Oh, Hello!

My name is Laura and I like to consume food! Jess is totally my BFF. I will be blogging. I live in England. Here I am making offal pies for the Queen's tea! Pip Pip!

Beeb's Brambly Apple Blackberry Crumble

Laura: an epic introduction Part 1.

Hello! I am a messy cook. Jessica (over there, delicately forming sugar cages and perfectly laced peach pies) is worthy of Martha Stewart magazine but alas, I must fully embrace the rustic family-style cooking trend. And yes, during the day I am paid to make things pretty while Jessica is paid for math so I don't know how this happened.

It's not that I don't love a good complex recipe (oh I do! the most!) it's just that after simmering that sauce for four hours I want it in my mouth – damn the presentaion, plate, knives, forks, etc.

Needless to say, the science of baking and I have a complex relationship (leveled cups of flour? ha!). I save 'baking' for a weekend of Julia or Deb role play.

So now then: "Brambley Apple & Blackberry Crumble: when you can't be arsed to make pie."

Pie has its place. I love pie. But there is something about just chucking a bunch of apples, blackberries & topping into a dish then, popping it into the oven for 30 minutes and come out with something so perfect and delicious. Amounts? Times? Ballparks! Simple! Perfect! Delicious! How the fuck did it do that?

Okay so you have to caramelize the apples so the gooey apple-caramel coasts the blackberries. And topping the buttery crumb with clotted cream (whipped, extra thick or creme fraiche will work as well) is required by law. But how else are you going to make the 'best crumble in England'*

To summarize: Pie is great but crumbles are your dirty secret.

*independently validated by a bunch of English people who have eaten more crumble in their lives than you can imagine.

Brambly Apple Blackberry Crumble
(heavily adapted from a BBC recipe, now offline – philistines!)
Filling
3 large Bramley apples (use what you can find, tart cooking apples are traditional)
30g/1¼oz butter
150g/5oz caster sugar (or 150g of granulated sugar)
pinch of cinnamon
A squeeze or two of lemon juice (to taste)
80g/3oz fresh blackberries (looks tiny but trust, there is enough)

Topping
100g/4oz unsalted butter, diced
220g/8oz plain flour
100g/4oz caster sugar
clotted cream

Method
1. Preheat oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.
2. Peel, core and cut apples into ¼in thick slices (or so they are relatively thin and even)
3. Heat butter in large saucepan. Add apples and gently sauté.
4. Add sugar and cinnamon. Continue stirring until apples are just cooked and the goo is thick and ready to coat the blackberries.
5. Add blackberries & lemon juice and stir very gently until coated with delicious.
6. To make the topping, lightly rub butter into flour and sugar until crumbly.
7. Spoon apples and blackberries into shallow, oval 23cm/9in ovenproof
dish. Sprinkle crumble mixture over top until fruit is covered. I enjoy crumble. I am liberal on this step.
8. Place in oven until light golden brown (usually between 15-40 minutes depending on your oven)
9. Serve with clotted, whipped or heavy cream. Creme fraiche works as well if you like a sour tang... I just wouldn't recommend vanilla ice cream, the flavours clash.

Busy Bee

So it's been a pretty busy summer. Birthdays, weddings and a trip to Chicago has booked up practically every weekend in July and August. Not to say that it hasn't been enjoyable, but I haven't been cooking as much as I'd like. And I'm sorry to say that I haven't baked a single cobbler, pie or cake with my favourite summer fruit: peaches!

I went to the market this past weekend and had a little panic attack that I was missing peach AND corn season (though I believe both are actually in season for another month...I get a little anxious!). That led to me buying a dozen ears of corn (which aren't as light as you'd think), shelling the ears and freezing both the kernels and cobs (for soups). I bought some peaches too. Yum! I still don't have much time for the next few weeks to bake so we'll probably just be enjoying them fresh, but they did remind me of some delicious hand pies that I made last summer when I was baking up a storm while spending a few weeks in Ancaster with my mom.

