Anna N

A number of recipes call for cooking the meringue on the stove top before scooping the cookies and baking them in the oven. I suspect that is more the “real” version. But even Mario Batali‘s recipe skips that step.

Breaded pork tenderloin slices with leftover vegetable korma.

Really? Are you sure you’re talking to the right people. Most of us love to cook, love to eat and love to enjoy all the social aspects associated with food. I bet not many of us would prefer to swallow a pill.

Brutti ma Buoni (Ugly but Good). Hazelnut and chocolate macaroons.

Indian egg curry with a side of Mexican flour tortilla brushed with spiced butter. (Eggs cooked in the Instant Pot.)

Vegetable korma. No Indian style bread in the house but a lovely flour tortilla brushed with spiced butter and gently heated worked very well.

Lunch yesterday. Toasted homemade rye bread with processed cheese and bacon and some of @HungryChris‘ marinated mushrooms.

I always thought it was compulsory to add the pink dye for safety. This company however appears to sell it without the dye.

Congratulations. What an inspiring review.

I wanted to add that she also includes a list of every size and shape of pan that is used in the book. She also notes that a pan of suitable size can be substituted for most of these so there is nothing rigid about her list.

Some people are appalled by even a fingerprint.

You are so right on the patience. It is my downfall all too often.

Yesterday.

I just bought a Kindle copy of Mary-Ann Boermans’ Great British Bakes. This is perhaps the most useful feature I have ever seen: “The numbers in the brackets show the total number of recipes that use each ingredient. Simply put: if you have everything on this list, you can make every recipe in this book. Some ingredients are only used once or twice, but I have tried to limit these to items that could be used in other recipes. The ingredients in italics might be less easy to locate, and online sources for them are listed at the end. FLOURS Plain flour (51) Strong white flour (16) Cornflour (10) Self-raising flour (3) Rice flour (3) Stone-ground wholemeal flour (1) Rye flour (1) GRAINS Medium oatmeal (1) Ground rice (3)“ And it goes on to list every ingredient. Can you imagine how useful this is if you want to use up an ingredient that you have purchased just for one recipe. By consulting this list you can see how many other recipes you might want to make to use up the ingredient. This would be even more valuable in a general cooking book rather than a baking book. In addition to this one invaluable feature the book makes it easy to find a recipe. In addition to a general table of contents there is a table of contents at the beginning of each chapter and if that isn’t enough all the recipes are listed alphabetically in yet another table. Has anyone ever seen a food related book where all the ingredients are listed next to all the recipes that require them? I am more excited than an overstimulated synaptic gap.

Me too.

To me they are definitely for grown-ups.

Mine came from disassembled hard drives.

“No matter the decade, it seemed there was a Shrewsbury Cake recipe of some description almost everywhere I looked. After a more organised search I found no fewer than 74 recipes for these English shortbread biscuits, ranging in date from 1621 to 1865.” From Great British Bakes by Mary-Ann Boermans. She gives 4 different recipes in the book for these cakes/biscuits/cookies.

Yes it is. I am going to try the modernist version but I used up all of my rye levain so it may take a while before I get around to it.

I have to tell you that I am a Huge cheat and almost always roll things out between two pieces of plastic wrap. I don’t know how much of a difference it makes but it required no additional flour.

More of this soup. It improved exponentially with a few days rest in the refrigerator!

Not sure I am prepared to dig them out of my kitchen garbage bin.

I can’t link you to a recipe because this is from a book – – Paul Hollywood’s British Bakes. But I believe I can give you the ingredient list without any issues of copyright infringement: 100 g of butter 100 g of sugar Zest of one lemon 200 g of all purpose flour (plain flour) 50 g of currants

That is not even possible. I literally dug them out of my pans. I am now going to sulk until I have enough rye levain going to try the modernist version of this recipe.

Shrewsbury Biscuits. They are a shortbready cookie with currants. Probably too plain to amuse my usual audience. In a pique of nostalgia I decided to do a little digging into my British past and see if I could re-create or more truthfully re-invent something of my childhood since I don’t remember anything about most of the sweets that I have come across.