AUTUMN ROSE
The Rose Bakery's 'Breakfast Lunch Tea' was a book I'd picked up and put down a lot. It looked beautiful, the recipes sounded lovely but, for whatever reason, I always kept slipping it back onto the shelf. Noticing recently how common a feature it was in the collections of many I know, however, I finally decided to order my own and give a few recipes a crack. The crushed potato, celery and herb soup was a fitting farewell to spring, while the spiced chickpea and lemon soup added a nice warmth to the now dark and cool autumn eves. Both would have been complimented beautifully by the cheddar and cornmeal scones, a great savoury take on the quintessential weekend snack (their carrot cake is also well worth a look, while you're at it).
Crushed potato, celery & herb soup
Spiced chickpea & lemon soup
Cheddar & cornmeal scones
#IGBREADCLUB
Still a bit hit-and-miss keeping up with #IGbreadclub but I did manage one recipe this month, the mixed flour miche. Again, a little tight on the crumb, but I'm really enjoying having a play around with the larger loaf. A much more consistent shape now that I've figured out a better system for getting 1.8 kg of dough into a domestic oven, and I really like the communal nature of it in being able to share out a half or a quarter of a loaf. I'm still having trouble getting a great crust at home (they're usually soft by the following day), but the mixture of flours used here gave this particular loaf a beautiful flavour.
Hamelman's mixed flour miche
ONE OF A KIND
Florence Knight's 'One: A Cook and her Cupboard' is a beautiful new library addition with a lovely design, and chaptered by key ingredient. Carrying a nice mix of simple and slightly more intricate recipes I'd bookmarked a number to get me started, but somehow managed to make only ice cream this month. The chocolate sorbet was a given, as I just had to try her candied fennel, with the chocolate aniseed combination turning out to be a surprisingly good one (there's also Pernod in the sorbet itself). Beautiful flavours from the olive oil and brown sugar number, although I wasn't quite sold on the texture. That said, it did go down a treat in the company of a vin-santo-baked pear or two. My favourite, however, was the barley ice cream, which brought back some good childhood memories of malted milkshakes.
Chocolate sorbet with candied fennel
Olive oil & brown sugar ice cream (with pears baked in vin santo)
Barley ice cream (with Armagnac-soaked prunes)