I should probably write some kind of apology for the hiatus here, with assurances that I won't do it again.
But that's boring*, so let's just move along.
There are days when everything goes neatly into the box I expected it would, and days when I'm completely foiled in my attempts to educate.
There are also days when a simple idea becomes something so monumental that I want to run about screaming with excitement** but I can't because we're too busy doing whatever it is.
Then there are days where, without any prompting from me, one of the girls will pick up an idea, or ask a question, and suddenly we're studying a completely different topic to the one I'd intended.
And then there's Eleanor's Week of Gender Studies.
It started innocuously enough: I'd set Ellie the task of imagining a person from a world completely unlike ours, and then considering what that person would think of some simple items from our home***.
So she wrote out a description of her person:
"They are from Neptune.
They are half fairy and half alien.
They are both male and female.
They are very small and their hair is green tentacles".
Ok.
So.
I had a few questions about this.
First I asked her what she meant by both male and female: did she mean the people on Neptune could be male or female, or something else?
No: she meant that her person was both male and female, like all the other people on Neptune.
Right.
Then did she mean that they were emotionally or mentally genderfluid****, or was this a biological trait.
Biological: people from Neptune have both boy parts and girl parts.
O......kay.
There followed a long conversation during which I mentioned that there were people just like that on Earth, offered the term intersex as being more appropriate than "both male and female", discussed the varying degrees by which a person could be male or female or otherwise, touched upon the differences between sex and gender, mentioned the us of ze as an alternative to he or she*****, confirmed that yes "they" would be fine for her Neptunian if the Neptunians preferred that, asked how said Neptunians would know the difference between one person or several and somewhere along the lines realised that I was having this entire conversation with a six year old.
Then she went back to her desk****** and wrote about the ways in which a tentacle headed, six inch high, intersex person from Neptune would view some simple household objects.
It turned out neither sex nor gender really had much impact.
And then we got on with our day.
That was on the Tuesday.
Wednesday passed with nothing unusual bar a few questions as to why people thought some things were for girls and others for boys..
On the Thursday we set off to ballet class.*******
All proceeded as usual until it was time to get changed for Phoebe's class, when, seemingly out of nowhere Eleanor suddenly asked: "Mummy, why do we have different changing rooms for men and women?"
This being a question which has occasionally bothered me, I found it a little different to answer.
Eventually I settled for explaining that some people weren't happy about dressing or undressing in front of people who might be attracted to them, or to whom they might be attracted, and that sometimes they might have to worry about people looking at them in a way that made them uncomfortable.
I declined, at this time, to discuss rape, in a public changing room, with a six-year-old, however pretty much everything that she said next applied pretty well in that case too.
In a voice clearly designed to carry into every corner of the building, Eleanor declared that this, was silly.
She further added that it "wouldn't even work, because boys can be in love with boys and girls can be in love with girls, and anyone can be attracted********* to anyone and if they're that worried why don't we just have cubicles?"
And some more that I can't quite recall at present.
I think she may have punched the air a few times.
So I agreed that, yes, it was quite silly when she put it like that, and she was preaching to the choir here anyway, and preaching to the choir was just an expression that meant I already agreed with her, and yes, people did have stupid ideas but could she perhaps lower her voice just a bit because now she seemed to be making that lady over there a little uncomfortable with all the shouting?
And then she muttered something about people needing to be uncomfortable if the world was stupid and we went off and waited for their teacher to arrive.
I rather thought that would be it for that day.
During Phoebe's class the parents tend to congregate outside, letting the children learn on their own, but staying within reach in case we're needed.
Naturally this leads to conversation.
One of the mothers (and it is all mothers and grandmothers out there, except for Eleanor) noticed that Ellie was reading Doll Bones by Holly Black and asked if she enjoyed horror stories.
From here we began discussing our own literary preferences and it transpired that everyone there enjoyed horror, James Herbert being the most popular author, while no-one had any interest in the sex-and-shopping or romance novels generally marketed towards women.
So we talked about the foolishness of stereotyping for a bit, before it was time to go back in and collect our various offspring.
As we walked through the door I heard one mother observe to another that, yes, her daughter loved ballet too, "I think it's something girls just naturally gravitate to".
At this point I became both incredibly glad and rather sorry that I'd asked Eleanor to lower her voice earlier, as she grabbed my sleeve and whispered "Do you think she listened to anything she was just saying?"
And then we went and did a maths activity involving buried treasure.
On Friday we went to the library, where Eleanor got out a number of books about a girl's adventures in fairyland.
Because that's fine too.
*And, honestly, I will do it again.
**Or blog about it.
***For our archaeology project: when you think about it, this is often what an archaeologist is like when they first approach a site.
****Yes. I explained the concept of genderfluidity to a six-year-old.
***** "But some people don't like that either darling, so it's better to ask, if you don't think it would be impolite to do so".
******It's an antique school desk with an inkwell and a place for a pen and I love it.
*******Our Thursday: I get up and drag anyone who isn't up out of bed.
After two bus journeys, (during which we read, to various values of the word read) we grab lunch somewhere and either shop or visit a soft play centre where I will spend seventy five percent of my time looking for one daughter on behalf of the other.
