I give you some recipes

Readers! If you are not in the mood for reading about recipes, etc, then do not bother to read this post. It is about baking (ish), and contains recipes for:

1. Granola bars: usually disgusting, but not in this case;
2. North Staffordshire Oatcakes, underestimated miracle food;
3. Lemon and Lavender biscuits, not quite seasonal yet but best to be prepared, for they enable time and space travel.

(I put in a 'next page' thing but it's not always showing - if it's not, a rapid squeeze on the header will take you to the whole enthralling thing. Lucky you.)

Granola Bars

These are good and mainly good for you. Good for elevenses. Not boring, grown-up without being worthy; not too sweet. Stolen from the Cooks Illustrated website again. This recipe is worth doing - it's not as long as it looks, but it's not exactly super-fast either. It'll give you enough granola bars to fill the lunchboxes of your 7 children every day for a week, with one left over for you to chew on in desperation as you once again contend with insomnia at 3am.

Pointless interjections from me in ghastly blue. Warning: Cooks Illustrated recipes are a bit bébé la-la and explain everything in massive detail, unlike for e.g. Elizabeth David.*


Cranberry and Ginger Granola Bars

Dried cherries, coarsely chopped, may be substituted for the cranberries if you prefer. I do prefer. Chopped apricots also nice. Make sure to press forcefully when packing the granola mixture into the pan; otherwise the bars may be crumbly once cut. At the end, they tell you to use a spatula thing for doing it - is rubbish; use your damp monkey fingers instead. If you like, add up to ½ cup of wheat germ and ¾ cup of sunflower seeds to the oats after toasting. Salted sunflower seeds = very good. And feel free to add your favorite spice: grated nutmeg and ground ginger are pleasant additions to the suggested cinnamon. Is true, they are very pleasant. The bars can be effectively stored in the rimmed baking sheet I do not know what that is but rimming is a bad word, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap, or in an airtight plastic container for up to 1 week.


Ingredients
7 cups (21 ounces) old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup apple or orange juice
1/4 cup chopped crystalized ginger
1 1/2 cups whole almonds, pecans, or walnuts
3/4 cup honey
3/4 cup packed (5 1/4 ounces) light or dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon (optional)

Instructions


1. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 375 degrees. Line an 18 by 12-inch rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil. Combine the oats, oil, and salt in a large bowl and mix until the oats are evenly coated. Transfer the mixture to the baking sheet (save the mixing bowl for use in step 3) and spread into an even layer. Bake, stirring every 10 minutes, until pale gold, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, bring cranberries and juice to a simmer in a small saucepan over medium-low heat and cook until very tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Strain through a fine-meshed strainer, gently pushing on cranberries to extract excess liquid, and cool. Remove the oats and lower the oven temperature to 300 degrees.


2. Place the nuts in a food processor and process until coarsely chopped, about ten 1-second pulses. Place ¾ cup of the nuts in a small bowl and process the remaining nuts until finely ground, 20 to 30 seconds. Add the finely ground nuts to the bowl with the coarsely chopped nuts and set aside. Combine the honey and brown sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat and cook, stirring frequently, until the sugar is fully dissolved, about 5 minutes. Stir in vanilla and cinnamon, if using, and set aside.


3. Combine the oats, nuts, and honey mixture in a large bowl and stir with a large rubber spatula until the oats are evenly coated with the honey mixture. Add cranberries and ginger. Stir thoroughly to incorporate. Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking sheet and spread in an even layer. Wet the spatula with water and forcefully pack the mixture into a very flat, tight, even layer. Bake until golden, about 45 to 50 minutes. Cool, in the baking sheet, on a wire rack for 10 minutes and cut into 2 by 3-inch bars with a chef’s knife. Remove the foil from each bar before serving. Really? You surprise me. Cool completely before wrapping and storing.



North Staffordshire Oatcakes

I bought some of these in Sainsbury's on Brixton Hill (the one just before the A205) years ago and liked the cock out of them. I made some yesterday and then, oddly, found people being rude about them on Jonny B's blog this morning which made me feel strangely defensive, despite the fact that I have never been to North Staffordshire and am not even entirely sure that I know where it is.

Bref (as they say in some French speaking countries), I have decided that it is time to spread the word and the love: they are low GI (if you like all that) and are like enormous, very very thin crumpets. They freeze awfully well and are the very work of the devil with strong cheddar melted into them, and are also and at the same time quite holy when used like you would a tortilla wrap thing.

