with friends then anyone with a wheat intolerance or coeliac disease doesn’t have to miss out.

If you are trying to cut carbs from your diet, well, it isn’t exactly Atkins because there’s plenty of vegetables in there but it does, at least, avoid pastry.

So then… what do you need?

I had some broccoli in the fridge and that, along with a lovely piece of Stilton cheese would make a lovely pie.

I had half a dozen free range eggs, a small pot of cream, a packet of sliced Serrano ham, 200g of Emmental cheese (which I love for its sweet nuttiness) a courgette, a handful of cherry tomatoes and few baby salad potatoes.

For those of you who don’t have access to Stilton or Serrano ham or, in fact, anything else I have listed, just remember I am putting those ingredients in because that’s what’s in my fridge.

As long as you have eggs, cream, some ham (some kind of air dried ham, sliced thinly) some cheese and some vegetables you can make this.

Now, because you are making what is really a quiche filling, it is going to be runny. And you don’t have a pastry shell to pour it into. I told you we were wrapping some air dried ham around it but that isn’t going to stop the filling from running out, so this is what to do

You can buy silicone paper cake liners from most places now – one of these popped inside a springform cake tin makes the ideal liner to keep all your lovely ingredients from seeping out when you bake it.

Open your packet of ham and drape the slices round the edge.

You don’t need to completely cover the sides and you don’t need to cover the base. What you are doing is making what will turn out to be a lovely, savoury, lightly crisped ham edging. It helps keep it in one piece when you cut it.

The bottom of the pie will be lined with a layer of steamed and sliced potatoes – it makes for a firmer base. Either slice them and steam them now, or use left  over cold salad potatoes. Because I am using broccoli, I steam that at the same time.

See? Just a thin layer of little slices of potato.

Followed by a lovely layer of broccoli florets

I found a courgette in the fridge and if you use a julienne cutter, you get a glorious tangle of shredded courgette. When this cooks it disappears into the gorgeousness of the creamy, cheesey, eggy filling so even for avowed courgette haters… this would slip right on past them. Another vegetable chalked up!

Scatter those shreds over the broccoli layer

And as it is a broccoli and Stilton pie, now is the time to slice that piece of Stilton you saw earlier.  You could crumble it if you want to, and scatter it across but I thought how pretty and symmetrical it looked to arrange it in thin slivers.

I had half of a red onion left over from something else I’d made so I thought that, sliced finely so that it would cook through while the pie was baking, it would add an extra hint of savouriness.

 That was scattered on top of the cheese.

That’s the vegetables taken care of, the next thing is the delicious cheesey, eggy mix.

6 beautifully golden fresh free range eggs need breaking into a bowl and whisking round with a fork.

A small (150 ml) pot of cream gets poured in and whisked around again.

And pour it in……

Give the springform tin a gentle shake from side to side to make sure the eggy mix falls down around those lovely vegetable layers.

I had some sliced Emmental to use up as well, so that was shredded and scattered over the top.

Little cherry tomatoes (there were only 4 or 5 left) were quartered and added to the top layer before the ends of the ham were folded over.

You can see when you do this that the egg and cream mixture seeps between the slices of ham and then you realise just what an excellent idea it was to use the paper liners…

Into the oven with it at 160 or so degrees C for approximately 30 -40 minutes.

You can tell when it is done when the top looks golden and if you give it a gentle side to side shake the pie quivers just a little bit… and if you press it with your finger it feels soft but firm…

The only thing to do now is to free it from the springform tin, peel back the paper liner and slide it onto a serving plate

The hardest part is waiting for it to cool slightly so you can slice into it….

With a green salad it truly is the perfect lunch or supper.

Tasty, easy to make, easy to take for lunch… cunningly packed full of vegetables in the midst of that delicious filling… just the thing for the summer months!