Following this we have Phoebe's ballet class, then a gap where they get changed then sit with a friend and do some activity I've cobbled together (usually sneaky maths).
Then Eleanor has her class while Phoebe and I sit in a coffee shop with friends and re-enact Sex in the City******** with two adults and two three year olds, then we take Eleanor to Rainbows, then there's dinner, then games night and then I fall over.
********I have never seen Sex in the City.
But I have seen adverts.
********* Although she actually said attractled, instead of attracted.
She also mispronounced cubicle.
Wednesday, 26 August 2015
Friday, 19 June 2015
Shakespearean Pieday
We have made far too many pies with pre-prepared pastry lately.
Clearly then, it was time to stop messing about and get our hands dirty* again.
We embarked, therefore, upon a confection of unquestionable provenance***, a pie greased with the patina of ages, a delicacy with which one might cry "God for England, Harry and St George".
In short
We made a Westmorland Tart
Ingredients
175g flour (kept in a covered bowl, in the fridge or freezer until needed)
A pinch of salt (with which to take the authenticity of this recipe)
2 tbsp caster sugar
110g of butter (also kept in the fridge till needed)
Another 25g of butter (not kept in the fridge)
1 egg yolk (make meringues with the rest)
200g of raisins
85g of chopped dates
85g dark muscovado sugar, or whatever soft**** brown sugar you can get.
Half a lemon (make those lemon meringues)
A good slug of orange juice (freshly squeezed if possible)
3 tbsp rum (and use the good stuff, not the sort you could use to clean the silver with)
100g walnut halves.
First quickly sift together the flour, salt and sugar.
Next get out the grater and, again working quickly, grate the butter into the flour mixture.
Explain that yes, this does seem rather silly, but actually keeping everything cold stops it melting together before you cook it and produces a better pastry.
Realise that you've been standing there, holding the butter in your warn little mitts as you explained this and that it is now no longer, by any stretch of the imagination, cold.
Finish grating the butter into the flour and quickly rub the stringy yellow worms into the rest of the mixture until it resembles breadcrumbs.
Now break in the egg and stir it together to produce a stiffish dough.
Resolve argument between co-chefs over who is to provide the water: Small Chef broke the egg so Smallest Chef will be water bearer.
Accept censure over unfair egg-bias: Small Chef always gets to break the egg because when Smallest Chef breaks eggs you get a bowl full of shell and she gets a fist full of slimy fragments.
Acknowledge fault in this issue and agree that more eggs will be broken by all in the near future.
Plan to make omelettes tomorrow.
And to buy more kitchen detergent.
Work the dough into a ball, wrap in cling film and stick back in the fridge.
Make a cup of tea and go off to water the garden or something.
Drink the tea before it goes cold.
Preheat the oven to 190 degrees or whatever counts as a moderate pie oven in your house.
Roll the pastry into a circle, press gently into your pie tin of choice, prick with a fork, apply baking parchment and beans or scrunched-up-tinfoil-filled with rice***** and bake blind for about twenty minutes until you have a nice, lightly golden pie case.
Now put everything else except the walnuts into a pan on a low heat and stir gently until the butter has melted.
Once it has done so, bring the pan to the boil and then immediately turn off the heat.
Allow it to cool, then stir in the walnuts.
Spoon the resulting, stickily brown mixture into the pie case and return the whole thing to the oven for another five or ten minutes.
Remove tart from the oven, go and put on Henry the Fifth, retrieve a slice or two of tart******* and watch the former with the latter.
Do not join in with the speeches.
Well, not with your mouth full, anyway.
Finish pie.
Wish you had but one ten thousand more.
*Well, not dirty, exactly, but definitely not clean.
Just faintly gritty with flour and sugar and that awkward buttery texture that's a pain in the neck to scrub off.
**It has come to this: last week I saw a packet of muffins labelled English Breakfast Muffins.
O tempora, o mores.
***Except it was probably invented in Colorado in the nineteen fifties, knowing my luck.
****Do not use granulated sugar.
If you use granulated sugar in this recipe then Drake's drum will beat and the heroes of Britain's chequered past will arise to point at you and laugh.
Or something.
*****Or whatever you use to bake pies blind.
Not using anything will not fill your house with Elizabethan zombies******, but may result in a puffed up pie case with less room for its delicious filling.
You have been warned.
******Probably.
******* Optional extra: Cumberland Cream.
Take 150ml double cream, 20g icing sugar and 2tbsp good rum.
Whip them all together and chill till needed.
Eat on the hot tart********.
Do not give any to the kids.
********There will probably be a lot left over.
Fortunately it also goes wonderfully in coffee, hot chocolate and other such non-traditional vehicles.
Friday, 5 June 2015
Ancient Roman Pieday
I think I've mentioned before that I write the Pieday blog entries with a buffer, so the pie we make on Friday is generally not the pie I then write about.
This gap grows vaster yet when I fail to post for an entire week due to being in a field*.
So here's the pie we made for our Roman feast, to wind up our Roman project.
More on that later.
Probably.
