Sam Stern 'Virgin to Veteran' and a spot of vintage shopping

As soon as I heard about the opportunity to review this book, I stuck my hand up.  I'd heard of Sam Stern before and considered buying one of his books but never quite got round to it.  His previous books have been, I think, very much aimed at a younger audience (hence my temptation to buy one - I am not a confident cook) and I am quite sure that his latest book - Virgin to Veteran - was written especially for me!

The book starts with loads of helpful little tips about food and cooking techniques.  It includes hints on 'Fridge Etiquette', 'How To Freeze Stuff' and suggests what to keep in your store cupboard.  There is a whole section on 'Vegetables and Salads' advising what to look for when choosing veg, how to cook different types of vegetable and which dishes to serve them with.

It covers all of the basics including fish pie, roast chicken and spaghetti bolognese and there is a fab recipe for roast pork and baked apples.

Although it includes all of the basics you'd expect to see, a few unusual recipes also make a welcome appearance - the aromatic lamb madras, Greek lamb pie and asparagus ravioli all sound delicious. There are also a few burger suggestions I'd love to try out.

The book didn't just appeal to me because I'm a novice cook (although it would be a fantastic gift for any teens who are heading off to uni this year).  To me, the book is a celebration of good, simple, tasty food.  It appeals to my appetite for fresh flavours and good quality ingredients.  I can see us using this book a lot - Andrew is trying to improve his culinary skills and has taken it upon himself to try a new recipe each week.  He's going to start with the easiest recipe in Sam's book this week and says he will make bruschetta (with a selection of toppings) on Wednesday night.  One suggested topping with broad beans and feta sounds especially yummy.  I am so hoping for sunshine - a plateful of freshly made bruschetta and a glass of red wine would go down a treat in the garden as the sun slowly sets.

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We've had a busy old weekend - it was Andrew's 40th birthday yesterday and his Mum's present to him was an all-expenses paid trip to the hotel that we were married in two years ago.  It was utterly delightful and we had the most amazing time.  We had the spa to ourselves for about an hour yesterday afternoon which was bliss!

I did manage to fit in a tiny bit of shopping this weekend, though, as you'd expect!  In one of our local towns, Olney, there is a gorgeous little shop called Chic Boutique.  The owner is lovely and stocks (amongst other things) a wonderful selection of vintage china at really good prices - I always want to take the whole shop home with me.  I managed to control myself but did come home with this pretty  floral trio and sweet Peter Rabbit child's mug which I will save for when my niece comes to visit.

Hope everyone has a fab week.  Fingers crossed for some warm, sunny days... 

Nicki 

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Peggy Porschen 'Boutique Baking' and a little cake recipe

I am a huge fan of Peggy Porschen and love her books so I was delighted to get my mitts on a copy of her latest offering 'Boutique Baking'.  As expected, it is a visual delight.  The cakes look amazing and the photography is stunning.

The book begins with recipes such as meringue kisses (gorgeous tiny pastel-coloured meringues), signature macaroons (some are heart-shaped!), morello cherry bakewell tarts and ice cream cake pops.

I am definitely going to be making these mini cinnamon doughnuts - my stepson will absolutely love them and they look so nice!  You can be sure I will pile them all up prettily in my cake dome too, just because I can.  

The book also has recipes for layer cakes, cupcakes, drinks and biscuits.  There are mini eggnog kugelhopfs that I plan to try, a lemon, almond and poppy seed cake and this gorgeous white chocolate passion cake looks so good:

There is a very well-illustrated 'techniques' section at the back of the book which gives step-by-step photography on tricks such as how to assemble (and ice) layer cakes and how to create simple flowers with cutters and veiners.  It also has the standard instructions you'd expect on how to frost cupcakes both with icing bags and palette knives.  If you have a special occasion coming up and want to create a beautifully simple but delicious cake you could do worse than trying one from this book. 

