An Explanation

Despite my best intentions, I haven't been blogging nearly as frequently as I'd like in the past couple of months. Part of this is due to poor light for photos and lack of interesting dinners, but the main reason has been this:

I was made redundant in the summer, annoyingly at an early enough point in my contract to not qualify for any payoff. As Edinburgh is a financial centre, the labour market here is flooded with unemployed bank staff with a several years experience under their belt. No one wanted a recent graduate with only a year or so of temping, when they could get someone more experienced for the same price. At the other end of the scale, minimum wage jobs weren't interested as I was obviously overqualified. So, seeing as no one else would employ me, I decided to employ myself.

I've spent the last few months endlessly steaming Christmas Puddings, taking food hygiene exams (credit pass - check out my cleanliness!), testing recipes and buying wholesale packaging. The first market I signed up to do lost its street closure licence, and the second market didn't manage to get a food licence granted. I looked in to the Edinburgh Farmers' Market, but the waiting list is long, its not really a feasible option for someone just starting out.

Eventually I found a Christmas market in the Grassmarket, and booked a stall. 10 hour baking sessions were followed by an early morning taxi the next day. I had too much stuff to carry myself, so the journey to the market also had to be incorporated in to T's journey to work. So I got to sit in a freezing marquee for 3 hours waiting for the market to open. On the third day I let someone watch my stuff while I repaired to Peter's Yard for some serious carbs.

Carrot Cake - The best seller.

Anyway, despite the cold and lack of sleep, I really enjoyed it all! The first day, I just brought my favourite cakes. It was interesting to see which ones sold and which ones didn't. A version of Korova cookies went down well, as did a carrot cake with mascarpone and pecan icing, and salted caramel shortbread. Red velvet cake attracted a lot of attention, but didn't really sell. Cupcakes and Christmas puddings were Marmitey - people seemed to love them or hate them, but people who did love them were happy to buy them.

Chocolate cupcakes with ganache and vanilla buttercream.

The Sunday was quite busy, and I sold out with just a few minutes left before the doors closed. I'd had a lot of requests for gluten free items, so I made 2 banana breads, which sold so quickly. Peanut blondies went ok, but weren't as popular as I'd hoped.

Cardamom shortbread with Pistachios

On the final day, I mixed it up and took cardamom shortbread and gluten free lemon drizzle, as well as the past favourites of the salted caramel, carrot cake and banana bread. I almost sold out, so gave away the last few remaining bits to the other stall holders, rather than take them home.

The feedback was really positive, something I really needed as I haven't had much confidence in my cooking lately. I handed out lots of cards with my name and number, so hopefully I might get some commissions in the new year.

So that's my excuse for being a bad blogger...

Real Food Festival

I am in London this weekend, partly to catch up with friends, but partly because I fancied a trip to the Real Food Festival at Earl's Court.

I booked tickets for the Sunday, and planned to go with my mum. However, she had to work on Sunday, so we decided to sneak in to the trade show on Friday. We had a deli-based cover story, but part of me thinks being a blogger now counts as "trade", especially when you see how many blogs get sent free samples as a promotion tactic. Anyway, enough of my views on whether exploitation of new media as free promotion is ethical or not.

A very extensive tea stall

It was an enjoyable day, and I learnt some interesting stuff about tea, and saw mozzarella being made. I also saw Willie Hardcourt-Cooze being filmed manning his chocolate stall, which was quite exciting. Sadly we missed Fergus Henderson doing a cookery demonstration, but we were too cheap to buy a programme and didn't realise he was on.

Mozzarella curds

Given my "expert" knowledge in food lies mostly within baking, I was particularly interested in the bakeries at the show. There were a couple of bread stalls that looked good, and some great Italian biscuits. The cake stall were generally disappointing, with cupcakes being a major theme. I like making these at home, but I think commercial cupcakes usually suffer from style over substance. On top of that, I even saw one stall that had such poorly iced examples on display that I would have rejected them if I had made them myself.

The real star find was PT's biscuits. Not only were his biscuits delicious, but they used proper ingredients like butter (rather than margarine or oil). The flavours were not particularly revolutionary, but it was great to look at the label and see the same list of ingredients as I'd use at home. No additives, preservatives, weird chemicals - home baked biscuits without the hassle! I also chatted with him for a while and he gave me loads of free samples. I truly believe good baker is a generous one! I hope Paul succeeds.