Meanwhile
We made placenta**
Ingredients
60g semolina
60g plain flour
One packet of Filo pastry***
340g ricotta (or painstakingly recreated ancient Roman soft cheese)
190g honey
Pour the semolina into a bowl, add enough water to cover it and leave it for an hour while you get on with your day.
When you return to the semolina drain out as much water as possible, squiggling it down to press out the last drops.
Observe that yes, it does look like quicksand, but is probably too shallow for anyone to get sucked down and drowned in.
Knead in the flour to produce a dough.
Scrape the sticky bits of dough off the knuckles of chefs Small and Smaller and send them off to investigate the properties of a nailbrush.
Leave the dough to rest while you get on with the next bit.
Beat the cheese together with 90g of the honey.
Use a fork, not a rotary whisk, unless you feel like destroying kitchen utensils today****.
The fork also allows a little more control and helps prevent splatters.
Actually, make sure you use a nice big bowl too.
And put an apron on Smaller chef.
And a headscarf.
Actually, better run a bath while you're at it.
Now take a large round dish and layer the filo sheets inside it, setting each one at a slight angle to the one before so that you have a rough circle or star of overlapping corners.*****
Brushing each sheet with melted butter gives a better finished effect, but is even less authentic.
Now divide the semolina dough into six balls.
No, they won't stay ball shaped, they are essentially weird, droopy pieces of sand coloured silly putty.
Prevent Small chef from throwing one at the wall to see if it will bounce.
Prevent Smaller chef from eating any.
Promise Small chef that bouncy-semolina experiments will be attempted another day.
Take smaller chef into the bathroom to vigorously scrub teeth.
Re-divide semolina dough into six balls well out of the way of any other chefs.
Stretch the first ball into a rough disc and place on the pastry base in the dish.
Observe that it immediately starts to creep back on itself.
Thwart this attempt by dolloping a sixth of the ricotta honey mixture on top and spreading it out over the whole surface of the semolina.
Now repeat this with the nextball blob of semolina and keep on stretching, dolloping and layering until you run out of gooey oozy things to play with.
Next fold the pastry around and over the cheese and honey morass: lift one edge and pull it up and over, then take the next edge and do the same, pulling it across to slightly overlap the last edge******.
Keep going round until you have achieved an attractive, rounded cake-pie creation.
Observe that yours is neither attractive, nor truly rounded, but forge ahead anyway.
Cover the dish with a roasting tin or similar and put the whole caboodle into a hot (about 220 celsius) oven for around fifty minutes until golden brown and puffy and crisp in a way that it probably wouldn't have been if you had used the proper pastry.
While it cooks rearrange you front room to resemble a triclinium with the addition of camp-beds, throws, cushions and random proppy things.
Once the placenta is out of the oven leave it to cool a little while you pour the rest of the honey into a pan and warm it on the stove.
Place the placenta on a serving dish, pour the warmed honey over the top and serve as part of a Roman feast alongside quails' eggs, lentil-and-chestnut stew, chickpea paste (ok, hummus) and honeyed dates.
Eat with your fingers, while reclining.
Go and run another bath.
*At Foolhardy Circus Camp.
And it was amazing.
**And once again, ew, moving on now.
***The proper version of this uses flour to make something like strudel paste.
I've made it that way before but am, frankly, dreadful at stretchy, delicate things and do not feel inclined to entrust that task to myterrifying abominations children.
For the more authentic recipe see The Classical Cookbook by Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger.
A recipe for seadas will also give you a good idea of what this ought to taste like.
****Well you might.
It could be a mini-project: first work out why the whisk broke, then try to fix it, then when you can't fix it, estimate the cost of the new whisk and look up various whisk-selling websites to see what the average price is before subtracting the estimated price from the real average and seeing how much more everything costs than you expect.
It's a learning experience.
*****Yes, this a truly awful description.
And no, I don't have a photograph to help you.
Look, just get the sheets into the dish so you have a flattish roundish pastry base.
******This description is, if anything, even worse than the last one.
Just pull the pastry over to cover the filling: you'll probably figure out what I meant and if you don't you'll still have achieved filling-inside-pastry and beyond that who honestly cares at this point?
This gap grows vaster yet when I fail to post for an entire week due to being in a field*.
So here's the pie we made for our Roman feast, to wind up our Roman project.
More on that later.
Probably.
Meanwhile
We made placenta**
Ingredients
60g semolina
60g plain flour
One packet of Filo pastry***
340g ricotta (or painstakingly recreated ancient Roman soft cheese)
190g honey
Pour the semolina into a bowl, add enough water to cover it and leave it for an hour while you get on with your day.
When you return to the semolina drain out as much water as possible, squiggling it down to press out the last drops.
Observe that yes, it does look like quicksand, but is probably too shallow for anyone to get sucked down and drowned in.
Knead in the flour to produce a dough.
Scrape the sticky bits of dough off the knuckles of chefs Small and Smaller and send them off to investigate the properties of a nailbrush.
Leave the dough to rest while you get on with the next bit.
Beat the cheese together with 90g of the honey.
Use a fork, not a rotary whisk, unless you feel like destroying kitchen utensils today****.