I buy this type of book all of the time - they have drool-worthy photography and beautiful styling but the recipes also tend to be fairly complicated with a huge list of ingredients.  I enjoy regular baking but if I was to constantly use recipes like this it would feel like too much of a faff and I am sure that I would be less inclined to get my cake pans out.  There is one super-easy sponge cake recipe that I have committed to memory and can whip up without a second's thought.  It's the recipe I started baking with and the one that I use almost weekly to create simple teatime treats for my favourite boys.  If you're new to baking, this is a great recipe to cut your teeth on.  

I call it the: 

Six, Six, Six Mix

I told you I have committed this to memory and this is how - by keeping the recipe in imperial measures as taught by my Great-Grandmother to my Mum and my Mum to me. (Big apologies to the young 'uns but 1oz is about 25g I think.)

The ingredients are just: 

6oz softened butter or baking spread (Stork)

6oz caster sugar 

6oz self-raising flour 

3 medium eggs 

This amount of batter will give you at least 12 large cupcakes, a good-sized tray bake or a small cutting cake (say, a 5" tin).  But if you want to make bigger cakes, or more cupcakes just increase the ingredients: for every 2oz you use 1 egg.  Simples. (So: 8oz butter, 8oz sugar, 8oz SR flour means you use 4 eggs. And so on.)

The method: 

Switch your oven on:  gas mark 5 or about 180C.  Grease or line a tin (or line a muffin tin with paper cases).

Cream together the sugar and the butter/spread for ages until pale and fluffy.  If you have a free-standing mixer this bit is great - I just switch it on and potter around the kitchen for a while, stopping every now and then to scrape the mix from around the sides of the bowl.  An electric hand mix is also useful but my great-grandma used a good old wooden spoon and her buns were delish.

Sieve your flour than add a large spoonful together with one egg to the sugary, buttery mix.  Mix up a tiny bit.  It will look as though it's about to curdle - don't worry.  Add the remaining eggs in the same way (with a spoonful of flour) mixing a bit in between.  When all the eggs have been added, throw in the rest of the flour and mix until you get a smooth batter.  At this point, I always add a tablespoon of cold water.  (I use a tablespoon of cold water however many ounces of ingredients I use.  It just makes the batter a little looser.)

Stick a finger in the mix and test it.  (Optional but yum.)

Pop your mix in your tin/cases and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes.  If baking a large cake with more ingredients you could need to bake for up to 45 minutes.  You know it's ready when the top of the cake is pale gold, it doesn't wobble when you move the tin and/or when you insert a skewer into the middle of the cake it comes out clean.  

(You can also tell whether a cake is cooked or not by the noise it makes.  An uncooked sponge cake will fizzle a bit and sound 'wet'. Just chuck it back into the oven for a few more minutes.)  With some cakes you have to be careful of opening the oven door when they are baking in case they sink.  As long as you let these bake for a minimum of 15 mins with the door firmly closed you'll be fine to keep popping them in and out of the oven until they are cooked to perfection.

Allow to cool and decorate with your choice of topping.  A really simple option is to just make some royal icing (lots of icing sugar and a drop of water or lemon juice) and sprinkle sugar strands on the top.  That's what I did with my tray bake last week - my family calls it 'bits and bobs' cake.  It's a winner every single time.

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So there you have it.  A simple recipe that you can memorise and pull out wherever you may be.  I love the feeling that I always know exactly how to make a lovely cake, wherever we are, and could bake it in an empty baked bean tin if absolutely necessary.  It's like an important life skill for me!  Just remember:  666.   

It produces a lovely sponge cake but it's quite rich so won't last more than a few days (not a problem in our house).  When you get confident with this simple sponge you can start to vary the flavours:  add a tablespoon of coffee essence and frost with coffee buttercream or add a tablespoon or lemon juice and drizzle with a mix of equal parts lemon juice and sugar.  Swap out a little flour for an equal measure of sieved cocoa powder to make chocolate cake.  You could also throw in a few chopped glace cherries, raisins or chocolate chips for a bit of variety.

