“Breakfast”rolls.

Found a photo of these on mojewypieki.com and made them this morning, but for brunch. Not for breakfast. I’m coping Florek’s effective diet of eating nothing till midday and enjoying lunch then, it seems to be doing good to my waistline ( as I’m writing these words, I’m on my second g&t, munching on some particularly moreish chili and serrano crisps bought 2 weeks ago in Adnams, speaking of dieting!).

For about 8-9 rolls I used 2 tall glasses of strong bread flour, 0,5 tsp of salt, 1 tbsp of melted butter, a small egg, 1 tsp of sugar, 7 g of fresh yeast, 3/4 tall glass of tepid milk. Made the starter first- a bit of that flour,milk and all the yeast, then mixed it all in with the remaining ingredients, leaving butter till the end. The dough proved for about 1,5 hour, then, using a little rolling technique I picked up from Paul Hollywood I formed the rolls, placed them on the baking parchment, dusted with flour and left to double in size again.

I sprinkled them with some water and baked for about 15 minutes in 190 degrees. They were very much enjoyed with a lovely, creamy tomato soup, some pate and some mature cheddar. Recipe going into the book, to be used again!

Berry, maple and pecan tart.

While sitting through a vegetarian weekend in Suffolk recently I felt like doing a Sunday roast. Ewa’s was available, so was Mariusz, Tommy Banks’s recipe for roast pork belly was looking at me, there were no excuses.

I’ve done that roast today, pork was ok, but not mind blowing. There was quite a lot of leftovers, as Mariusz had to turn around before Oxford, there were issues with gear box. Luckily Ewa made it and she took some food for Sophie, who works on Sundays.

Dessert was a success. I made it yesterday and it went, all of it. Just the way I like it, the plates to the dishwasher, job done.

50g of pecans nuts, toasted, blitzed with 3 tbsps of icing sugar. 150 g of plain flour ( I added a bit more), 75 g of cold, unsalted butter. 1 whole egg. The dough chilled in the fridge for about an hour, then got rolled out and chilled again, then baked blind in 200 degrees for about 20 minutes and a few more without the beans.

For the filling I used a 250 g tub of mascarpone, 150 g of Greek yoghurt, coconut flavoured, unlike the recipe that called for plain, 6 tbsps of maple syrup and some vanilla paste. Really nice indeed. Fresh blueberries and raspberries on top. While the last piece of it was being eaten in the garden I remembered that I was going to drizzle it with extra maple syrup before serving. Next time maybe. And I think I’ll be doing my own shortcrust pastry, the very crumbly one, as those pecans didn’t really bring anything amazing to the dessert. Good, but could be better!