The fork also allows a little more control and helps prevent splatters.
Actually, make sure you use a nice big bowl too.
And put an apron on Smaller chef.
And a headscarf.
Actually, better run a bath while you're at it.
Now take a large round dish and layer the filo sheets inside it, setting each one at a slight angle to the one before so that you have a rough circle or star of overlapping corners.*****
Brushing each sheet with melted butter gives a better finished effect, but is even less authentic.
Now divide the semolina dough into six balls.
No, they won't stay ball shaped, they are essentially weird, droopy pieces of sand coloured silly putty.
Prevent Small chef from throwing one at the wall to see if it will bounce.
Prevent Smaller chef from eating any.
Promise Small chef that bouncy-semolina experiments will be attempted another day.
Take smaller chef into the bathroom to vigorously scrub teeth.
Re-divide semolina dough into six balls well out of the way of any other chefs.
Stretch the first ball into a rough disc and place on the pastry base in the dish.
Observe that it immediately starts to creep back on itself.
Thwart this attempt by dolloping a sixth of the ricotta honey mixture on top and spreading it out over the whole surface of the semolina.
Now repeat this with the next
Next fold the pastry around and over the cheese and honey morass: lift one edge and pull it up and over, then take the next edge and do the same, pulling it across to slightly overlap the last edge******.
Keep going round until you have achieved an attractive, rounded cake-pie creation.
Observe that yours is neither attractive, nor truly rounded, but forge ahead anyway.
Cover the dish with a roasting tin or similar and put the whole caboodle into a hot (about 220 celsius) oven for around fifty minutes until golden brown and puffy and crisp in a way that it probably wouldn't have been if you had used the proper pastry.
While it cooks rearrange you front room to resemble a triclinium with the addition of camp-beds, throws, cushions and random proppy things.
Once the placenta is out of the oven leave it to cool a little while you pour the rest of the honey into a pan and warm it on the stove.
Place the placenta on a serving dish, pour the warmed honey over the top and serve as part of a Roman feast alongside quails' eggs, lentil-and-chestnut stew, chickpea paste (ok, hummus) and honeyed dates.
Eat with your fingers, while reclining.
Go and run another bath.
*At Foolhardy Circus Camp.
And it was amazing.
**And once again, ew, moving on now.
***The proper version of this uses flour to make something like strudel paste.
I've made it that way before but am, frankly, dreadful at stretchy, delicate things and do not feel inclined to entrust that task to my
For the more authentic recipe see The Classical Cookbook by Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger.
A recipe for seadas will also give you a good idea of what this ought to taste like.
****Well you might.
It could be a mini-project: first work out why the whisk broke, then try to fix it, then when you can't fix it, estimate the cost of the new whisk and look up various whisk-selling websites to see what the average price is before subtracting the estimated price from the real average and seeing how much more everything costs than you expect.
It's a learning experience.
*****Yes, this a truly awful description.
And no, I don't have a photograph to help you.
Look, just get the sheets into the dish so you have a flattish roundish pastry base.
******This description is, if anything, even worse than the last one.
Just pull the pastry over to cover the filling: you'll probably figure out what I meant and if you don't you'll still have achieved filling-inside-pastry and beyond that who honestly cares at this point?
Friday, 22 May 2015
The mathematical value of Pieday
Ok, everyone knows how to do maths with pie.
Cut the value of Pi into the top before you bake it, make an open-topped pie chart with different fillings, measure the diameter, circumference, radius and depth: pie-based maths is fairly intuitive really.
Today, however is not about maths with pie pie, or even maths with Pi-pie.
In fact, it wasn't originally going to be about any kind of mathematical pie.
It was going to be about an ancient Roman cake-pie thing called placenta* which we were going to make for the Roman feast we had intended to make tonight, however a change of plans and an untimely stomach bug** later, here we are.
This isn't a recipe, I won't be listing ingredients or going into the method, or anything like that.
This is just a rough approximation of how, and why we make mathematical muffins***.
Start by convincing yourself that muffins count as pie****.
This may seem an unnecessary step but, just like salting and draining aubergines or adding that pinch of turmeric to a curry, it will have a huge, if unnoticed impact on the final result.
Remember that pie is a filling surrounded by some sort of crust.
Note that the glossy top of a muffin is somewhat crust-like and that, while a muffin may not be glossy and crusty all over it is still made from the same muffin mix and therefore, spiritually, all crust.
You have only to add a filling to achieve pie.
Concede that, while filled muffins are an oozy nuisance*****, if you want to call this Pieday then filled muffins you must make.
Get out the emergency box of muffin mix.
Assuming your mix is blueberry, go and get the jar of blueberry conserve from the cupboard.
Make up the muffin mix.
Add a little lemon zest****** because it's there, and because lemon and blueberry go so well together.
Consider swapping the blueberry conserve for lemon curd.
Determine that no, these are blueberry-pie muffins, so blueberry it must be.
Feel a moment's sympathy for the writers of those so-called recipes which list cake-mixture and packaged icing on their ingredients.
Quash this ruthlessly.