I am sure there are lots of you who are more experienced bakers and will have rolled your eyes at me publishing such a basic recipe but then I am hoping there will be a few of you who, like I used to, really want to learn to bake but think it sounds a bit scary.  After using this recipe a few times, you'll be well on your way to trying one of Peggy's gorgeous creations.

Nicki 

x

A book, utility china, a blog award and swapsies

We are just back from another trip to Norfolk.  This time it was just a weekend break and we took my stepson and Andrew's Mum.  We were lucky with the weather and spent most of the weekend sitting in the sunshine drinking G&Ts (juice for the stepson) and reading.  (MIL was in charge of pouring the drinks.  Her measures are much larger than mine - I spent both evenings slightly squiffy and zonked out by 10pm).  There was also a lot of basketball, football and volleyball, quite a bit of dog walking, some stone skimming and a smidge of bingo.  We had fun.  I was hoping to visit some pretty local villages but it just wasn't possible what with one thing and another.  Husband has promised we can both nip over for a weekend before the weather really turns.  Yipee!

I've got a few things to waffle on about but I'm in a bit of a hurry to get back to a book I started reading yesterday.  It's by Miss Read and is called 'The School at Thrush Green':

Man, I LOVE these books.  They are all slim little novels and the stories revolve around life in a Cotswold village.  They were written in the 1950s.  The stories are so simple and old-fashioned, nothing much happens, but the imagery is lovely and I adore the words that Miss Read uses.  Here's a snippet:

"The rumbustious January weather continued for the rest of the week, and the inhabitants of Lulling and Thrush Green were as tired of its buffeting as the rest of the Cotswold villages were.  But on Saturday morning the wind had dropped, and a wintry sun occasionally cast a gleam upon a thankful world.  Miss Watson and Miss Fogerty agreed that the weekly wash would benefit from a spell in the fresh air, and Agnes was busy pegging out petticoats, night-gowns and other garments when she was hailed by a well-known voice on the other side of the hedge.  It was her old friend Isobel, wife of Harold Shoosmith, who lived next door."

Ah!  Nice and simple, cosy, reading.  Lovely.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my last post about the wonkiness of the house.  I have decided to embrace the wonkiness *punches fist in air* and have set about decorating the dresser.  I won't do a proper 'big reveal' (!) of the dining room until it's properly finished but let me tell you that things are moving along nicely.  I've been hanging a few hearts, for starters...

My china collection continues to grow.  I picked up this little Meakin jug (with the blue tits) last week.  I found it on a vintage china stall.  I love it and find myself liking it even more every time I see it.  There were matching teacups and saucers and a slightly larger jug on the stall too.  So wish I'd bought them.

Oh, and the new fridge has been delivered!  It only arrived on Friday and I've already turned into a fridge Hitler. Every time the husband opens the fridge door I practically pounce on him to make sure that the item he is replacing has been put in exactly the right place with the label facing out.  He must find me trying at the best of times but I think this is going to finish him off if I don't get a grip.

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Before I go there are a couple of things I wanted to mention.

Firstly, a huge thank you to a fellow bloddie, Louise, at Tea at Weasel's for giving me a 'Versatile Blogger' award.  I'm thrilled!

Louise is new to blogging but I can already tell that I'm going to enjoy dropping by her blogspot to catch up on her news.

I can't think of any interesting facts about myself so I thought I'd list seven things that I'm loving right now:

1.  Stocking up on Autumn/Winter clobber.  Knitted dresses, slouchy jumpers, knitted harems, leg-warmers and snoods have all been purchased, amongst other things.  Still on the hunt for the perfect pair of winter boots, though.

2.  Reading cookery books and drooling over the hearty stews and soups I'm going to make this year.

3.  Drawing the curtains and lighting the woodburners.

4.  Working on my giant granny square blanket.

5.  Booking a big family summer holiday next year to a house in the French countryside.

6.  Thinking about Christmas cake baking and decorating.

7.  Scouring the charity shops, eBay and vintage fairs for pretty china.

Another thing I'm loving is thinking about what I might make for Lynda's Handmade Christmas Decoration Swap!  

