The Great British Bake Off

I don't normally post about TV cooking programs after all we have so many these days but I am really enjoying the Great British Bake Off. It is so well... British !  Baking is such a part of our culture and this program somehow has an element of the WI (women's institute) or country shows. I'm not sure why because neither of them normally have people actually doing the cooking but they do both have very good and competitive cake displays and competitions I suppose. One thing I'm very like about this program is they are much more reasonable and down to earth about giving out results, none of these long pauses and trying to out psych the contestants which has become to common in many competitive cooking programs.

You can find the program to watch here though I don't know if none Brits will be able to access the shows . I hope you can.

The program started with ten hopeful bakers from all walks of life and each program they do three baking sessions before the lowest ranked two are knocked out. We have had two episodes so far in both they have started with a signature dish ( week 1 cake, week 2 biscuits.. cookie for americans), then they have been given the ingredients but not instructions for a very classic British dish which they then needed to use their knowledge and skill to bake it correctly. Victoria sponge last week, then this week scones, both of which are in my image at the top.. Finally they had to bake a specific dish but using their own recipes.. so week 1 was chocolate cake for a celebration and this week was three petifores - meringues, macaroons and cho pasty.

There has been a huge variety of dishes even within those limited groupings and a good few historical titbits from the presenters and useful tips from the two judges. Mary Berry is a women famous for her cookbooks and baking and Paul Hollywood is a top flight baker and both have given some great tips for instance adding a little salt to egg before you use it as an egg wash as it breaks down the egg making it easier to spread and don't let it dribble down the side of a scone because it hardens and stops it rising.

Obviously most of the baking has gluten in it and I think anyone however good would struggle to compete with the contestants on most of the challenges if they did it gluten free but it would be fun to try and see how close we could get to most of them.

Next week is bread, which will be interesting but far less applicable to gluten  free cooking than cakes and biscuits as gluten free bread is just so different in technique and how the flour reacts.

So far I am planning to make a version of one of the cakes - chocolate brownie with meringue on top and see if I can use some of the tips on scones to improve my basic scone recipe. Some of the biscuit recipes sound really interesting too and the comments about how changing the balance between flour, fat and sugar effects the type of biscuit is worth remembering.

Christmas

We had a lovely Christmas day. My brother did a splendid meal to which I contributed two sorts of stuffing and the veg, though he did the cooking of the veg. I also took one of my christmas puds which seemed to go down quite well thought I forgot to take cream and so forth to go with it.

The two stuffings went down well, one was basically sausage meat, onion, garlic, and apple, the other was cooked rice, various dried fruits, a bit of garlic, parsley and some egg to bind it together a little.

We made various items for christmas hampers including chuckney, peppermint creams and noguat. I only remembered to take a photo of the noguat though but that is really nice if rather sticky. The photo at the start is of it, I made a honey, pastasio and cranberry version.

I also got a great haul of cooking books as presents which will give me plenty of reading materials for the next few weeks. I always read cookery books more like most people read novels but these ones even more so.

The first one is the biggest and boy is it big! You could kill people with this book.

I present The Fat Duck Cookbook by Heston Blumenthal. I love his TV programs and his fantastic OTT attitude that mixes cooking and a mad scientist lab. I got the basic version not the uber posh one that comes in it's own box and has a price tag to match but even the version I got is extremely heavyweight and has a great quality feel with wonderful photographs and of course his signiture dishes.

I also got another book by him "In search of Total Pefection" which looks interesting to read as well, it is about a set of TV programs he did about various well know dishes and looking for the 'perfect' version though very wisely he says everyones version of perfect is different.

Finally I got a  much more humble but almost certainly more practical in a day to day sense book. The Green Kitchen which is about being energy concous in the kitchen, ways of saving energy and so forth. The recipes in this book are more of the ilk to make me go into the kitchen and try them out where as the first two are more awe inspiring but probably a lot less practical.

Channel Four's Big food fight

Channel four (here in the UK) are doing a series of TV programs about food, focusing on things that need improving. They have got three of the big names in TV cooking to do the various programs, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey.. there is an advertising poster down our road which has the three of them all looking either worried or ready for a fight wearing outfits that look like they are about to play paintball or something similar.

There seems to be a bit of a focus on the chicken industry but also programs about junk food, bad diets and similar.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall starts off with three programs about the difference between intensively farmed chicken and free range chicken and his efforts to convince people to change what they buy in one local town. This is called Hugh's chicken run and runs the first half of this week at 9pm. Hugh ends up running his own intensive farm along side a free range one so he is free to show how they operate. Having grown up around both sorts of farming I already have a good idea but I don't think most people in this country do.

This is followed by programs by Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver. There is a preview article and a full list of articles here. It certainly sounds like some of the programs might be interesting. If they will tell those of us who already take an interest in what we eat much that is new remains to be seen but many people don't really think about what they eat and certainly if Jamie's school dinners program is anything to go by high profile chefs like these can get people listening in a way more 'normal' people can't.

The cookalong Live with Gordon Ramsey sounds an intriguing idea with the website doing various masterclasses before program where you are meant to cook along with him.