Note that at least the blueberries in the package are tinned and not dried because otherwise these would be dried-blueberry muffins not blueberry muffins: it's not as though you call scones******* with raisins in grape scones.
Not that that matters here.
Because these are pies.
Sort out the oven,muffin pie cases and so on.
Now spoon half the muffin mixture into the cases.
Add a teaspoon of the fancy jam in the middle of each splodge of mixture.
Top with the rest of the muffin mix.
Put the pies into the oven, set the timer and have a cup of tea.
Get distracted contemplating apple-pie muffins made with a really good plain muffin mixture with lots of melted butter, and a proper, non-gloopy, apple-pie filling with two kinds of apple, and a crumbly topping made of soft brown sugar and cinnamon*******.
Ok, so not all filled muffins are an abomination
Once the muffins are done take them out, let them cool a little and get on with the maths.
The thing about mathematical muffins is that it's not how they're made********* that makes them mathematical, it's what you do with them.
So count them.
Do addition and subtraction, cut them into halves, quarters and thirds, talk about the number of cuts needed for each and how many times you would need to cut them for each.
Talk about why that isn't the same.
Do most of the things you could do with a normal pie.
Measure them.
Figure out the height of an average muffin, then work out the height of six average muffins balanced on top of one another.
Balance them, giggling madly, and measure them to see if it's the same.
See how many times you can cut a muffin into equal-sized pieces before it crumbles.
Eat them.
Time yourselves cleaning up.
Make some more so you can check your results.
*Ew.
There, now that's out of the way we can get on with the blog.
**Apparently contracted by text.
I suppose it's a natural evolution of the computer virus.
***Which are still American Muffins, but also still get away with murder due to the awesome power of alliteration.
****Because this is Pieday.
*****And, frankly, just rather disappointing cupcakes.
Which are themselves just overblown fairy cakes.
******But not juice, as this would throw off the acidity of the mixture and mess with the raising agents.
Resolve to experiment with lemon muffins another day.
*******And I hope you mentally pronounced that correctly.
********Because cheese on a sweet muffin would be a thousand kinds of wrong.
*********Although obviously weights and measures are all sorts of fun.
Cut the value of Pi into the top before you bake it, make an open-topped pie chart with different fillings, measure the diameter, circumference, radius and depth: pie-based maths is fairly intuitive really.
Today, however is not about maths with pie pie, or even maths with Pi-pie.
In fact, it wasn't originally going to be about any kind of mathematical pie.
It was going to be about an ancient Roman cake-pie thing called placenta* which we were going to make for the Roman feast we had intended to make tonight, however a change of plans and an untimely stomach bug** later, here we are.
This isn't a recipe, I won't be listing ingredients or going into the method, or anything like that.
This is just a rough approximation of how, and why we make mathematical muffins***.
Start by convincing yourself that muffins count as pie****.
This may seem an unnecessary step but, just like salting and draining aubergines or adding that pinch of turmeric to a curry, it will have a huge, if unnoticed impact on the final result.
Remember that pie is a filling surrounded by some sort of crust.
Note that the glossy top of a muffin is somewhat crust-like and that, while a muffin may not be glossy and crusty all over it is still made from the same muffin mix and therefore, spiritually, all crust.
You have only to add a filling to achieve pie.
Concede that, while filled muffins are an oozy nuisance*****, if you want to call this Pieday then filled muffins you must make.
Get out the emergency box of muffin mix.
Assuming your mix is blueberry, go and get the jar of blueberry conserve from the cupboard.
Make up the muffin mix.
Add a little lemon zest****** because it's there, and because lemon and blueberry go so well together.
Consider swapping the blueberry conserve for lemon curd.
Determine that no, these are blueberry-pie muffins, so blueberry it must be.
Feel a moment's sympathy for the writers of those so-called recipes which list cake-mixture and packaged icing on their ingredients.
Quash this ruthlessly.
Note that at least the blueberries in the package are tinned and not dried because otherwise these would be dried-blueberry muffins not blueberry muffins: it's not as though you call scones******* with raisins in grape scones.
Not that that matters here.
Because these are pies.
Sort out the oven,
Now spoon half the muffin mixture into the cases.
Add a teaspoon of the fancy jam in the middle of each splodge of mixture.
Top with the rest of the muffin mix.
Put the pies into the oven, set the timer and have a cup of tea.
Get distracted contemplating apple-pie muffins made with a really good plain muffin mixture with lots of melted butter, and a proper, non-gloopy, apple-pie filling with two kinds of apple, and a crumbly topping made of soft brown sugar and cinnamon*******.
Ok, so not all filled muffins are an abomination
Once the muffins are done take them out, let them cool a little and get on with the maths.
The thing about mathematical muffins is that it's not how they're made********* that makes them mathematical, it's what you do with them.
So count them.
Do addition and subtraction, cut them into halves, quarters and thirds, talk about the number of cuts needed for each and how many times you would need to cut them for each.
Talk about why that isn't the same.
Do most of the things you could do with a normal pie.
Measure them.
Figure out the height of an average muffin, then work out the height of six average muffins balanced on top of one another.
Balance them, giggling madly, and measure them to see if it's the same.
