Chris Worfolk's Blog

After we were both completely sick of curries, having eaten nothing but curry for about a month, Elina suggested pies might be a suitable next topic. Having enjoyed Paul Hollywood’s book on bread, his book on pies and puddings seemed like an excellent choice.

The first section of the book takes you through making pastry. I have tried most of them. Shortcrust and hot water crust are okay, but ruff puff is my favourite. I now substitute almost any pie pastry with ruff puff now because it is so tasty. I have not tried full puff, because I cannot be bothered to wait around eight hours for it to be ready.

The second section of the book looks at pies. This typically calls for you to make a pastry from part one, prepare a filling and combine the two. The Thai chicken pie is our favourite so far. My raised game pie worked well too, though it was heavily waited to the game I could get down the market. I don’t even know where to buy buffalo from, so I did the buffalo and ale pie with beef and it worked fine.

The puddings section has been less well used but I did make a concerted effort to give at least half a dozen of them a go. They tasted fine but often looked less than brilliant. For example, here are the fruit pies I made for New Year’s Eve. This was my third attempt.

For posts about the recipes I tried from this book, see my attempt at short bread whiskey dodgers and my selection of pies. Looking back, none of them look that neat. Thankfully, they all tasted good.

In River Cottage Light & Easy Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall presents recipes that are healthier than his normal stuff. Everything is wheat-free and dairy-free and comes with icons to mark recipes as suitable for vegans and 20 minutes or less. A welcome sight for a series of books that often involves long and drawn-out recipes.

The book is divided into breakfast, baking, soup, salad, fish, meat, veg, fruit and treats. It follows the standard River Cottage book format of having a page for the recipe and a full page photo opposite. This, perhaps more than anything else, is why I like the series.

This book has inspired me less than Veg Every Day and River Cottage Every Day. Some recipes have been popular though. Soups in particular: the fragrant Asian broth is wonderful for a light meal and the swede and bacon soup proves that you can actually make swede enjoyable in certain situations.

Fish was the other section that managed to catch my interest. Th fish and tomato curry was simple enough to make, as was the mackerel, spinach and spuds. In fact, most of the dishes are simple and true to the title “easy”. Beef and bashed beans and minted lamb with green beans spring to mind.

Whether it will stand the test of time as a cookbook that I reach for often remains to be seen. Perhaps the real test will be when summer returns, and we’re looking for lighter meals. It has provided us with some nice dishes already.

I have tried a selection of the bread recipes in River Cottage Every Day, usually with success. This inspired me to take it to the next step with Paul Hollywood’s book on bread. I have had the book for ages but never got round to writing it up.

It covers a wide range: starting off with classic breads like bloomers, then moving through to soda breads, flatbreads, continental breads, sourdough and enriched breads.

For each type of bread, he first gives the recipe for the bread itself, then gives a recipe for using the bread in a meal. He claims he wants to put bread back in the centre of the table. A nice thought, though I must confess that it has had little effect on me. I just make the bread, and rarely use the bread-related recipe.

The bloomer has found the most regular rotation in our kitchen. I can probably do it without the recipe now, which is rare even for dishes I do regularly. The naans and maneesh have also become popular. I haven’t been sold on the soda breads or different kinds of grains though. I made them, but they are not to my taste.

Some of the continental breads I have had to skip. Hollywood says it is incredibly difficult to do by hand, so you really need a mixer. Hence why every combination I have had with my friends over the last month has invariably drifted to whether I should buy a stand mixer and which one to get.

I tried the sourdough starter too, but with little success. It did not produce tasty bread and ultimately went mouldy.

For individual posts about the breads I have baked from this book see rye and ale and the bottom half of this selection.

The Curry Bible is a cookbook on curry and curry-related food, surprisingly. That seems like a clumsy way to subscribe it but I am not sure what the best way is. It is not just Indian as it covers curries from other cultures as well, and goes beyond curries with a selection of other good, kebab for example. I can’t say Far East though, because that might suggest things like sushi or Chinese. Anyway…

It’s pretty good. Ironically, I found the curry recipes the least helpful. They are difficult to get right. It often tells you to reduce them, and sometimes gives a time, say an hour. In my experience this does not work though: you still come out with a very runny curry. The most success we have had with them is doing them in the slow cooker all day.

The non-curry recipes have been more successful though. The Vietnamese pork has found itself onto regular rotation in our kitchen, and a few other dishes repeatedly pop up too.

The section on sauces is also very useful. If you want to make a Thai red curry sauce rather than using a jar for example, the book will gives you instructions on how to do it.

Earlier this month we visited Chris & Cara in Warrington. The darkness, rain and fog literally put a dampener on the journey. Between the weather and the traffic it took us two hours to get there. More and more it seems difficult to get anywhere without allowing for significant margins due to the traffic. Coming home was much improved though, making the journey in less than an hour and a half.

One of the advantages of Warrington is that even with the apartment blocks right in the centre you can find parking. They also have a Toby Carvery, so what more could you want in a town? Dinner was excellent, as was the company. Well worth the trip.

32 years. They have had 32 years to work out what comes after Return of the Jedi. What did they come up with? A third Death Star. The greatest minds of Disney came together to brainstorm, and came up with absolutely nothing.

