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started making bread about two years ago. It had been in the pipeline for a while, within my general trend of opting out of processed food, but the tipping point came in May 2014. As we drove down a stretch of the Adriatic between Istria and Montenegro, I noticed that in Croatia it is apparently legally required to display bread ingredients in a visible, readable fashion. Going through long lines of unpronounceable chemical compounds has tripped off the final alarm in my brain. Back in London, I discovered that supermarkets guard such information for their dear lives: from Iceland to Waitrose, none shows what exactly they put in their bread. It took me an arduous, drawn-out email exchange with M&S to get them to reveal what they put in their baguette.
As I started digging around, I found out that the Chorleywood bread process, invented in the UK in 1961 and then spread all over the world, puts speed, bottomline and efficiency ahead of compatibility with how humans digest their food. It turns out that the bastards only let the dough to proof for a few minutes, barely allowing the yeast to break down things that the human stomach is not well equipped to process, such as gluten and various sugars. The latter-day pandemic of the celiac disease, when people get adverse symptoms from eating bread and pastry, might well be credited to that wondrous innovation introducing the values of capitalist production into your digestive system.
That's how I got converted into hand-made bread. My two specialties are largely inspired by the wonderful custard-running Gino d'Acampo. Every now and then I diversify and try other recipes, but my two mainstays, week in, week out, still are pagnotta con finocchietto, farmhouse loaf encrusted with fennel seeds, and pagnotta ligure con patate, Ligurian rustic loaf with potatoes and rosemary. I do modify and jazz up the recipes, with quite splendiferous outcomes, so please feel free to contact me, should you fancy a recipe. All pictures here are of my home creations.
nglish jokes about Eastern European cuisines are pretty rich coming from the people whose national dish is vinegar-drenched deep-fried potatoes eaten out of a newspaper cone. But then again the English never seem weary of taking the piss out of French cuisine so it is really a local issue.
Kürtőskalács (pronounced more or less like 'kewrtersh-kalartch') is said to be Hungary's oldest pastry. It hails from Transylvania, which, despite being populated mostly by ethnic Hungarians, was awarded to Romania after WWI. So, although it is de jure Romanian, de facto it is Hungarian (I'm talking about pastry, not territory here).
Essentially, it is a ribbon of sweet leavened dough wound around a cylinder, heavily sprinkled with sugar and baked over fire. In the olden days it was turned by hand but these days it is all automatic. When ready it can be sprinkled with caster sugar, cinnamon or chopped nuts. Thanks to it peculiar shape it is also known as chimney cake in English. That is what kürtőskalács actually means in Hungarian too.
In London, I found it in the New Covent Garden market where a very friendly Hungarian lady (on the picture above) plies them for one quid fifty pense a pop. A veritable yum-orama with a cup of freshly brewed coffee.
n the Western mass conscious, Russian diet inextricably revolves around the images of frozen cabbage eaten out of toilet bowls and people queuing for bread at 4AM on dark winter mornings. Thanks to years of Cold War propaganda, we all know that Russians are sullen-faced ruffians chasing vodka with raw potato peels in the midst of Siberian snowfields.
Reality, however, is rather different. With perhaps the only exception of convicted bachelors, Russians traditionally eat three warm meals a day. That extravagant habit explains why of all industrialised nations Russians spend the most time in the kitchen, one and a half hours a day on the average.
A day without soup is considered a wasted day. Although supermarket chains are doing everything in their power to change this, Russians normally eat whatever is in season. Spices are still used sparingly but fresh dill, parsley, horseradish, mustard are common. Sandwiches for lunch and deep fried food are an imported concept and frowned upon.
For me the most prominent feature of Russian cuisine is oven-baked dishes, particularly pies. Pies are made with leavened dough and eaten throughout the year. Fillings, as is the case with other dishes, are whatever is in season.
My favourite is my Mother’s salmon pie. The filling is de-boned wild salmon with black pepper and onions on a bed of buttery rice. The rice soaks in the fish and onion juices and keeps them sealed inside. The dough comes out golden-brown and crunchy on the outside and fluffy inside. Mother normally serves it with light fish broth in small bowls and a green salad. This time we had it with an underrated Austrian white, Grüner Veltliner. I brought it from my trip to Vienna as Austrians don't seem to favour exporting their wine.
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