See how many times you can cut a muffin into equal-sized pieces before it crumbles.
Eat them.
Time yourselves cleaning up.
Make some more so you can check your results.
*Ew.
There, now that's out of the way we can get on with the blog.
**Apparently contracted by text.
I suppose it's a natural evolution of the computer virus.
***Which are still American Muffins, but also still get away with murder due to the awesome power of alliteration.
****Because this is Pieday.
*****And, frankly, just rather disappointing cupcakes.
Which are themselves just overblown fairy cakes.
******But not juice, as this would throw off the acidity of the mixture and mess with the raising agents.
Resolve to experiment with lemon muffins another day.
*******And I hope you mentally pronounced that correctly.
********Because cheese on a sweet muffin would be a thousand kinds of wrong.
*********Although obviously weights and measures are all sorts of fun.
Friday, 15 May 2015
Nutty Pieday
Baklava is clearly pie: delicious nutty filling encased in pastry and drenched in syrup, that's definitely some sort of wonderful diminutive pie.
So, since I had a hafla* to go to and was looking for a different sort of pie to those that we've attempted lately, baklava it was**.
They are far easier than you might imagine, at least the way we made them as we don't make our own filo***, and well worth the frankly negligible effort.
So we made Baklava.
Ingredients
300ml of water
500g caster sugar (but adjust sweetness to taste)
Two packets of filo pastry
One lemon
Rosewater
Three small bags of pistachios (about 300-400g)
About half a block of butter.
First boil the kettle, half fill a bowl with boiling water, place the butter in a second, smaller bowl**** and gingerly place the one inside the other***** taking care not to get any water in with the butter.
Instruct Small and Smaller Chefs to be careful because that water is hot and could burn them.
Observe that both chefs now treat that whole countertop as though it were an unexploded bomb.
Decide this is better than the alternative and get on with things, occasionally pausing to refresh the boiling water in the bowl as it cools.
The point of this, in case you hadn't realised, is to melt the butter.
You can do it a different way, if you have one that works.
Grate a little of the zest from the lemon and set it aside.
Do not allow Smaller Chef to eat some of the lemon zest.
Or do, if you want to see the face she makes.
Grate some more while Smaller Chef washes her mouth out.
Pour the water into a pan (not too small in case it boils over) stir in the sugar, then cut the lemo in half and squeeze the juice from one half into the pan.
Put the pan on the stove and bring to the boil.
Issue an appropriately awful warning about the dangers of boiling sugar then invite Chefs Small and Smaller to stir the pan.
Observe that they now cross the kitchen as though they were navigating a minefield.
Stir the darn syrup yourself.
Allow to boil for five minutes, the take it off the heat and pour in a couple of tablespoons of rosewater.
Decant the whole thing into a jug, leave it to cool, then stick it in the fridge till you need it.
Next chop or crush the nuts.
You can do this by hand or in a Mechanical Whirry Blendy Device of Doom.
Should you choose the MWBDD, do not attempt to chop all the nuts at once.
Instead do a packet at a time, taking turns to push the button or whatever it is your particular contraption requires.
Note that while the Chefs Diminutive each quail away from the noise of the MWBDD when someone else is operating it, neither has any problem with the volume when the power is in their hands.
Muse on the implications of this while reducing the pistachios to a pleasing gravel.
Stir the nuts and lemon zest together.
Now turn on the oven to a medium sort of heat (we went with 200c).
Take a roasting tin or foil tin and brush the sides and base with the melted butter.
If you have a small tin****** brush that with the butter as well.
Now lay one of the packets of filo in the tin, a sheet at a time, brushing each sheet thoroughly with butter after you tuck it neatly in.
The filo should come up the sides of the tin a little.
Assuming you have an overhanging end of filo each time, which you probably will, cut it off and put it in the smaller tin.
Once the whole packet of pastry has been used pour in the pistachio and lemon mixture and smooth it off to cover the whole bottom of the pastry lined tin.
If you have a smaller lined tin too, share the nuts between the two.
Then repeat the filo-and-butter routine with the second packet, to cover the nuts.
Make sure you butter the top layer too.
Use a sharp knife to cut the baklava into neat squares or diamonds.
Make sure you cut down through every layer*******.
Note that the minor chefs, while treating a bowl of boiling water like weapons-grade plutonium, have absolutely no problem wielding blades.
Bask in the warm glow of pride.
Put the tin in the oven for half an hour and have a cup of mint tea or something.
When the baklava are puffy and golden and lovely, take them out and pour half of the jug of syrup over the top.
Once this has soaked in add the second half.
Allow the baklava to cool, then wrap carefully to take to a party the next day.
Or not if you have nowhere to be.
Save the smaller tray, should there be one, for when you get back.
Take baklava to party.
Observe the speed at which they vanish.
Do not get any baklava yourself.
On returning home observe that the contents of the reserve tin have been mysteriously reduced to a single square.
*A sort of bellydance party, with performances and generally a table of nibbles to which attendees can add things.
**I cheated: we made these on Wednesday, today was instead dedicated to maths with muffins.
I should probably call them American muffins, as I loathe the recent tendency to call plain, teatime muffins English muffins, at least in England, but I'm a fool for alliteration so I didn't.
