Fiction, Food, Faith and everything in-between

I made Jamie Oliver's Barbecue Beer Butt Chicken. There are so many versions of this recipe all over the Internet. Most are actually called Beer Can chicken.  I also saw John Torode (chef) cook his on a barbecue on TV.  The chicken is propped up on a partially filled can of beer. The beer is supposed to add flavour to the chicken but one chef has gone to the trouble of analysing the popularity of this recipe and he concludes that the beer makes no difference to the taste. (party pooper). I made mine in the oven. I had to remove all the oven shelves to fit it upright. At one stage it tipped over in the oven but I rescued it. The chicken must have been drunk on the beer. 😅 I also made a broccoli salad but it doesn't sound as much fun as Beer Butt Chicken. 😋 The chicken was eventually placed in a more dignified position, otherwise I would not have been able to fit it in the fridge.  Links to Jamie's...

I wasn't sure about this Pecan loaf.  This is supposed to go with cheese. It isn't a sweet loaf and I do like sweet things. It felt fiddly when I started mixing. It uses 3 types of flour - strong white, rye and wholemeal. And it also uses treacle which glooped all over the place. I have never cooked with treacle before. Golden Syrup - yes. Black treacle - no.  The dough didn't rise much and I left it in the oven for too long. But it tastes amazing! Especially with Brie. I was so surprised. I had it for supper and thoroughly enjoyed it. I bake most of my own bread now and buy very little from the supermarket. I amnjust enjoying my own bread. I enjoy making it and eating it. There is something so satisfying about making something that tastes so good.  I will definitely make this one again and I won't leave it in the oven for so long.

  Finding My Voice by Nadiya Hussain 'When I cook, it feels like I am performing the most effortless dance' I really loved this book. I don't generally read memoirs but I decided to read this one because I am doing Book Riot's 2021 read harder challenge  https://bookriot.com/read-harder-2021/   I needed to read a food memoir by an author of colour and this fit the bill perfectly. I had heard about Nadiya and how she won The Great British Bake Off in 2015 but I didn't know much else.  I am not a great watcher of TV and I live in my own world of work and reading as much fiction as I can, but I love cooking. When the pandemic hit I started to use the Food Network Channel as background noise when working from home. As the months passed, a couple of programmes and recipes caught my eye. One of these programmes was the Great British Bake Off which I found very intriguing.  I watched a few old episodes from 2015 and I was hooked.   Nadiya has a very ordinary yet c...

I made Pain au Chocolat from one of my Paul Hollywood books. It was certainly a pain to make the pastry. I had to keep it in the fridge, and roll and fold it once every hour for four hours yesterday. Then the pastry had to rest in the fridge overnight, before more rolling and baking today. The recipe says you should use two pieces of chocolate per roll but I used 3! Why skimp on chocolate?  There are quite a few of them so I told my son I would give a few to a clergy colleague. My son suggested that we stash them in the freezer instead. 🤣

Or perhaps I should say Cherry Tomatoe and Mozarella loaves!  I saw this in my Paul Hollywood book (How to Bake Bread) and decided to give it a go. I am so glad I did because it was absolutely delicious and it made such a lovely semi-lockdown lunch. One of the good things lockdown has done for me, is to re-order my time. I no longer have to travel into central London and it means I have about 3 additional hours per day. I haven't run around trying to use up that time on useful projects but I have been able to bake, to sit, and to reflect.  I love cooking but baking bread is totally new to me. Baking bread and eating it is very comforting to me and so I am glad to have found a glimpse of light in the darkness and difficulties of the pandemic.