Cooking thread

[Balderdasha]

Can't think of what else it could be called. It has a biscuit base like a cheesecake, but it's clearly not a cheesecake. Banoffee dessert?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I found a jar of apricot jam in the back of the fridge to put on my toast and sat in my garden I'm instantly transported back to eating breakfast on a garden terrace in the Loire Valley. Food is great for that.

[hobbes]

Today's experimentation. Cheese, onion, garlic and herb twisty bread.

[hobbes]

[Balderdasha]

That bread looks tasty!

[Balderdasha]

I like rustling up a Sunday lunch from not a lot of stuff left in the house (well, comparatively. As previously discussed we could always last at least another month from the contents of the cupboards and the freezer). Today I made roasted fennel with black olives, garlic, lemon juice and herbs, roast potatoes, sweet potato wedges, boiled carrots, Linda McCartney rosemary and red onion sausages, gravy, Yorkshire puddings for the kids, and a side salad of shredded lettuce, red cabbage and carrots (yes, double carrots again).

[Sporting]

What are red onion sausages?

[Balderdasha]

What are red onion sausages?

They're fake vegetarian sausages made from some type of soya probably, flavoured with rosemary and red onion.

[Balderdasha]

[Balderdasha]

They taste a bit like sausage-shaped sage and onion stuffing.

[hobbes]

Babka

[hobbes]

Different shape but still Babka

[Sean of the Shed]

Onion bhaji wraps for dinner. Warmed bhajis with lettuce, cucumber, tomato and red pepper (onion optional but I can't deal with raw onion) and lime pickle and/or mango chutney, rolled up in a seeded tortilla wrap.

[hobbes]

Holy shit. Just tried the babka.
I may never eat again. That was amazing.

Although I could quite go a bhaji wrap right now.

[Sporting]

What a faff it is trying to peel knobbly ginger so that you actually get some ginger to use and not have it left behind on the skin. Or am I doing it wrong, or can ginger peel be consumed (in the same way as TV cooks don't bother to peel garlic)? Calling Balderdasha and other experts...

[ad hoc]

How are you peeling it? Seems fairly straight forward with a sharp knife. I wouldn't use a peeler for ginger.

[Balderdasha]

If the ginger is eventually going to be blended into a paste or sauce, you can get away with not peeling it at all. If I'm chopping pieces to go in a stir fry then I do peel it, but with a sharp knife like ad hoc suggests.

[Balderdasha]

Son has been a bit picky with food recently and I had a sudden panic that I was feeding the kids too much "healthy" food and not enough actual calories. So, I made them a massive fuck off Victoria sponge cake. As it would clearly not be a good idea for me to eat this I have treated myself to a punnet of blueberries and a punnet of cherries instead.

[Balderdasha]

Son's initial verdict was that this is the best cake recipe ever. But then he remembered himself and qualified that, in fact, teta (his grandmother) makes better cakes. This is largely because teta melts down chocolate oranges to make icing.

[Balderdasha]

I made a birthday cake. It contains enough chocolate to send about 100 children into hyperactivity mode. It's two slices of Victoria sponge, with Nutella in-between, covered in melted milk chocolate icing, smarties, choco Leibniz biscuits and malted milk biscuits (the biscuits were an afterthought to cover up the messy sides).

[slackster]

I haven’t checked in on this thread for a while, so just want to say Toby’s bready efforts up-page have got me salivating. Haven’t had Babka for yonks - my nan used to make that for us when I was a kid.

[Gawpus]

Sporting If you're struggling to peel ginger with a knife, the skin's thin enough that you can easily scrape it off with a spoon.

[Sporting]

Good thinking

[Gawpus]

Can't claim it as my own, but it does work well enough in my experience...

[scratchmonkey]

Spoon peeling is the traditional method in my family, works very well.