***I'm cooking with kids here: time and fiddliness aside, home-made filo is a bridge too far.
****We used one of the little plastic bowls we got for the kids when they were tiny, these are generally pretty handy when cooking for weighing ingredients, separating eggs and so forth.
***** Or rather, the other inside the one.
******Or if you though ahead and bought some of those little tinfoil things curry sometimes comes in.
*******If using one of those flimsy foil things, take care not to cut through that as well as it will leak syrup all over the place later on.
I know this because reasons.
So, since I had a hafla* to go to and was looking for a different sort of pie to those that we've attempted lately, baklava it was**.
They are far easier than you might imagine, at least the way we made them as we don't make our own filo***, and well worth the frankly negligible effort.
So we made Baklava.
Ingredients
300ml of water
500g caster sugar (but adjust sweetness to taste)
Two packets of filo pastry
One lemon
Rosewater
Three small bags of pistachios (about 300-400g)
About half a block of butter.
First boil the kettle, half fill a bowl with boiling water, place the butter in a second, smaller bowl**** and gingerly place the one inside the other***** taking care not to get any water in with the butter.
Instruct Small and Smaller Chefs to be careful because that water is hot and could burn them.
Observe that both chefs now treat that whole countertop as though it were an unexploded bomb.
Decide this is better than the alternative and get on with things, occasionally pausing to refresh the boiling water in the bowl as it cools.
The point of this, in case you hadn't realised, is to melt the butter.
You can do it a different way, if you have one that works.
Grate a little of the zest from the lemon and set it aside.
Do not allow Smaller Chef to eat some of the lemon zest.
Or do, if you want to see the face she makes.
Grate some more while Smaller Chef washes her mouth out.
Pour the water into a pan (not too small in case it boils over) stir in the sugar, then cut the lemo in half and squeeze the juice from one half into the pan.
Put the pan on the stove and bring to the boil.
Issue an appropriately awful warning about the dangers of boiling sugar then invite Chefs Small and Smaller to stir the pan.
Observe that they now cross the kitchen as though they were navigating a minefield.
Stir the darn syrup yourself.
Allow to boil for five minutes, the take it off the heat and pour in a couple of tablespoons of rosewater.
Decant the whole thing into a jug, leave it to cool, then stick it in the fridge till you need it.
Next chop or crush the nuts.
You can do this by hand or in a Mechanical Whirry Blendy Device of Doom.
Should you choose the MWBDD, do not attempt to chop all the nuts at once.
Instead do a packet at a time, taking turns to push the button or whatever it is your particular contraption requires.
Note that while the Chefs Diminutive each quail away from the noise of the MWBDD when someone else is operating it, neither has any problem with the volume when the power is in their hands.
Muse on the implications of this while reducing the pistachios to a pleasing gravel.
Stir the nuts and lemon zest together.
Now turn on the oven to a medium sort of heat (we went with 200c).
Take a roasting tin or foil tin and brush the sides and base with the melted butter.
If you have a small tin****** brush that with the butter as well.
Now lay one of the packets of filo in the tin, a sheet at a time, brushing each sheet thoroughly with butter after you tuck it neatly in.
The filo should come up the sides of the tin a little.
Assuming you have an overhanging end of filo each time, which you probably will, cut it off and put it in the smaller tin.
Once the whole packet of pastry has been used pour in the pistachio and lemon mixture and smooth it off to cover the whole bottom of the pastry lined tin.
If you have a smaller lined tin too, share the nuts between the two.
Then repeat the filo-and-butter routine with the second packet, to cover the nuts.
Make sure you butter the top layer too.
Use a sharp knife to cut the baklava into neat squares or diamonds.
Make sure you cut down through every layer*******.
Note that the minor chefs, while treating a bowl of boiling water like weapons-grade plutonium, have absolutely no problem wielding blades.
Bask in the warm glow of pride.
Put the tin in the oven for half an hour and have a cup of mint tea or something.
When the baklava are puffy and golden and lovely, take them out and pour half of the jug of syrup over the top.
Once this has soaked in add the second half.
Allow the baklava to cool, then wrap carefully to take to a party the next day.
Or not if you have nowhere to be.
Save the smaller tray, should there be one, for when you get back.
Take baklava to party.
Observe the speed at which they vanish.
Do not get any baklava yourself.
On returning home observe that the contents of the reserve tin have been mysteriously reduced to a single square.
*A sort of bellydance party, with performances and generally a table of nibbles to which attendees can add things.
**I cheated: we made these on Wednesday, today was instead dedicated to maths with muffins.
I should probably call them American muffins, as I loathe the recent tendency to call plain, teatime muffins English muffins, at least in England, but I'm a fool for alliteration so I didn't.
***I'm cooking with kids here: time and fiddliness aside, home-made filo is a bridge too far.
****We used one of the little plastic bowls we got for the kids when they were tiny, these are generally pretty handy when cooking for weighing ingredients, separating eggs and so forth.
