Cairo days
The heater is
broken again. Well, not exactly broken but all the wires that connect it
to power have apparently burned up and melted into a molten non-conductive mess.
This happened on Thursday night, of
course, because our weekend starts on Friday. And it's still COLD!
So Friday I made
soup – will post that recipe later because it turned out quite delicious – and
yesterday I baked bread. This recipe was
adapted from one of my favorites, from the great doyenne of British cookery,
Delia Smith. Her version was with goat
cheese and thyme but I have figured out that you can put any cheese and any
herb and this will taste fantastic.
Spring Onion Rosemary Cheese Quick Bread
As mentioned above, you can switch out the cheese for any of your favorites, except perhaps something too soft and runny like Camembert or Brie. I fear those might melt completely out of the bread when baked.
Ingredients
4 oz or 110g strong
cheese of your choice (I used a combo of blue and cheddar.)
4 spring onions, finely sliced
1 medium potato weighing approximately 6 oz or 175g
At least 1 rounded tablespoon fresh herbs (I used rosemary
this time.) plus a few extra leaves for the top when baking
6 oz or 175g flour
1 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon or generous pinch of cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon English mustard powder
1 large egg
2 tablespoons milk
Olive oil for greasing the cookie sheet
Method
Preheat the oven to 375°F or 190°C.
Pare the rind from the cheese, if there is one, and cut it
into 1/2 inch or 1 cm cubes.
Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a big, roomy
mixing bowl, holding the sieve up high to give the flour a good airing.
Peel the potato and grate it straight into the flour, using
the coarse side of the grater. Lightly mix the potato in with a fork.
Mince your spring onions.
Add the spring onions, rosemary and two-thirds of the cheese
to the potato/flour bowl. Add in the
cayenne and mustard powder.
Still using a fork, gently mix everything thoroughly.
After that, beat the egg with the milk, then pour the
mixture into the bowl, just bringing it all together to a loose, rough dough,
still using your fork. It will seem too
dry to come together but just keep mixing and turning the bowl and the dough
and your patience will be rewarded. It
will come together.
Rub a little olive oil on your baking sheet and transfer the
dough on top of the oil.
Pat it gently into a 6-inch or 15 cm rough round.
Now lightly press the rest of the cheese over the surface,
and scatter the reserved rosemary leaves over it as well.
Bake the bread on the middle shelf of the oven for 45-50
minutes or until golden brown.
Remove it to a cooling rack or cutting board and serve it still warm
if possible. We slathered ours with
butter and called it lunch!
Enjoy!
First of all, the bread looks delicious. And second-- I LOVE your kitchen scale. How did you come by it?
ReplyDeleteThank you. The bread was delicious!
ReplyDeleteDual language (metric and imperial) scales are hard to come by in the States, as you've probably noticed. I bought this one at a car boot sale (like a garage sale but people sell things in a parking lot (carpark) out of their car boots (trunks) in the United Kingdom. I like to joke that I was bilingual before I learned my second language since I started school on the British system in Trinidad. :) This scale is a Salter and the cool part is that you can put any vessel on it and reset to zero to weigh just the contents. I found another similar one to leave at my house stateside a few summers ago at a charity resale store but you might have better luck on Ebay. Once you start weighing ingredients for a recipe, it's hard to go back to cups and fractions of cups.