Cyrus Todiwala

Despite having a great day pretending to run a deli, I still had tickets for Sunday. So I went again with my friend C! We watched Cyrus Todiwala make an Indian meal, before wandering around the stalls. I had a nice hazelnut ice cream, and a pear and cardamom cupcake from one of the more professional looking stalls. The pear filling added moistness, but the icing had dried out a little. The cardamom flavour was also too weak, and the cake mainly tasted of sugar. C had an espresso cupcake that was a bit more successful.

Pear and Cardamom cupcake

Espresso cupcake

We also managed to get a spot at the Bordeaux Quay cookery school stand. We made a fennel and courgette salad, and a cheese omelette. Our omelette was a bit runny, but the salad, which also featured garlic, pine nuts, sultanas, coriander, mint and lemon was delicious. Raw fennel and courgette didn't excite me at all, but the end result was very tasty.

C showing off her chopping skills

The finished salad

My other top find was a Welsh chocolate maker called Hipo Hyfryd. They are nominally vegan, but really in the case of chocolate this just means plain chocolate rather than milk. I got a box of the salt and pepper flavour, which was really unusual and much more interesting than some of the other chocolates on offer on other stalls. I think it might be trumped by lime chocolate in terms of weirdness, but lime chocolate didn't work while salt and pepper most definitely did. Again, they seemed like nice guys and I hope they do well!

I had a really good day on both my visits, but I felt that the show would have benefitted from something a bit more "showy". Most of the festival was a glorified farmer's market, with some of the stands being quite big names, rather than smaller "real food" producers. Although it was great to meet the people who made the food, some stalls had employed temps, notably Rococco chocolate, were most of the girls behind the counter were unable to even speak English, let alone tell you about the chocolate you were tasting. I really enjoyed the cookery school, and the demonstration kitchen, so I think the focus should shift from being about market style stalls to more interactive/instructive elements.

I am such a nerd.

10 dinners

This article on BBC News reveals that the average Briton knows ten recipes off by heart. I found this quite surprising, as I didn't think I knew ten recipes!

Here are the top ten:

Spaghetti bolognese

Roast dinner

Chilli con carne

Lasagne

Cottage or shepherd's pie

Meat or fish stir fry

Beef casserole

Macaroni cheese

Toad in the hole

Meat, fish or vegetable curry

Part of me thinks this isn't exactly 10 recipes, as chilli, bolognese and cottage pie are essentially the same recipe (and lasagne to some extent) but with varying carbohydrate accompaniments, although I guess there are components that need different knowledge areas, such as making mashed potato topping or bechemel sauce.

For me, most of the recipes I know come from growing up. As a child and teenager, I wouldn't mind eating the same things over again. My brother and sister were also quite fussy eaters, so there was a limited repertoire of dishes in our household. Shepherd's pie was probably the first dinner I learnt to cook, followed by bolognese and curry. I have only learnt casseroles, stir fry and roasts in the past few years at uni, as I've extended my repertoire to consist of what I want to eat, rather than what my brother and sister can handle.

Out of the top ten, I can't make macaroni cheese or toad in the hole without a recipe. The macaroni is because despite years of trying, I still don't really like cheese. I don't really eat toad in the hole often enough to have memorised the recipe, although I do cook it very occasionally.

My top ten would replace the macaroni cheese with a sponge cake. I have been making a basic sponge since I was 9 years old. For some reason, I became fascinated with victoria sponge, and would make it almost weekly. Although I know the recipe off by heart, I'm not sure I could make it now as I only know it in imperial measurements! 4oz of butter, 4oz of sugar, 2 eggs, 4oz of flour, some salt, baking powder and vanilla essence. Gas mark 4 for 30 minutes. I had the recipe memorised by the time I was 11 or 12, so that is quite weird that it is still in my head after so many years! I haven't had an oven with gas marks for at least 6 years, so that makes it even stranger that I only know the imperial measurements.

I would also include chicken fajitas. Every Saturday night, I would make fajitas for my mum, brother and sister. I think I must have eaten them in a restaurant somewhere and tried to copy them at home, as I don't remember ever following a recipe. They were originally made with pre-cooked, flavoured chicken (the type you put in sandwiches and salads) but over the years I refined the recipe to use fresh chicken. I still make them sometimes for my flatmates.

While I follow a recipe for the majority of the time, I am now confident enough to branch out a bit. I might just take the ingredients and make my own process, or follow the process but sub in my own ingredients. Since I like to experiment and try new dishes, it is quite rare that I will make something weekly, hence why I don't have a bigger list of known recipes. I think I could give a lot of dishes a good attempt without a recipe, since I have a good knowledge of cookery techniques and how different ingredients are used, but given that I usually have to eat what I'm cooking, I don't want to go too crazy and make something inedible!

What recipes do you know off by heart? Do you have an interesting story behind how you know it?