***** Or rather, the other inside the one.
******Or if you though ahead and bought some of those little tinfoil things curry sometimes comes in.
*******If using one of those flimsy foil things, take care not to cut through that as well as it will leak syrup all over the place later on.
I know this because reasons.
Friday, 8 May 2015
Piatus
We made a pie.
But it was not a pie.
It was a scone.
There will be a slight piatus while I debate the ethics of posting about savoury scones on pieday.
Fear not*.
I will return.
*Unless you live in fear of my blog posts, which is honestly the more sensible attitude, but in that case just don't read them.
But it was not a pie.
It was a scone.
There will be a slight piatus while I debate the ethics of posting about savoury scones on pieday.
Fear not*.
I will return.
*Unless you live in fear of my blog posts, which is honestly the more sensible attitude, but in that case just don't read them.
Friday, 1 May 2015
Immeasurable Pieday
Well, unmeasurable, anyway: our scales are still broken.
Unable to make anything involving weights and measures, and desperate for success following the coconut-pie debacles*, we decided to go with something simple this week.
We made Blueberry Tarts
Ingredients
One sheet of ready-rolled puff pastry**
Two punnets of blueberries
One small, or half a large tub of mascarpone
One lemon
Icing sugar to taste
A little milk or beaten egg
First turn on the oven to a medium heat (200 in our case), get out baking sheets and line with baking parchment.
Next cut the pastry into eight equal squares.
Use a sharp knife to draw a wide border around the outside of each square, then prick the middle of each square with a fork.
Brush the border with milk or beaten egg to make it nice and glossy when it bakes.
If you want to leave the filling uncooked, for fresh, light tarts, pile baking beans into the middle of each tart case and pop them into the oven for fifteen minutes.
When you realise you have no baking beans in the house, scrabble wildly in cupboards until you come up with an acceptable substitute.
Make sure whatever you use is non-toxic and won't get stuck in the pastry***.
You probably ought to buy baking beans at some point, really.
Take them out when they're done and allow them to cool before continuing.
When they have cooled, or immediately if you want to bake the filling, for a more cohesive and somehow richer-seeming tart**** move on to the mascarpone.
Squeeze the juice of the lemon into the mascarpone and beat with a fork.
Add a few tablespoons of icing sugar and beat vigorously.
Taste a little and add more icing sugar if necessary.
If it tastes too sweet, you needed to add less.
Dollop the mascarpone into the cases, or spoon onto the uncooked pastry bases taking care not to over-fill as it will flow out when baked.
Stud all over with blueberries.
If you pre-baked the pastry cases your work here is done.
If you plan to bake the filling, then stick the whole lot into the oven for twenty minutes.
When done replace any blueberries that have been washed overboard and allow to cool before eating.
Serve after something Small and Smaller Cooks don't much like and see how fast they eat it with the promise of tart for dessert.
*I bought a bottle of Malibu for those things.
**The pastry is pre-made as we had no way of weighing ingredients, but obviously this recipe would be even better made with fresh, home-made puff pastry.
Unable to make anything involving weights and measures, and desperate for success following the coconut-pie debacles*, we decided to go with something simple this week.
We made Blueberry Tarts
Ingredients
One sheet of ready-rolled puff pastry**
Two punnets of blueberries
One small, or half a large tub of mascarpone
One lemon
Icing sugar to taste
A little milk or beaten egg
First turn on the oven to a medium heat (200 in our case), get out baking sheets and line with baking parchment.
Next cut the pastry into eight equal squares.
Use a sharp knife to draw a wide border around the outside of each square, then prick the middle of each square with a fork.
Brush the border with milk or beaten egg to make it nice and glossy when it bakes.
If you want to leave the filling uncooked, for fresh, light tarts, pile baking beans into the middle of each tart case and pop them into the oven for fifteen minutes.
When you realise you have no baking beans in the house, scrabble wildly in cupboards until you come up with an acceptable substitute.
Make sure whatever you use is non-toxic and won't get stuck in the pastry***.
You probably ought to buy baking beans at some point, really.
Take them out when they're done and allow them to cool before continuing.
When they have cooled, or immediately if you want to bake the filling, for a more cohesive and somehow richer-seeming tart**** move on to the mascarpone.
Squeeze the juice of the lemon into the mascarpone and beat with a fork.
Add a few tablespoons of icing sugar and beat vigorously.
Taste a little and add more icing sugar if necessary.
If it tastes too sweet, you needed to add less.
Dollop the mascarpone into the cases, or spoon onto the uncooked pastry bases taking care not to over-fill as it will flow out when baked.
Stud all over with blueberries.
If you pre-baked the pastry cases your work here is done.
If you plan to bake the filling, then stick the whole lot into the oven for twenty minutes.
When done replace any blueberries that have been washed overboard and allow to cool before eating.
Serve after something Small and Smaller Cooks don't much like and see how fast they eat it with the promise of tart for dessert.
*I bought a bottle of Malibu for those things.
**The pastry is pre-made as we had no way of weighing ingredients, but obviously this recipe would be even better made with fresh, home-made puff pastry.
***We settled for making little parcels of tin foil wrapped around rice.
****Somewhat galette like, in fact.
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