Anyway, I have found this recipe (thank you, John Harrison) that is very good and that works; if you sort of blitz the oats a bit first it helps, but don't turn them to dust. (I am very interested in North Staffordshire Oatcakes and think everyone should eat them, so if you have any recipes and/or ways to use them, let me know.)


Ingredients

• 225g fine oatmeal
• 225g wholewheat or plain flour
• 1tsp salt
• 15g yeast
• 450ml warm milk
• 450ml warm water
• 1tsp sugar

Method

1. Mix the water and milk together.
2. Mix the salt to the flour and oatmeal in a large bowl.
3. Dissolve the yeast with a little warm liquid and add the sugar. Allow the mixture to become frothy.
4. Mix the dry ingredients with the yeast liquid to make a batter adding the remainder of the warm liquid.
5. Cover the batter with a clean cloth and leave in a warm place for about an hour.
6. Pour out enough batter on a well-greased griddle to make an oatcake of about 22cm. The surface will be covered in holes as it cooks.
7. Flip the oatcake after 2-3 minutes when the top side has a dry appearance and the underneath is a golden brown colour and cook for another 2-3 minutes.

Notes: Try to use the heaviest frying pan available as this will keep the heat constant which is best for making oatcakes. Great served with fried bacon, mushrooms and cheese as a savoury snack or with butter and jam as a sweet treat. Oatcakes can be frozen and a microwave is the ideal method of defrosting and reheating them.

Lemon and Lavender Biscuits

I love Sybil Kapoor and I don't think she is nearly as famous as she should be. She writes lovely recipes: unpretentious, to the point, and not showy-offy; she doesn't make a hoo-ha about simplicity and local ingredients and seasonality; she just sort of gets on with it. Anyway, books that I use the whole time are Taste and Simply British (which I think is out of print, but you can still get through other methods).

This is a recipe from Simply British and I make it the whole time, particularly in summer when I can get lavender flowers out of the garden (yes, even in Canada). It works with dried (edible) lavender; I think you just use a little less to avoid making something that tastes like loo cleaner. They are magical. I can't think of a better word but if you are even vaguely able to cook, and if you like biscuits, please make these.

115g/4oz softened butter
55g/2oz caster sugar
1 lemon, finely grated
3 teaspoons lavender flowers
170g/6oz plain flour
Extra sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 150°C/300°F/gas 2 and grease 2 baking sheets.

Beat together the butter, sugar and lemon zest until pale and creamy. You don't have to it by hand. Mix in the lavender flowers and flour by hand until the mixture forms a stiff dough. Place this on to a sheet of greaseproof paper and lay another sheet on top. Then gently press down with a rolling pin and roll out thinly. Top tip: I chill the dough at this point 'cos it's a bugger to use otherwise. You can also just cut freestyle strips rather than using a cutter, say an inch wide and 3 inches long; it doesn't really matter if they don't all look the same. I am not bloody Delia Smith. Lift off the top sheet and stamp out the biscuits with your chosen cutter. Using a palette knife, lift them off the bottom sheet of paper and carefully transfer to the baking sheets.

Bake in the centre of an oven for 30 minutes or until tinged brown. Remove to a cooling rack and liberally dust with extra caster sugar. Serve when cool.

They are very good in the summer with a cup of tea. (I think she says honey ice-cream would be nice with them, which it would.) Eating them also allows for time and space travel: if you make a cup of Lapsang-Suchong with lemon and a couple of these biscuits tottering about on the side, you will suddenly find yourself in an English garden (a nice one, not a common one with ghastly clashing flowerbeds everywhere) in August with wasps trying to get in your pants, the cricket on Radio 4 longwave and heatwave warnings as the temperature hits 75 degrees.

Does anyone want an amazing bread recipe? If so I will do it but I'm warning you, it's long and I will need to film some little bits to show you how to do the magical kneading of Mr Homo the baker. (Don't ask.)

Pip pip!

NWM


* For e.g., "Take some ground almonds, some bitter chocolate, some butter and some cream. Combine. Bake in a medium oven until firm."


P.S We had roast beef with tomato gravy out of Nigel Slater's new book for supper last night. Was very very nice. The butcher cut the ribs off then tied them back on, so we got the flavour/heat conducting stuff without the difficult carving. Cunning. The easiest link I can find to the recipe is to the accursed Telegraph, if you want to have a look.

It looked like this before it went in the oven, and did not look the same afterwards: