The Breakfast Series - The Croissant

Croissants have become so synonymous with breakfast that they have almost transcended their French origins. They can be found in any hotel from the five star to the unclassified and even our local Tesco sells some mass-produced, hydrogenated stuffed croissant like things. They have been used and abused, fiddled with and taken for granted. And yet ... and yet, we still love them. Fluffy and buttery with yet more butter smeared over them with a liberal helping of jam, there's nothing quite like it.

Now anyone reading this may be thinking; "Gosh, isn't that fiddly? Wouldn’t that take ages? My word, what patience she must have!" and of course you'd be right - about it being fiddly of course. I, however, do not have the patience to embark on such a crusade. Besides, it wasn't my turn this week, it was Ax's. As the fully trained chief in the house and myself a mere amateur, I leave the really complicated stuff for her cut and bruised, artistic hands.

The recipe came from a book I was lucky enough to buy last week when we visited the Taste Festival (lots of fun btw - I now have this great desire to visit Le Gavroche as we enjoyed their food so much). In honour of our breakfast traditions I bought a copy of "Breakfast at the Wolseley" by Mr. A.A. Gill. Expect a lot of the breakfast series to be taken from the book, I would certainly recommend reading what he says about the bastardisation of our illustrious friend the croissant by a multitude of cultures. But I digress ... rather a lot really ... so let’s get on to our breakfast and Ax's Croissants.

Ax spent the entire week working on a multitude of batches for this one, the first batch she wasn’t happy with as she didn’t allow the yeast to fully dissolve but the second got her approval. That is until we discovered just how fragile the dough was. A little tip, when the dough is going through its final rise it is so sensitive that even the barest hint of the weight of a tea towel will traumatise them so much that they will retreat in terror and stubbornly shrink to the thickness of a pancake. However, I was much impressed with the end result of the final batch; they were fluffy, buttery, ever so slightly creamy and a tad of crisp resistance that succumbs to your first bite to release a pillow of buttery yummyness.
(... I apologise for the ramble-ness of this post- old woman that I am, it was getting a tad late for me)

The Breakfast Series - Baked Doughnuts

So we have a tradition in our house (we may have only lived here for three weeks but yes we already have traditions!) that on Sunday mornings we take turns making a proper breakfast. So far we've done French toast, blueberry pancakes and now Doughnuts.

Ah, Doughnuts. Those little bouncy, fatty, sugary pillows of heaven. There's nothing like a fresh doughnut or 5 to bring a smile to even the most depressed little face. Whether jam, cream or sugar, all doughnuts are my friends. (But not glazed, never glazed. Keep those overly sugary, sickly American monstrosities to yourself. Oh and we all know how chocolate and I feel about each other so none of that either.) If you have never had a still steaming hot, freshly deep fried doughnut then I pity you. Deeply. Once you have tasted them truly fresh then you will begin to see how much of a pale imitation your average supermarket bought doughnut is.

However, as much as I love a freshly fried doughnut, I did not relish the thought of leaving the flat smelling of a chip shop and I am sure my fellow tube passengers wouldn't have thanked me for it either. Hence the baked doughnut. Its a wonderful little recipe I picked up via tastespotting.com (which has sadly recently ceased to function - EDIT tastespotting hath returned! I rejoice and my manager probably despairs at my loss in productivity). Axy tells me these are better than the fried version as they are lighter and lack the claggy fatty taste.

Baked Doughnuts

Ingredients

• 1 1/3 cups warm milk
• 1 packet active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
• 29g butter
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• A pinch or two of nutmeg, freshly grated
• 1 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon

Directions

Place 1/3 cup of the warm milk in to a bowl and stir in the yeast, set aside for five minutes or so. Be sure your milk isn't too hot or it will kill the yeast. Stir the butter and sugar into the remaining cup of warm milk and add it to the yeast mixture. With a fork, stir in the eggs, flour, nutmeg, and salt - just until the flour is incorporated. Now turn the dough out onto the side and begin to knead it (see the post about english muffins for guidance on this).

This is where you are going to need to make adjustments - if your dough is overly sticky, add flour a few tablespoons at a time. If it’s too dry then add more milk a bit at a time. You want the dough to eventually become supple and smooth. Knead and pull the dough a few more times then shape into a ball.

Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl, cover, put in a warm place, and let rise for an hour or until the dough has roughly doubled in size.

