Using up random ingredients - Pearl Barley

 
Lurking at the back of my cupboards I have a variety 'interesting' ingredients that I bought with the intention of 'trying something new' or because there was an exciting recipe on TV which I bought the ingredients for but never got round to making.  One of the things clogging up my cupboard was a bag of pearl barley. So when over the summer I was acting as the 'support crew' for some friends who were cycling from Inverness to Glasgow so I decided to forego my normal carbohydrates of pasta, potatoes or rice & experiment on my friends.

We were staying at the youth hostel in Aviemore, so whatever I cooked had to be straightforward enough to be made in the hostel kitchen with about 40 Duke of Edinburgh students cooking frozen pizza around us.  After about an hour wandering around the supermarket in Aviemore looking for some inspiration I finally decided to make a roasted vegetable barley risotto type thing, which everybody thought was good, especially with some Brewdog beer to wash it down.

Ingredients:

Enough for 4

85g Pearl Barley
Stock
1 Butternut Squash
2 Peppers
2 Onions
150g Cherry tomatoes
Oil
Handful Edamame beans (or other beans to add crunch e.g. broad beans or mange tout)
100g Feta (or halloumi)
Small Handful of Mint
Small Handful of Coriander
1 Chilli
Squeeze of Lime
Salt & Pepper

Method:

Preheat the oven to 200 ͦ C


Cook the barley in the stock until al dente, this will take about an hour

Whilst the barley is cooking chop the squash, peppers, and onions into small pieces.  Halve the cherry tomatoes and put in a large roasting tin with the chopped vegetables.  Coat with a little oil and roast at 200  ͦ C until soft (about 45 minutes).

While the veg is roasting finely chop the mint, coriander and chilli.

When the barley and veg are cooked mix them together.*

Stir in the edamame beans, finely chopped mint, coriander and chilli.  Season with salt and pepper, crumble over the feta and a squeeze of lime

*  If you're planning to eat this over a number of meals portion it out at this point and add the rest of the ingredients just before you're ready to eat.

Souffles

I've always been apprehensive about making souffles because of their reputation as being tricky (they're not).  They are however quite fun and did involve a lot of time on my knees praying to the baking gods that they would rise.  They also taste great - like a hot lemon mousse, light and airy but with a very distinct flavour.




Fundamentally a souffle comprises a well flavoured base (in this case creme patissiere) into which egg whites are gently folded.  As the souffle cooks the air in the egg white expands with the heat, making the souffle rise.

Everything ready

I think the trick of making a souffle is making sure everything is prepared and ready to go before starting to cook. Once that's done it's pretty easy really - although these could have done with being left in the oven for a couple more minutes.

Oven Ready

Done

The recipe I used was Mary Berry's http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/mary_berrys_lovely_lemon_73914 and it works as does the chocolate version http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/hot_chocolate_souffle_95703

Hot Lemon Mousse

Ingredients:

A little melted butter
Zest and juice of  2 lemons
2 egg yolks
4 egg whites
6 rounded tablespoons caster sugar
3 rounded teaspoons corn flour
1 rounded teaspoon plain flour
90 ml double cream
110 ml milk
Icing sugar for dusting

Method:

Melt a little butter and brush it around the sides and base of the ramekins, then coat with caster sugar and put the ramekins in the fridge.

Mix together the zest and juice of the lemons and leave to one side.

Separate the eggs and add 2 additional egg whites.  Mix the caster sugar together with the 2 egg yolks into a thick paste.  In a separate bowl mix together the cornflour, plain flour and double cream.

Heat the milk until just boiling.  Whisk a little milk to the flour mixture to loosen it a little and get rid of any lumps. Whisk in the rest of the milk and then put the mixture back into the pan.  whisk over a low heat until the mixture begins to thicken.  Take the pan off the heat and add the egg and sugar mixture and then the lemon juice and zest.  Put the pan back on the heat and whisk until the mixture begins to boil.  Take off the heat and allow to cool.

When the flavoured base is cool heat the oven to 180 C and put a tray into the oven to heat up. 

Whisk the four egg whites until they reach the soft peak stage.  Mix in a spoonful of the egg white to loosen the lemon mixture then gently fold in the rest until there are no white streaks remaining in the mixture.

Fill the ramekins with the souffle mixture and level the top with a palette knife.  Run a thumbnail around the edge so the souffle doesn't get caught on the rim as it rises.

Put the souffles in the oven and pray.

Take the souffles out when they have risen and turning brown on the top.  Dust with icing sugar. 

We ate these with orange tuilles which added some nice contrast of texture.

Hot Cross Buns

I love hot cross buns  (and one of my guilty secrets is how much I love those that come from Sainsbury's bakery).  Last year I made my own for the first time using the River Cottage Bread recipe.  Although delicious (and I'm sure authentic) they were definately a fruited bread rather than the bread/cake hybrid that the supermarkets have trained us to expect from this seasonal treat.
So this year I tried again and went in search of an even more enriched bread dough to act as the basis of this years buns.   I needed something more buttery, brioche-y, less parsimoniously british to mark the end of Lent and the beginning of the Easter feasting.