These may seem a bit intimidating, and are admittedly a bit more work than a traditional pie. But they're so cute, how could you resist? Plus it's pretty much impossible to take pie in to work or social settings without easy access to plates and serving utensils. But hand pies? Hand pies are perfect for the office! Or parties! Or stuffing a plateful into your mouth while telling yourself "they're so small, one more can't possibly make a difference...". Whatever. Make them. Love them.

Peach Hand Pies
adapted from SmittenKitchen
Makes 14 to 24 (depending on cutter size)

1 batch of Pie Dough
1 1/2 lbs peaches, preferably freestone
1/2 lb blueberries
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
Juice of half a lemon
1 tsp vanilla extract

One egg yolk beaten with 2 tablespoons water (for egg wash)
Sugar for sprinkling on top (optional)

1. Make pie dough; you don't need to divide into discs here but I would divide into two balls for easier handling later. Make sure it's been refrigerated for at least an hour

2. On a lightly floured counter, roll out one half of the dough to 1/8-inch thickness. Using a 4 1/2-inch-round biscuit cutter (or a knife if you don't have a biscuit cutter...seriously, I make biscuits enough that I should probably get some of those), cut circles out of the rolled dough until you can't anymore. Transfer the circles to a parchment-lined baking sheet, and chill in the refrigerator for about a half hour. Repeat with the other half of the dough.

3. Blanch the peaches: bring a large pot of water to a boil, drop the peaches in and let them boil for about 2 minutes. Remove from water and dunk in ice water to stop the cooking. Once cool, peel and chop the peaches into small pieces, (remember they need to be small enough to fit into small pies!)

4. Make the filling: mix peach bits with bluberries, flour, sugar, lemon juice and vanilla, plus a pinch of salt. Set aside.

5. Remove the chilled dough from the fridge and let stand at room temperature for just a few minutes until they're pliable. Spoon about 1 to 2 tablespoonfuls of filling onto one half of each circle of dough. Brush a little cold water around the edge and fold it in half so the other side comes down over the filling. Seal the pie, and press down on the edge with a fork. Repeat with the rest of the dough. Place the hand pies back onto the parchment-lined baking sheet, and return to the fridge to chill for another 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees Farenheit, 190 degrees Celsius

6. Remove the chilled hand pies from the fridge, cut a small slit in each and lightly brush with the egg yolk wash. Sprinkle some sugar over the pies, and bake for about 20 minutes, until they are golden brown and just starting to crack. Remove from oven, and try to let them cool slightly before you taste them.

Less is More

Here is a recipe for those days when all you have the energy for is to boil some pasta and have it with some canned sauce. This is almost as easy as opening a can of sauce, and tastes much better.

I've been meaning to try this sauce for a few months now. I guess the delay was largely attached to my wariness of just how unbelievably good this sauce with only four ingredients (and that's including salt!) was. I just didn't get it. Plus there's nothing else in it. Just sauce. I tend to like my pasta sauces with lots of onion, veggies and ground beef. So I had to be in a particular type of mood to make this one.

I don't know if I'd say this was the best tomato sauce I've ever had. But I will say that this is probably the only tomato sauce I'd be tempted to eat straight up with a spoon. It's so simple, but feels quite luxurious and (to quote Laura) is weirdly addictive. If I didn't make it myself I'd say there was crack in it. The added butter and simmered onion makes the sauce really rich and smooth and for two ingredients, adds a great deal of flavour.

The one problem here is that I'm not sure exactly what the right pasta for this sauce is. We had it with some homemade tri-coloured pasta from the market, which was good but I felt a bit like the pasta and sauce were fighting for my attention. "Eat me, taste me! I'm delicious!" Well, yes it's true that both were delicious, but I think next time I might go for a simple white shell or fusilli noodle that is going to more or less act as a vehicle to get more sauce into my mouth. Yum.