Punch down the dough and roll it out 1/2-inch thick on your floured counter top. Use a 2-3 inch cookie cutter to stamp out circles. Transfer the circles to a parchment-lined baking sheet and stamp out the smaller inner circles using a smaller cutter. If you cut the inner holes out any earlier, they become distorted when you attempt to move them. Cover with a clean cloth and let rise for another 45 minutes. (If making the night before then put them in the fridge at this stage, take them out in the morning and let them rise.)

Bake in a 190°C oven until the bottoms are just golden, 8 to 10 minutes - start checking around 8. While the doughnuts are baking, place the butter in a medium bowl. Place the sugar and cinnamon in a separate bowl.

Remove the doughnuts from the oven and let cool for just a minute or two. Dip each one in the melted butter and a quick toss in the sugar bowl. Eat immediately if not sooner.

Makes 1 1/2 - 2 dozen medium doughnuts.

(We had some left over home-made bonfire toffee so melted it, mixed with cream and used that as a dip - as seen above on the half eaten doughnut and all over the plate; it worked surprisingly well.)

So lets talk about meat ...

Yes I'm a meat eater, completely and unashamedly, however I seem to have a philosophy that's somewhat out of favour. Although I am in favour of eating meat, I believe that you should respect the animal you're eating; respect it enough to give it a good life before it dies, respect it enough to use as much of it as possible. I should probably get to the point. My point is this; I eat offal and I think everyone who eats meat should respect their food enough to do the same.

Its not just about respect - offal is not only cheap but delicious! From Liver and Onions to Steak and Kidney pie, some of the great classic dishes use offal to great effect. Besides, i love trying new things, I'm defiantly not squeamish about my food and if you get too precious about eating offal when you quite happily eat steak, I shall just have to quote the great Jeff Jacques at you; lean in real close and whisper "you're eating that animal's muscles, that's what they used to move around when they were alive and now you're eating it". Because if that doesn't bother you then i fail to see why offal would.

So what triggered this little expose of my gastronomical preferences? My new favourite recipe, that's what! I watched the latest episode of River Cottage recently and was inspired to see Hugh fernly-whatisname cooking Deviled Lamb's Heart. Having never cooked heart before, I leapt at the chance to try it when i saw hearts for sale in the local Morrisons. However, I was then thoroughly disappointed to notice the complete absence of a recipe on the website. I assume the series will be followed by some sort of recipe book but I didn't want to wait that long so downloaded the episode, watched him cook it again and then did my own version. Possibly the most surprising recipe so far. (NB; the quantities in this recipe are complete guesswork apart from the heart as I just sloshed things in till they looked right)

Devilled Lamb's Heart

Ingredients
(serves 2 for a starter or 1 for a main course)

• 1 decent size Lamb's heart
• stock vegetables (I generally just use whatever I've got in but your basic guidance is 1 decent sized carrot, half an onion and some celery)
• Stock herbs (again this is a matter of preference but I just gathered some bay leaves, rosemary, thyme, basil and parsley from the garden)
• 3 tbsp cooking sherry
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
• a decent splosh of Worcestershire Sauce
• 2 tsp English mustard
• 2 tsp recurrent jelly
• Cayenne Pepper
  
• 3 tbsp Cream

In selecting your heart, you want a nice crimson one with creamy swirls of fat at the top. When you get it home, cut it in half lengthways and wash it to get rid of any clots of blood. I just rinsed it under a running tap until the water ran clear. Then you want to prepare your stock vegetables and put them into a decent sized pan with the herbs, add the heart and just enough water to cover everything (i needed about 1 1/2 pints) add some salt and pepper at this point if you feel the need. Cover the pan and bring to the boil then lower the heat and leave it simmering for about an hour. Go and do something else whilst your heart has a nice warm bath.



Remove the heart from the stock and slice into thin vertical slivers, removing the fat and tube-y bits as you go. Heat a sauté pan with a very small amount of oil until its so hot its almost smoking then add your heart slivers. Fry for a few seconds then add the Sherry. BE VERY CAREFUL AT THIS POINT. There is a very high probability the sherry will catch fire, this is not a problem and is simply the alcohol burning off. When the Sherry is no longer alight add the vinegar, mustard, redcurrant jelly and cayenne pepper. You may notice at this point that I've carefully avoided putting a quantity down for the cayenne and this is because the amount it entirely up to you. Now add the cream and stir to make sure everything is fully combined then reduce - you want to be aiming for a thick sauce that will happily cling to your toast.

Now simply serve on toast, I used some slices of a rather nice home-made malt loaf and served with a leaf salad. Enjoy. I practically licked my plate clean.