Make your own bacon!

Like many people, you probably thought that making bacon is really complicated and best left to the professionals. Well actually, preserving meat is extremely easy, however it is a good idea to follow a nice recipe because the flavour of the end product really changes depending on methods and ingredients. Our recipe is a really quick and easy recipe, but it should be said that this technique makes a very particular style of bacon. It's quite thick, and is only left in the cure for 3 hours and thus produces a nice cooking bacon, perfect for dicing or frying as thick slices. The flavour of this bacon is simply fantastic, with a wonderful pork flavour and great aromas from the herbs and spices used in the cure. But this bacon has to be stored in the fridge, and only lasts for around two weeks. It is not a stable farmhouse bacon that dries for weeks and keeps for months. Eventhough our recipes draws out a lot of moisture from the meat, you would have to increase not only the amount of cure but also extend the curing time, to a few days at least, and then the bacon has to dry and age. If you want real authentic pancetta bacon, then you have to use another recipe, but our recipe is a great substitute, as it is incredibly quick and very tasty, perfect for the average home cook :)

Bread Experiment No.4: Malthouse Grain Bread

Here's another bread experiment. This bread flour is a blend of different grains and malted wheat, giving it a real rustic and deep flavour. Again, I've been very happy with the result of the bread, great flavour and great texture and the dough was quite nice to handle.

Having said that, most of the work was done by our new kitchen aid. A kitchen aid is the true secret to no-knead bread. You can just put all the ingredients in the bowl, put the dough hook on and just leave to mix for 5-10 minutes. The machine does all the hard work for you!

After that the process proceeds as usual: the dough is placed in a clean bowl and covered to rise. When it has doubled in size deflate it, shape it to the form you like, let rise again for half an hour, make a few cuts for prettiness and more importantly to avoid the loaf of splitting in an uncontrolled way. Bake in a hot oven for about 30 minutes, leave to cool, and enjoy warm and delicious homemade bread.

The end result was a very flavourful and rich-tasting loaf, but quite light and not too dense. I can definitely recommend this flour and all other Doves Farm products I've tried so far. Using these types of flour gives you a real authentic experience of bread making and bread tasting! It's the real deal.

A Tour of TheCoolKitchen!

The title says it, this video is about our own kitchen and how we organised everything to suit our needs for daily cooking and food prep. The video is not so much about what we have in our kitchen, but rather to show you interesting ideas and tips on how to organise your own kitchen. After all, if you have a busy kitchen which is used every day and cooking is really important to you then the layout of your kitchen is incredibly vital for your culinary happiness. Your kitchen is the foundation of your cooking, and it is therefore a good idea to have an efficient and well-organised kitchen, but also an aesthetically pleasing one. If you're going to spend so much time in that one place, then make sure you like what you see and you like being there. Overcrowded and messy kitchens are just not a joy to spend time in, so a better kitchen makes for better and happier cooking!

We hope our tips inspire you to organise your kitchen to suit your needs and your likes so that you may become a better and happier cook! Thanks for watching!

Traditional Apple Compote by A-C (family recipe)

Try this incredibly easy but tasty French Apple Compote recipe! A-C shares her family recipe which is perfect for this time of the year. Fresh apple compote is so delicious, especially when it's still warm. Yum! And adding the butter at the end is a real good finish to the compote, making it even creamier and richer. Perfect on its own, with yoghurt or spooned over cakes and other pastries...do not miss out on this great food!

Incredible Blue Cheese & Pear Crêpe

The other day AC had just cooked a bunch of fresh crêpes for breakfast and I was wondering what I should put on my crêpes. I opened the fridge to get a bit of inspiration and then saw that there was still some blue goat's cheese left that we had tried out that week. I then remembered that we still had an amazingly ripe pear in our fruit bowl and that pear and stilton are an incredible combination. So why not use this principle with blue goat's cheese and crêpes instead I thought. And here's the result.

All good things are three, and this crêpe combination surely demonstrates the truth of this saying. At first I wasn't too sure if a crêpe with blue goat's cheese and pear would be that amazing, especially for breakfast, but when I had my first taste I knew this was a winner. Incredibly tasty is all I could think of, and that I wanted more! I ate two more crêpes after that first one and they were just as good. Like many people, I like a good savoury crêpe and the combination of sweet and salty flavours. And I have had the opportunity to try quite a few salty crêpe combinations, but this has truely become one of my favourites. The simplicity but the quality of the ingredients is what makes it so incredibly good. You  first need a good creamy blue cheese, a nice stilton would be great as well. Then you have to make sure that you get a nice ripe and juicy pear. And finally, use fresh homemade crêpes, roll together, eat and you're in cheese and pear heaven! So good...

Three Sisters Risotto

In our blog section about Helen's Bay Community Garden (More...), I have been explaining what 'The Three Sisters' are and how they work. In short, the three sisters are sweetcorn, squash and beans. When planted together they become a form of companion planting wherein all plants benefit from each other.
The three sisters are also ingredients that work well together in the kitchen. The sweetcorn is incredibly sweet and has a nice bite. The pumpkin/squash is also sweet, and has deep flavour and a creamy texture. And the beans simply taste beany and have good texture!

In our latest YouTube video I'm showing you how to pick these ingredients, and more importantly, how to cook with them by making a fantastically seasonal risotto. Now risotto is always a handy recipe to know that you can customise and make the way you want to and it is simply delicious. It's really easy to make and it's a fantastic meal for this time of the year. So we hope you enjoy this video and that you will try our recipe, and if you have a vegetable garden we recommend planting the three sisters for next year to get a bountiful crop of delicious veg!

Blackberry Jam recipe by A-C

A-C shows how to make incredible blackberry jam! Autumn is a beautiful time of the year and it is also a great time for picking wild berries. Pretty much everybody knows what blackberries look like and they are pretty easy to find as they grow like a weed. So if you want to start foraging your own wild food, blackberries are a great and easy start. And obviously, they make a fantastic jam. What's so nice about homemade jam, especially when it's made from wild ingredients, is that it just tastes like the preserved essence of the fruit, which is not very often the case with most jams you buy in a shop. So we hope you enjoy this recipe and that you will start foraging for wild and yummy food!