I haven't participated in a swap before so I'm really excited!   If you fancy joining in, pop over to Hookin' with LaaLaa and sign up here.  Go on, it'll be fun.

I think that's it from me.  Stories of two elderly schoolteachers await me.  

Nicki 

x

Shopping and a Girl Crush

I picked up this book (Cute and Easy Crochet by Nicki Trench) at the weekend.  I have wanted it for a while so was pretty pleased to grab the last copy in my local Hobbycraft along with a few sumptuous balls of yarn...

The brown and the pink are both 'Sublime Baby Cashmere Merino Silk DK'.  It is 75% extra fine merino, 20% silk and 5% cashmere.  It is soft, warm and I love the delicate shade of the colours.  I found a blanket in the book that I would love to use this yarn for but I would need to buy 32 balls.  (32 balls!) At £5.49 a ball that isn't something I can persuade our Household Financial Controller (husband) to sign off any time soon!  I couldn't leave the yarn in the shop so I bought six balls of it.  They didn't have it in store in a cream colour and I quite fancy making a cream baby blanket with accents of the brown and pink.  I am sure I can buy it cheaper elsewhere - I might try eBay.

I really want to make something out of the book soon though, so I'm going to give the fingerless gloves a try (although I prefer to call them wristwarmers!).  For this project I bought two balls of the cream-coloured yarn in the photo.  It is an Amy Butler for Rowan 'Belle Organic DK'.  It's 50% organic wool and 50% organic cotton.  I daren't start it yet in case I mess up but at least the material is in my basket for when I'm having one of my more confident moments!

Matalan is next to Hobbycraft in our town so whilst I was there I thought I'd pop in for a quick squizz.  There were lots of gorgeous little floral dresses in store but cute florals aren't me :( .  I saw this jumpsuit though and loved it:

It is difficult to show it properly in a photo without wearing it (and I'm not ready to post any photos of myself!) but it's kind of silky with a loose waist so it drapes nicely.  It also tapers at the ankle with little ties and has similar ties on the shoulders.  It looks lovely with my black leather jacket and nude platform peep-toe shoes.  I feel a bit Rod Stewart in it but I think I can get over that after a stiff gin!  It will be perfect for a nice dinner somewhere or drinks in a chic bar.  Here's a close up of the fabric:

Very happy with it and it only cost £22.  I always forget just how affordable Matalan is.  I'm not a huge fan of throwaway fashion; I don't often buy clothes but when I do I like to go for the best I can afford and tend to choose things that I hope will be timeless.  However, if I didn't go to the cheaper stores for a few bits and pieces my wardrobe would be a bit safe and boring.  I definitely wouldn't have much choice either!  I am trying to sort out my clothes at the minute and I've got a few events coming up at the end of the month so in a move that is completely out of character for me I am planning my outfits in advance (I never do this - I always frantically rush around the shops the day before a big dinner/wedding or whatever to find the right outfit).

So, back to work tomorrow having had over a week off.  I've got that end-of-holiday feeling which is ridiculous because I love my job, have a great boss and enjoy a certain degree of flexibility.  But it has been really nice to just potter around at home with my husband for the week.  The only thing I regret is that I didn't get round to any baking - this WeightWatchers thing is tough so probably a good job I didn't.

Before I go, can I just say that I'm now a tiny bit obsessed with Princess Kate.  I have always considered her to be a bit bland, boring and old before her time (I feel guilty for admitting that now).  Since the wedding I haven't been able to stop thinking about her.  She was so cool and calm on her wedding day.  She is thin, toned, impeccably behaved and beautifully turned out.  She must have such willpower and I am so totally jealous of her discipline and her cool head.

♥♥♥  I have a bit of a girl crush... ♥♥♥

Nicki 

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