Another Belated Friday Feature: A Life in Yanbu

I'm cheating again. Instead of writing something I'm just going to link to Life in Yanbu, a blog I discovered through the MENA Cooking Club (on which I've been more of a lurker on than a real participant* but I'm hoping to change that soon).

Life in Yanbu has wonderful recipes, great photos, and honest commentary on the recipes. Apart from all that, Life in Yanbu humours my love of South Indian food by not only giving me hints and tips but also identifying things I've tried (oh, and then trying out recipes!). I'm thinking of murukku, a lovely little snack I've had lots of times in Dubai and India but had no idea how it was made until it appeared on My Life in Yanbu's feed for me! (It's great with tea.)

Murukku (looks a bit like pasta in this photo)

And now, another confession. The lovely blogger at My Life in Yanbu asked me to post photos of the trip I took to India in March. I haven't gotten around to it but maybe that can be my project for this week. It would also be plastic free!

* I wanted to take part in the last MENA Cooking Club challenge, I had planned on making chebab but couldn't find yeast in any of the shops in my town! 

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Soda bread: an alternative to yoga

I once shared a house with a guy who said the thing he didn't like about Europe was the bread. (By Europe, he meant the "Continent", his idea of Europe didn't seem to include the UK.) I could never get my head around this as I love bread, and Europe has such a wonderful variety of breads.

Years later, when I was living in the US, I often wondered what he would have made of American bread. Yes, he could have found what looked like his beloved sliced white bread but surely, if European bread didn't pass muster for him, American bread wouldn't have either?

As for me, I gave up on bread in America - it was far too sweet for me. Then I got a soda bread recipe from my brother. Soda bread brings back childhood memories, of either visiting my grand aunt or my father coming back from visiting her. She was a wonderful cook, and would always have soda bread for us - even typing this I can practically smell fresh soda bread. In my mind, soda bread was something only Auntie Alice could make so I was spent a year with the recipe but without ever trying to make it in case I ruined my memories of soda bread!

Definitely not the right kind of pan Soda bread in the making

But during that year other things happened, and other memories starting to block out the good memories. I was anxious, I found it hard to be in large groups, meeting new people caused me a lot of stress. Running would get me through much of the day, but sometimes when I was at home and my mind was running away with itself, I found baking a great way to calm down. But after discovering I had a lot of scones still in the freezer, one day I decided to turn my hand to soda bread. Turns out, soda bread making is a fantastic way to calm an unsettled mind. I've since made it so many times that it is one of the few recipes that I know by heart. (On nights when I couldn't sleep I would sometimes go downstairs to the kitchen and make a batch of soda bread. One of the girls I lived with was a late night studier so she was the main beneficiary of these late night crisis  baking sessions!)

Soda bread is great warm with some cheese, butter, or jam. Enjoy!

Here is the family recipe for soda bread:

'Plain' soda bread

Ingredients
Plain (all purpose) flour
Salt
Bread Soda
Buttermilk  ( soured milk can be used but results are not as good )
Method:
You will need
1 or 2 mixing bowls
Heavy based or cast iron pan
Spoon

1. Measure out the flour in cups / 4oz multiples, the number is not important. I suggest starting with 2 and then adjusting as necessary for the quantity of bread required when comfortable with the technique.

2.To the flour add 1/3 teaspoon of baking soda per cup of flour. A little less is ok, but anything more than 1/2 a spoon per cup will result in a strong soda taste and a very crumbly and dry texture in the bread which is not what is desired. The end result should be soft and slighly chewy.

3. Add salt to taste to the flour and soda. I suggest 1/2 a teaspoon per cup of flour for the first two cups, then 1/4 for subsequent cups. (I forgot the salt once, and only once. The taste was not the same.)

4. Combine the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, then add buttermilk mix to form a wet dough, roughly the consitency of cold porridge. It only takes a minute or two to do this with a spoon not a mixer.

5. Pre-heat the frying pan (dry) to medium heat. For me this is level 3 on a 5 level electric hob. On gas it is typically 1/2 of full flame. The correct temperature can be gauged by sprinkling some flour on the pan, it should take about 15 seconds to brown. (DON'T RUSH THIS STEP!)

6. There are two options for getting from the dough in the bowl to cooking it in the pan.

Sprinkle some flour on the pan, enough to lightly coat the bottom. Drop the dough in on top and spread to a 1.5-2cm thickness. Sprinkle some more flour on the top.

Flour a flat surface and shape the dough into a circle, about 1.5-2cm in thickness. Cut into quarters and sprinkle flour on top.

7. Cooking time.
Cook for 8 minutes on each side, then test with a knife or skewer to see if it is cooked though, it should come away clean, but possibly damp. Do not turn from the first side for the first 8 minutes even if it appears to be buring. The flour may burn a little if the heat is too high but it will prevent the bread from burning and can be brushed off afterwards. If this happens reduce the heat slightly and add a bit more flour to the bottom of the pan when turning the bread after 8 minutes.

8. When cooked, wrap in a clean teatowel or similar cloth so that the bread cools slowly otherwise it will form a crust rather than a skin which is what this bread should have.

You can also bake as a loaf in the oven at 180C / 350F for 30 minutes on a baking tray (again, spread the dough out to about 1.5-2cm in thickness) or 40 min in a tin.

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Feteer - flaky Egyptian pastries

Flaky, butter pastries. What more could I ask for on a cold mid-January day? Nothing really, other than a cup of tea to go with it. I always loved these kind of flaky breads when I lived in the UAE - I'm one of those people who will pick bread over rice any time. Parathas were always one of my weaknesses - yes I know parathas are Pakistani / Indian and not MENA - but that I'd choose a buttery, flaky bread for this month's MENA cooking challenge wouldn't come to a surprise to anyone who knows me. (When I had the good fortune to travel up to Abu Dhabi on my own for work the office driver would stop at a roadside restaurant so we could have paratha and fried egg for breakfast. The first time we did it he sent me a message the night before that just said, "Don't have breakfast". Add in chai and I'm pretty happy.)

And in my parallel universe I had a flaky feteer. Back in the real world, things panned out a little differently. I can put my finger on a few of the reasons why my feteer turned into more of an Irish pastry than a flaky bread.

So far so good!

First of all, I wasn't generous enough with the ghee. Maybe it was the post-Christmas feeling, but then again, we aren't a family that goes over-the-top at Christmas, we're fairly low-key when it comes to festivities and food. New Year's Resolutions aren't something I'm prone to, so it wasn't because I was feeling the need to be healthy. I'm going to put this one down to not being used to baking with melted butter / ghee and being a little reticent to use as much as the recipe asked for. (1-2 cups).

Still looks good

I question whether I kneaded the dough for long enough. After a few minutes of having the mixer running I heard a crash. Then I spotted it. The cup we'd stored the leftover goose fat from New  Year's Day dinner had fallen over and the goose fat was slowing creeping across the bench. It moved a bit like how I imagine lava moves. So cue a dash to grab kitchen paper and mop up the mess. A bit of a distraction from the dough kneading.

I had to try to stretch the dough on the kitchen table. A marble surface, as the recipe writer used, would have helped (at least I can tell myself that). 

Practice would definitely help. I tried a few different ways to stretch out the dough, from letting it hang from my hands, and rotating it that way, to dividing the balls into smaller sizes and stretching the dough from there. A lot more practice is needed! 

I was worried that the dough would stick to the baking trays, but it didn't at all. I suppose, despite my parsimonious approach to the ghee, there was enough to prevent this happening!

The recipes I looked at were fairly straight forward. Add flour and salt, and then slowly add warm water until the dough forms a silky but stretchy dough. Split the dough into equal sized balls (I saw between four and ten), let the dough rest and the stretch out the dough before folding it up. Really, not much to it I hear you say! Well, true, but I think it takes patience, skill, and practice to get this right!

It did taste good....

The recipe I used comes from Chef in Disguise, who has a great video showing how she stretches the dough. I only made sweet feteer, using a baking apple filling, as I thought that was most likely to be eaten her (not everyone loves the savoury version in this house). The apple filling might not have helped the process as it is very white.

Egyptian Feteer - Flaky Bread / Pastry

Ingredients

2 cups of plain flour

0.5 teaspoon salt

1 to 1.5 cups of warm water

1 to 2 cups of melted ghee

Filling

Two baking apples, stewed (as noted above I don't think this is great for the recipe as it adds a lot of moisture)

Oven temperature: 190C / 380F

Method

1. Add the plain flour and salt to a mixing ball. 

2. Slowly add the water to the mix until you have a smooth, sticky dough. 

3. Knead for ten minutes (using an electric mixer, with a dough hook).

3. Divide the dough into four equal sizes and cover with ghee. (Don't be afraid, be generous with the ghee).

4. Let the dough rest for an hour.

5. Drizzle some melted ghee on a clean surface and start stretching the dough until it is as close to paper thin as you can get. 

6. Spread some melted ghee on the surface of the dough once it is stretched.

7. Fold over in thirds, in the same way one folds a letter to fit into an envelope. At each fold, spread with ghee. You will now have a rectangular shaped piece of dough.

8. Again, fold one third of the dough over. Cover with ghee and then fold the other third over until you have a square piece of dough.

9. Spread the top with some melted ghee and set aside into a baking tin.

10. Repeat with the other balls.

11. Let rest for about half an hour. 

12. Preheat the over to 190C / 380F.

13. Spread the dough square to fill the baking tray. 

14. Add a couple of spoons of apple filling to one base and seal with a second layer of dough.

15. Repeat with the remaining two squares of dough.

16. Bake in the oven until golden brown. 

An InLinkz Link-up

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When tea isn't enough

Sometimes even Barry's Tea isn't enough. This summer, which on the whole was quite pleasant, was occasionally interrupted by cold sweats as I thought about the looming thesis deadline. It wasn't that I didn't have anything to write, it was more that I couldn't get the words on paper.

Maybe if I'd taken the Morning Pages approach to writing instead of the Morning Baking approach things would have gone better.  But life would have been less sweet and there's something about baking, starting out measuring ingredients and finishing with something to eat alongside tea, that is incredibly satisfying. Alongside running, baking is my go-to stress buster and mind-clearer. Both are things I enjoy doing on my own, no distractions, no discussions, just me working through a recipe or placing one foot in front of the other.

Running and baking work well together in another way: the added incentive of knowing that I will, at the end of a run, have something I baked for breakfast may have motivated me to go for a run once or twice.

A favourite this summer was the Apricot Shortcake from Alexa Johnston's  Ladies, A Plate, though I usually make it with frozen berries or apples instead of apricots. With the reduction in sugar I find that it's perfectly acceptable to eat for breakfast.

This cake is very easy to make, even by hand it only takes about ten minutes to make the dough provided the butter has been softened. I usually reduced the amount of sugar by 25-30% as experience with this cookbook is that the recipes are very sweet. 

Ingredients:
115g butter
160g sugar (I usually use somewhere between 110-125g sugar)
1 egg
170g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
20cm / 8 inch shallow cake tin (I often had to use a springform cake pan)

Fruit of choice - I didn't have an exact measure of fruit, it really depends how much of a middle layer you like.

Oven temperature: 200C / 400F

1. Place frozen fruit / apples in a saucepan with a little water and stew on a low heat. Add sugar to taste (I tend not to add sugar to the fruit in this recipe).
2. Grease and line the tin.
3. While the fruit is stewing, cream the butter and sugar in a bowl until light and fluffy.
4. Slowly add the egg, beating thoroughly.
5. Sift in the flour and baking powder and mix until it turns into a soft dough (don't overmix but do get all the flour mixed into the butter, sugar, and egg mix).
6. Split the dough into two equal sized balls. (At this point I tended to place the mixing bowl into the fridge for a little while to firm up the dough as it can be very soft).
7. Check on the fruit!
8. Roll the first ball so that it fits the base of the pan. Don't worry if the dough breaks up, just assemble it by hand so it covers the base. (As the dough is very soft, when it comes to rolling it out be generous with the flour.)
9. Pour on the fruit.
10. Roll out the second half of the dough and cover the fruit. Again, if the dough starts to fall apart don't worry, just assemble it as best you can. It will come together while baking.
11. Bake for 30 minutes. The recipe calls for turning halfway through, sometimes I forgot and it didn't seem to do any harm to the final result.
12. Remove from the oven, cool for ten minutes before turning out on a baking tray.
13. It looks lovely with some icing (powdered) sugar sprinkled on top. I bought a stencil on Amazon to decorate some wedding cakes I made and since then many of my cake have been decorated with a powdered sugar elephant. Decorating has never been my strong point but since I bought the stencil I've turned out some very pretty cakes!
14. Best enjoyed with some Barry's Tea.

While Ladies, A Plate is sold out on Alexa Jonhston's website, her second cookbook is available. The website also has a lot of recipes on it, they are worth checking out. Everything I've made from her books has been delightful.

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Sans-chocolat Pain au Chocolat

It's been a while since I posted, I've been wading my way through 300+ footnotes, with the occasional baking break. Croissants and pains au chocolat were a great choice, regular breaks from the footnotes to roll and fold the dough.

Instead of just making croissants and pains au chocolat I decided to make a few with sultanas (or raisins as they are called here in the US). Which was all well and good until I picked one for breakfast, expecting some chocolate or a sultana and discovered, well, nothing. I wouldn't have minded if it had been croissant shaped but this was supposed to have something inside it. Quite a disappointing way to start the day!

Thanks to Hazbo for the recipe. The croissants are a funny shape because I wasn't paying attention and cut the wrong type of triangle. I'll know for the next time.

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