When Return of the Jedi ended there was a feeling of hope in the galaxy. The Empire had been defeated. Happy times were ahead. However, it turns out that it just pops up again. This time it seems even more serious. I guess this is how people feel every time the Conservatives are turfed out of Number 10.

Han Solo’s re-appearance felt a bit like the return of Red Dwarf as old characters were shamelessly wheeled out to remind us of the good old days. No Carrie Fisher is an gold bikini though. I seem to be the only person disappointed about that.

Elina says she enjoyed the film. She is effectively a new fan: I did make her watch episode IV but she fell asleep (we were watching it in bed). So perhaps it will inspire a new generation of fans. I think NewsThump accurately captured the atmosphere:

George Lucas blasts new Star Wars film for being ‘enjoyable’ and ‘popular’

We went to Everyman Cinema, which was a rubbish. The milkshakes were small and watery and the food was complete shit. The hot dogs were £8, for which you would expect a really nice hot dog, but you don’t get one. The cinema has gone downhill in my opinion.

I want to start this post by complaining about the decencies of Sky Sports. They buy the coverage and black it out on GamePass, so I have to get Now TV. However, Sky has no catch-up facility, so when I miss it on Saturday it is blacked out on Sunday, so despite paying for both GamePass and Sky Sports I can’t watch the game! Sky are way behind BBC on this who have almost all their shows on iPlayer almost immediately.

Anyway…

Kansas City Chiefs at Houston Texans

If these teams play like they did last weekend, neither of them going anywhere. The Texans played an awful game and turned it over four times. That in itself is enough to write them off as a Super Bowl team. However, the fact that the Chiefs managed to convert all of that into only two field goals spells bad things for them too. If you turned the ball over to Tom Brady four times, would you expect to be six points down?

The Chiefs got it together in the second half though and their defence remained strong throughout. If they can play consistently like that, they will have more of a chance.

Pittsburgh Steelers at Cincinnati Bengals

This looked more like two heavy weight play off teams slugging it out. Again, it tooks the Bengals most of the game to get going though. Maybe this wouldn’t have been the case if they had made it to the division round and got Dalton back, but we’ll never know. It’s their own fault. How well with the Steelers do if Ben Roethlisberger is injured though?

Seattle Seahawks at Minnesota Vikings

It felt like a reasonable performance from each team. Two good defences slugging it out against each other. It’s hard to write the Seahawks off given the good form they are in. Déjà vu anyone?

Green Bay Packers at Washington Redskins

The first quarter was not looking good for the Packers. Aaron Rodgers could not get anything going on offence. Their defence put in an excellent performance though and kept them in the game. Rogers got it going in the second quarter suggesting at the high wind may have had a really effect when you are paying into it.

Predictions

Patriots beating the Chiefs is the easiest to call. I am not sure I fancy the the road teams in any of them though. Panthers have had such a good season. Packers over the Cardinals maybe? Depends how quickly Aaron Rodgers can get it going. I suspect not fast enough, but if any road time is going to win, it will be the Packers, second to the Steelers over the Broncos.

Good, not great. This New Year’s Day we were treated to a one off Sherlock special. Series four is due to start filming in April, and unlikely to air before next year.

The Abominable Bride is set in Victorian London. I was rather hesitant as to how this would work as, for me, much of the appeal of the show comes from it being a modern take. However, that was worked in reasonably well to fit with the format of the show.

The mystery itself was alright. I did not guess what was going to happen. How much I watch it on repeat over this year will probably be the real test of success though.

For New Year’s Eve 2015 we ditched our traditional party format in favour of a murder mystery dinner party. This came with its pros and cons.

On the downside, the logistics of getting everyone round the table complicated matters. We have more friends that would fit round, so I had to omit some people from the invite list. A few people were ill at the last minute, so this further complicated the situation. On the plus side though between the murder mystery and the food, people seemed to be entertained throughout the evening.

The murder mystery itself has lots of room for improvement. The dialogue could probably be condensed into bigger sections, as it was a bit start and stop. That would avoid it breaking into conversation unless there was a length chunky of stuff to do. Once I have cleaned up the typos I will post it on here for other people to look through.

The food went well. We only got through nine of the 11 courses I had planned. Everything went smoothly and it did not feel like much of a rush. Whether that was because I was able to do a lot of the work before, or whether it was because everything was broken down into separate courses rather than one big-bang service, I am not sure. I suspect it is a combination of the two.

We had plenty of left-overs:

Our dinner the day after consisted of smoked-salmon on maneesh, meatballs, breaded fish, gammon and Yorkshires. A mixed grill of left-overs.

Lunch was taken care of by our usual trip for recovery steak. We opted for Miller & Carter because you can always get a table and the food is pretty good. The price of your steak includes chips, salad and sauce, which makes it good value.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is a novel by Douglas Adams. It is the second book in his Dirk Gently series.

I tried reading the novel a few decades ago and never got very far, so it was nice to make a fresh (and successful attempt). In between a saw the BBC TV series, which was fairly entertaining.

I was so-so on the novel. The humour and wordplay was very good. I found myself laughing at several points. However, I was not as much of a fan of the story line. Why are gods suddenly wandering around? It seemed an odd combination of fantasy, detective and humour. It was okay, but no h2g2.