The Joyful Home Cook - Rosie Birkett

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deseeded and finely chopped

      10ml dark soy sauce

      1 tsp black sesame seeds

      spring onion greens

      1 Crack the eggs into a bowl, add the water and soy sauce and whisk to combine. Sift in the flour, baking powder and spices and whisk to form a smooth batter. Leave the batter to sit for a few minutes while you make the syrup.

      2 Put the maple syrup, chilli flakes, soy sauce and sesame seeds into a small saucepan and stir. Heat until really runny and warm but not reducing or bubbling. Remove from the heat.

      3 Stir the kimchi, sweetcorn and spring onions into the batter and coat well to make sure everything is cloaked in the batter. Add a dash more water or soy sauce if you think it needs loosening – it should be loose enough to drop off a spoon.

      4 Line a plate with kitchen paper and heat half the oil in a large non-stick frying pan over a medium-high heat. To make the fritters, spoon 2–3 dessertspoonfuls of the batter into the pan in little piles, leaving space between each pile. Use the back of the spoon to flatten them slightly and fry for 4–5 minutes, flipping them over to cook on the other side halfway through, until golden and crispy on the outside and cooked all the way through. Drain on kitchen paper and season with salt. Add the remaining oil to the pan and fry the rest of the batter, keeping the first lot warm in a low oven until you’re ready to serve. Serve the fritters with the syrup poured over, and slices of avocado alongside.

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      Wild mushrooms on toast

       with lemon and thyme seeded crumb

      Serves 4 as a starter, or 2 as a lunch

       I made this dish for 120 people from the kitchen of a pub in Borough Market with a brigade of brilliant female food writers and chefs. We were cooking a dinner to raise money for the food poverty charity Action Against Hunger, and even though it’s just fancy mushrooms on toast, it went down a storm – though the logistical effort of cleaning wild mushrooms and making toast for that many people is not something I wish to repeat!

       Try to sniff out wild mushrooms, which have more of an interesting woodland flavour than standard ‘shrooms, and come into season from early autumn onwards – girolles and porcini work well but if you can’t find them, try chestnut or oyster. The crumb provides extra texture and lovely nuttiness thanks to the toasty, malty quality of the buckwheat. The butter and crumb can both be made in advance.

      4 thick slices of sourdough bread (shop-bought or (see here))

      1 garlic clove, peeled and halved

      ½ tbsp rapeseed or neutral oil

      500g wild mushrooms (see tip), cleaned (larger ones halved)

      leaves from 2 sprigs of thyme

      lemon juice, to taste

      sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

       For the seeded crumb

      2 thick slices of sourdough bread (shop-bought or (see here))

      2 tbsp pumpkin seeds

      2 tbsp buckwheat groats

      2 tbsp olive oil

      grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon

      leaves from 4 sprigs of thyme

      ½ tsp dried chilli flakes

      sea salt

       For the garlic and herb butter

      1 shallot, peeled and quartered

      1 tsp sea salt

      2 garlic cloves

      20g flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked

      10g tarragon, leaves picked

      1 tbsp lemon juice

      70g unsalted butter, at room temperature, diced

      1 First, make the crumb. Blitz the bread in a food processor until it forms breadcrumbs. Heat a heavy-based dry frying pan or skillet over a medium-high heat. Add the pumpkin seeds and buckwheat groats and toast for 2–3 minutes, until the buckwheat is golden and the pumpkin seeds are puffed, popped and crunchy. Transfer to a bowl and put the pan back on the hob over a medium heat. Add the olive oil along with the lemon zest, thyme and chilli flakes and stir to infuse for a minute, then add the breadcrumbs and toast them in the oil for 3–5 minutes, until golden and crunchy – it usually takes a bit longer than you’d expect. Scrape all the crumbs into the bowl with the pumpkin seeds and buckwheat. Season with sea salt. Pour into a jar or airtight container once cool, or use immediately.

      2 Make the butter by blitzing the shallot, salt and garlic cloves in the small bowl of a food processor or mini chopper, followed by most of the herbs (saving a few for garnish) and the lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper, add the diced butter and blitz to make a green butter. Scrape out of the food processor and into a bowl by the hob.

      3 Toast the sourdough and rub it with the garlic. Keep warm in a low oven with the plates while you cook the mushrooms.

      4 Place the pan back over a medium-high heat and pour in the rapeseed or neutral oil. Add the mushrooms with the thyme and a pinch of salt and fry for a couple of minutes, until they are caramelised and losing their moisture – they will shrink a little and you want to see some nice dark colour on them. Turn the heat down slightly, add all the butter, stirring to melt, and baste the mushrooms with it. Taste, season to your liking and maybe add a little lemon juice to pique the flavours. Serve spooned over the warm toast with the crumb scattered over.

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       Proper sourdough bread is a truly magnificent thing. It’s bread made the old-fashioned way, slowly and reverently, without the use of any industrially produced yeast, but rather leavened or raised with a starter culture made from naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria that awaken when flour and water are mixed together. The resulting fermentation yields something altogether more flavourful and satisfying than mass-produced bread, and in recent years we’ve seen a sourdough revolution, a movement of artisan bakers the world over who are re-embracing the craft of making slow-fermented doughs and beautiful, delicious and nutritious loaves. A really good loaf of sourdough takes time to make, but it becomes the basis for so many good, quick meals that it more than pays you back for the time you’ve invested.

      Now, while I do think that squishy white bread still has a place – I can’t imagine a bacon sandwich made with sourdough or, worse still, a chip butty – after interviewing bakers and chefs and tasting this delicious style of bread at many restaurants over the years, I became fascinated by the process, and obsessed with mastering the art of making sourdough at home. The idea that it was possible to raise an army of hard-working yeast who would obligingly leaven loaves of bread, producing gut-friendly acids that make that bread easier on the digestion, more nutritious and tasty in the process, had me hooked.

      There are books and courses dedicated to sourdough, and if you want to delve deeper I’d recommend these books for further reading – Do Sourdough by Andrew Whitley, The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard, and Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast by Ken Forkish – but please don’t be intimidated. For centuries people

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