Kitchen Chemist

I've just taken advantage of an offer on Amazon for a returned Kenwood Mixer attachment for £37 in Like New condition.

24 hours after mixing 30 g of organic spelt flour with water and leaving to do it's thing. I've now added 20 g of organic white and a little more water.

New everyday crockery arrived today. Plain white, simple design, dishwasher safe. Perfect for food photos.

Now I've got Blogger on my phone perhaps I'll get back to blogging more frequently.

Autumn is Apples. So, with a little inspiration from the River Cottage Everyday series I created this. The surprise is the slightly wacky ingredient. Ingredients 4 free-range Pork Sausages 1 Onion 2 large Carrots 1 Apple 1 tbsp Balsamic Vinegar 100 mL Ginger Beer Method Peel or scrub the carrots, slice into batons, drizzle with oil and a generous grinding of black pepper. Put in an oven at 180 °C to cook for 1 hour. Lightly fry the sausages, just to add colour, for 1-2 minutes. Allow a little of the pork fat to colllect in the frying pan. Add to the carrots when there is 30 minutes of cooking time remaining. Peel, core and cut the apple into 8 pieces. Gently fry these in the residual pork fat until the sides have coloured. This will give them some protection against turning to pulp in the oven and also give them a meaty flavour. Add to the carrots and sausages 10-15 minutes before serving. Finally, fry the sliced onion in any residual pork fat, on a medium heat. Allow the onion to colo...

This is the second recipe. #2 Chicken, Onion and Peppers This was meant to combine what I love about Dopiaza, Jalfrezi, Madras. So it's got chunks of onion from Dopiaza and fresh peppers (bell and chilli) like a Jalfrezi. Then I think of Madras as hot with both pepper and mustard seeds. Again, I offer no guarantee of authenticity - this is a reverse engineering of the best of take-aways! Ingredients 2 or 3 Chicken breasts 2 Onions 2 Peppers 2+ Chilli Peppers (choose size and quantity to your taste, I used 2 mild home grown) 1 tsp Mustard Seeds 1 tsp Fenugreek Seeds 1 tsp ground Tumeric (heaped tsp) 1 tsp ground Cayenne Pepper Method As with the other curry, slice the onion and fry in plenty of oil (rapeseed works well) for ~20 minutes on a low heat. The aim is to remove moisture and soften the onion without generating any caramel. Grind the whole spices and mix with the ground spices. Add to the onions and cook the spices for 2-3 minutes. Add enough boiling water to make a thick sa...

The first of two curry recipes invented yesterday, trying to combine my favourite parts of take-away curries into something reasonably healthy and stronger flavoured. Authenticity and originality not guaranteed. #1 : Lamb and Tomato This one combines rogan josh (lamb, tomato, cardamon, garlic) with dhansak (cumin, lentils). This is not a hot curry, and the initially flavour is sweet from the meat, onions and tomato - but it has a pleasant kick. I made this from left-over roast lamb, but in the past I have made a similar curry with lamb precooked in water with garlic cloves - boil for ~15 minutes. Ingredients 500 g Cooked Lamb 1 Onion 4 or 5 Tomatoes 1 or 2 handfuls of Red Lentils 1 tsp Coriander seeds 1 tsp Cumin seeds 1 tbsp Garam Masala 1 tsp ground Ginger ½ - 1 tsp ground Cayenne Pepper (depending on how hot you want it) 4 Cardamon Pods (crushed a little) Method Slice the onion and fry in plenty of oil (rapeseed works well) for ~20 minutes on a low heat. The aim is to remove moistur...