I love Richard Bertinet's recipes and have successfully made brioche using his recipe a number of times. Although those are delicious I wanted something slightly less buttery where the addition of fruit and spices would add to the flavour rather than detracting from the gloriously rich butteriness of the brioche.  Bertinet's kitchen is based in Bath and his book Crust has a version of the famous Bath Buns - brought to Bath by a french baker in the 1700's and anglicised. Bertinet's recipe for these are an enriched dough (like brioche) but with a smaller proportion of butter and eggs than are in his brioche recipe, so this seemed a good comprimise to act as the base of my Hot Cross Buns.

To me a hot cross bun needs to be soft in the middle with a good proportion of fruit and spices.  The spices are particularly important with the sweetness of cinnamon and nutmeg along with the warmth of ginger and a hint of clove giving a depth of flavour.  These 'Christmassy' flavours found in mince pies, Christmas cake and Stollen also provide a nice connection between celebrations of the birth of  death and resurrection of Christ.

The other element of at Hot Cross Bun I enjoy is the sticky, sugary glaze and the contrast of the white cross against the brown bun.  I also like the contrast in textures this provides with the flour and water cross being slightly chewy against the softness of the bun.  We happened to have some sugar syrup in our cocktail cabinet which proved to be a good glaze, but a stock syrup of sugar dissolved in an equal weight of water would work well.

The resulting Hot Cross buns were much more what I was looking for than those I made last year.  I loved that the spices formed a coloured swirl within the bun rather than being evenly distributed, making them as pretty inside as they were outside.  The spicing was exactly what I was looking for (although if I'd had an orange some zest wouldn't have gone amiss).   They take some time to make but definately worth the effort if you want a relaxed day pottering about the kitchen.  I'm not sure the ferment is strictly necessary and not using it would reduce the time needed by 2 hours or so - just add the ferment ingredients into the standard dough.

Mr Vitty may still prefer the Sainsbury's version, but he has dubious taste (afterall he married me!) and I'll definately be making these in the future.

Recipe (makes 12) Based on Richard Bertinet's Bath Bun Recipe in his book Crust

Ferment:

125 g Strong White Flour
125 g Water
3g Dried Yeast

Dough:

7 g Dried Yeast
375 g Strong White Flour
All the ferment
125 g Unsalted Butter chopped into chunks
60 g Caster Sugar
150 g Milk
110 g Eggs (2 large eggs)
7g Salt

110 g Chopped Mixed Peel
170 g Sultanas
3 Teaspoons Cinnamon
2 Teaspoons Mixed Spice (shop bought and including ginger and cloves)
Grating of Nutmeg

Paste for forming the cross

100 g Flour
100 ml Water
Splash of sugar syrup

Egg Wash:

1 egg
Pinch of salt

Glaze:

Sugar Syrup

Method:

Make the ferment by mixing together all the ingredients really well in a large bowl.  Cover with a baking cloth and leave in a warm place for 2-2.5 hours

When ready to make the dough mix together the yeast, flour, ferment, butter, sugar, milk, eggs and salt.  Work the dough using Richard Bertinet's slap and fold method  or in a stand mixer until it is smooth.  Lightly flour the work surface and form the dough into a ball.  Put the dough into a lightly floured bowl, cover with a baking cloth and leave to rest for 1 hour in a warm place.

Mix the fruit together with the spices in a small bowl.  Take the dough out of the bowl and stretch it out on your work surface.  Sprinkle the fruit and spices over the dough  and fold the dough in on itself a few times until the fruit is incorporated.  The fruit may make a bid for freedom but keep folding it into the dough.  Form the dough into a ball and leave to rest for another hour.

Lightly flour the work surface and turn out the dough.  Cut the dough into pieces about 100 g in weight and form into a ball.  Put the buns onto a greased baking tray well spaced apart to give them space to rise.  Cover with a baking cloth and put back in a warm place for 2- 2.5 hours until they have doubled in size.

In the meantime make the egg wash by beating together the egg and salt and the sugar syrup by mixing the water and flour into a paste.  Add a dash of sugar syrup to the flour/water paste but be careful not to add too much.  The paste needs to be a consistency that you can pipe a clear cross shape onto the top of the buns.

Preheat the oven to 180 ^oC

Make a cup of tea and sit down for a few minutes to drink it.

Once the buns have doubled in size use a pastry brush to glaze them with the egg wash.  Put the paste for the crosses into a piping bag and pipe a cross shape onto each bun (I didn't use a piping nozzle- somehow however many of these I have I don't have the right size - a bit like knitting needles).  Put the buns into the oven for about 20 minutes or until the buns have turned brown on top and are golden underneath.

Glaze with the sugar syrup and allow the buns to cool on a wire rack.

Make another cup of tea and enjoy a warm hot cross bun with plenty of butter.

Not even we could eat 12 buns in one sitting.  They will keep overnight wrapped in silver foil, just refresh them in a hot oven (about 200 ^oC) for about 10 minutes before eating.  They also freeze well in freezer bags.  Just defrost overnight and refresh them in the oven.