Buttery Tomato Sauce
adapted from from Marcela Hazan's Essentials of Italian Cooking, via SmittenKitchen

28 oz can of whole peeled tomatoes (San Marzano if you have them)
5 tbsp (70 grams) unsalted butter
1 medium-sized yellow onion, peeled and halved
Salt to taste

1. Put the tomatoes, onion and butter in a heavy saucepan (I used my dutch oven as I don't have a saucepan) over medium heat.

2. Bring the sauce to a simmer then lower the heat to keep the sauce at a slow, steady simmer for about 45 minutes, or until droplets of fat float free of the tomatoes*. Stir occasionally, crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon.

3. Remove from heat, discard the onion, add salt to taste and keep warm while you prepare your pasta.

Serve with pasta, with or without grated parmesan for topping.

*Some of the comments I read on this recipe said that you needed to cook a little longer (maybe an additional 20 minutes) at a higher heat to really get some more flavour in the sauce. I thought it still tasted a little bland after 45 minutes, but I was going to play squash so I turned off the heat and let the sauce sit with the onions for about an hour. Then when I got back I reheated to a simmer and then removed the onions. It made a huge difference in the flavour. So...you might want to simmer for closer to an hour.

Keeping Cool

So...this past weekend was a pleasant break from the extreme heat wave that Toronto has been experiencing for the last couple of weeks. It's still fairly comfortable today but apparently the temperature is going back to 40's with the humidex later this week. Yikes.

On days like this, just seeing people walking into work with their regular cups of hot coffee makes me start to sweat. How can they bear it?? I get that people still need their daily fix of caffeine but why subject yourself to the extra heat when delicious iced coffee is such a delicious alternative?

I started off the summer drinking Starbucks iced coffees which, I admit, are fairly addicting and convenient. But this starts to get expensive, and really making iced coffee at home is fairly easy and delicious!

You could just make your regular brew of coffee and throw some ice cubes in, but my personal opinion is that the cold-brew method is vastly superior; less acidity and so much smoother. In fact, this can be somewhat dangerous in that this stuff goes down like water. The best part is you can make a few days worth of coffees at a time! For someone like me who is the only coffee drinker in the household, this is so much more convenient than brewing a hot pot of coffee every day. I just make a batch in my french press and keep it in the fridge for about 3 days worth of iced coffee. Yum.

Now about the caffeine level: various articles state that cold-brew coffee has more or less caffeine than regular coffee. So which is it? Honestly it seems to really depend on the grinds to water ratio that you use, and also how much additional milk/water you add to the concentrate. From my personal experience though, a cold-brew coffee generally makes me more jittery than a regular coffee so I'm putting myself in the "more caffeine" camp.

You can add water, milk, any type of simple syrup or sugar (it just might take awhile to dissolve the crystals) with this. Lately though, I've been using condensed milk. I woke up one day a couple of weeks ago just craving condensed milk. Not a particular recipe with condensed milk as an ingredient...just a spoonful of it. So I bought a can and ate a few spoonfuls...so until it's gone I'll be using this to sweeten my iced coffees. It's actually pretty amazing because it adds some milk and sweetness to the concentrate, plus it dissolves more easily than sugar. Oh, and it's REALLY good. Try it.

Vietnamese Cold-brew Iced Coffee
Adapted from Serious Eats

3/4 cup ground coffee
4 cups water
condensed milk (to taste)

1. Fill a pitcher or french press coffee maker with coffee grinds and half the water. Stir to combine, and add the remaining water (this will help you to not get coffee grinds everywhere). Let steep overnight (at least 8 hours, ideally more like 12).

2. Strain coffee - if you're using a french press, strain the coffee into another bowl or pitcher, rinse out the carafe and pour the coffee back in. If you're using a regular pitcher do the same thing but with regular coffee filters to strain out the grinds.

3. Mix with condensed milk, or cream and sugar syrup and serve over ice. You can keep the rest of the mixture in the fridge for a few days which is convenient since you don't need to make a new batch every day!

A Perfect Pair

This summer seems to be flying by. One minute I'm eagerly anticipating the warm weather, and before I know it strawberry season is almost over! Rue and I went strawberry picking on the last weekend in June. And of course, with strawberries come rhubarb for some delicious baked goods. Yum.

We made the requisite strawberry rhubarb pie (with a crumble topping) which was oddly received with enthusiastic praise from everyone at the pool party that I brought the first pie to, and a thumbs down from my family who thought it was too tart. I guess rhubarb isn't for everyone?


The majority of the remaining berries went into some refreshing agua frescas the following weekend. But I still had about a pint and some rhubarb left over so my plan was to make muffins. Unfortunately you need a muffin tin for that (I seem to have lost mine) so I decided to make coffee cake instead.

Sometimes you make something that just know is going to be delicious before you even start getting the ingredients together. You can just kind of feel it. That's what this cake was like. A not-too-sweet cake batter infused with vanilla flavour and some sour cream to keep it moist, a fairly heavy crumb topping and some delicious seasonal fruit...what's not to love?

Anyway, I was right and then some. The cake was moist, perfectly sweet and just the right combination of cake and fruit. And the smell. Oh god. I took some in to work and could hardly restrain myself from eating the entire batch. It's really too bad that strawberry season is over...but the best part is that you could make this cake with any seasonal fruit. Next up...peach crumb cake?


Strawberry Rhubarb Crumb Cake
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Fruit filling:
1/4 lb rhubarb, trimmed and sliced into 1/2 inch pieces
1/4 lb strawberries, washed and sliced
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch or flour

Crumb topping:
1/6 cup brown sugar
1/6 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (2 oz) butter, melted
3/4 cup flour

Cake:
1/4 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup softened butter, cut into pieces

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Farenheit, 163 degrees Celsius

1. Grease an 8-inch round baking pan. For filling, toss strawberries and rhubarb with sugar and cornstarch or flour. Set aside.

2. To make crumbs: in a large bowl, whisk sugars, spices and salt into melted butter until smooth. Then add flour with a spatula or wooden spoon until the mixture is more doughy than crumb-ly. Leave it pressed together in the bottom of the bowl and set aside.

3. To prepare cake: in a small bowl, stir together the sour cream, eggs and vanilla. Using an electric mixer of some sort or a wooden spoon (I used my immersion blender with the whisk attachment) mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add butter and about half the sour cream mixture and mix on medium speed until flour is moistened. Increase speed and beat for 30 seconds. Add remaining sour cream mixture and beat for about another 20 seconds.

4. Scrape all but about a 1/2 cup of batter into the prepared pan. Spoon fruit filling over batter. Drop the remaining batter over the fruit filling; it does not have to be even.

5. Using your fingers, grab bits of the crumb topping and squeeze into a big clump, breaking it into large crumbs about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch in size over the cake. Keep doing this until the topping is all used up. Bake cake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean (it may be moist from rhubarb), about 35 to 45 minutes. Cool before serving.

Pizza - 4: Jess - 0

I love pizza. I really do. But lately I feel like pizza doesn't love me back. You see, the last few times I made homemade pizza have been pretty...difficult to say the least. Some minor roadbumps but others were just full-fledged disasters.

A couple of months ago I discovered the skillet method. It was genius, really. A perfect way to get that charred, crispy bottom without a) having to preheat the oven for an hour and b) a pizza stone. It worked pretty well for me the first few times. Then, one night I removed the skillet from the oven and unfortunately slammed the pizza down on the stove (hey, cast iron is heavy!). This resulted in an oil dripper falling off the ledge of the oven (why did I have an oil dripper up there to begin with? I'm an idiot, that's why) and shattering ALL OVER my pizza. I was so upset I tried to eat a slice anyway and almost ate a shard of glass. I actually did have enough ingredients to make another pizza, but by this point I was so distraught that my second pizza ended up coming off the cutting board and into the hot skillet as a big glob (this is generally the trickiest part of the skillet method), which led to an uneven and doughy mess of a pizza that I ended up taking about three bites of before throwing out. I haven't gone back to the skillet method since.

Then there was that time in Collingwood where we didn't have any cornmeal or flour (I was trying Reinhart's dough recipe as shown below and brought up the extremely wet pre-made dough) and pretty much had to chisel a few pizzas off the pan until we discovered a box of pancake mix in the cupboard (for the record, it works perfectly fine as a flour substitute to dust a pan with!)

And then a couple of weekends ago, I was at my mom's making pizza and while transferring a hot, fresh-out-of-the-oven pizza to the cutting board dropped the entire thing facedown on the floor. Three second rule you say? I wish. When I attempted to pick it up, everything but the crust remained on the floor. Sob. We made some again the next night with the remaining dough which went fairly smoothly, but not completely disaster-free either. I proceeded to knock the bowl of grated mozzerella out of Adam's hands as he walked into our tiny kitchen. Luckily we salvaged enough of it to make our pizzas later.

Reading this post over to myself is making me wonder why I still bother making pizza at home. Is it even worth the mess, stress and wasted food? And the answer? YES. Because it's that good. Because, even with all the accidents I managed to scrape out some pretty delicious pizzas on the majority of these occasions (the skillet night being a huge exception - that was just a big fat FAIL). Because I love pizza. A lot. A lot a lot.

Peter Reinhart's Pizza Dough and Sauce
Adapted from The Fresh Loaf

Makes 4 10-inch pizzas

5 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp sugar or honey
2 tsp salt (or 3 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt)
1 tsp instant yeast
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cups room-temperature water

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon or mix in an electric mixer. After you've combined all of the ingredients, set the dough aside to rest for 5 minutes. Stir again for 3 to 5 minutes, adding more water or flour if necessary. You want the dough to be pretty wet here. I usually end up add a bit more water...it should be dry enough that it holds together and pulls away from the side of the bowl when you mix it, but not dry enough to knead by hand.

2. Divide the dough into 4 pieces. Place each one into an oiled freezer bag. I just drizzle some olive oil into the bag and rub around. You can also apparently brush the outside of the dough with olive oil and then place it into the bag...weirdly enough, I just read this part of the instruction and had a bit of an "aha!" moment.

3. If you aren't going to bake your pizzas that day, you can throw the bags into the freezer. They'll stay good in there for at least a month. The evening before you intend to bake them, move the frozen dough balls to the refrigerator to thaw.

If you are baking later the same day, put the bagged dough balls in the fridge until about an hour or two before you want to make your pizza. At that point, remove and let the dough warm up to room temperature.

If you need to have your pizza as soon as humanly possible (which is usually the case with me), leave the bags out at room temperature and let rise for about an hour. This will result in a less flavourful, but still tasty dough.

Also, turn your oven on to the highest setting about an hour before baking. This isn't exactly an efficient use of heat but will make your pizza better. If you have a pizza stone, throw it in while the oven is heating up. If you don't, place a cookie sheet in there instead. Make sure it's on the lowest (or second lowest) rack in your oven.

4. You won't be able to roll this dough out. Take a ball out of the bag, and using your hands shape into a small circle. Take the edge and rotate so that the weight of the ball stretches your circle. Keep doing this until your dough is large/thin enough to your liking. This may take a few tries to get. If you're using parchment paper (which I strongly advise) you can also stretch it out a bit once its laid out since the dough will stick to the paper.

5. Top with sauce, cheese and whatever toppings you want. The pizza above had roast pork tossed with barbeque sauce, red onion, red pepper and pineapple. Place the pizza (still on parchment) on your pan/stone and let bake for probably about 10-15 minutes, depending on how hot your oven is, until the cheese is bubbly and the crust is browned. Enjoy!


Pizza Sauce

1 28oz can crushed tomatoes
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 bay leaf
4 or 5 cloves of crushed garlic
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar (or any other kind of vinegar/lemond juice)
Salt and pepper, to taste

Heat olive oil in a small pot and add garlic. Cook for a few minutes until garlic is soft but not browned. Add remaining ingredients and let simmer for awhile (maybe 20 minutes) until the flavours have mellowed a bit. Cool and use on pizza, and freeze the rest for later.