middle eastern flatbreads

middle eastern flatbreads
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk

Thursday night, with the help of my able assistants (aka nephew and niece) I made a fabulous batch of middle eastern flatbreads, topped with za'atar. Based on a Jamie Oliver recipe, but kinda made my own, now.


Forgot to say, you can see the recipe here.

macaroni cheese

macaroni cheese
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk

Apparently, I make a rather good macaroni cheese.

carrot and ginger jam

carrot and ginger jam
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk

I've been making a lot of jam recently (never let it be said I have too much time on my hands), most recent batch was carrot and ginger, to an old Mrs Beeton recipe, except with kiddush wine instead of brandy. Seems to have gone down well, so far.

Victor Keegan on new small businesses

I love Vic Keegan: he is smart and insightful and thoroughly charming in person. Loving today's piece on the flowering of micro-startups and entrepreneurial happenings in London. Of course, I'm on maternity leave :)

How smart are you?

Must be all the humous (or easy questions) - I got 20 out of 20 (and beleive me, it's quite some time since I did that well at anything) on the BBC's How smart are you? quiz.

All Hail The Smart Growth Manifesto

I've often wondered about growth - of the business kind - surely, I thought as a fresh-faced graduate tasked with acheiving x% growth each year (just for my bit of the business), eventually it'll all topple over? And how much more so for huge corporates and economies? I mean, isn't it a bit like a chain letter or just overeating? Umair Haque has put together the Smart Growth Manifesto which appears to be a little downturn-friendly.

Top 100 foods to improve your productivity |

The Guardian's got a cute little interactive diagram of the top 100 foods to improve your productivity - I should be way brainier given the amount of humous I eat.

my kez recipe

So, the kez worked out fine. The big picture is the final product - kinda like cream cheese, but (a) less fat (I'm guessing, as I didn't use cream) and (b) it had more of a ... zing to it. The top pic is the start, the middle pic is pouring it into the muslin after it had gone yoghurty (about 24 hours) and the bottom pic is the kez tied into a muslin cloth draining in the fridge.

Frankly, quite a lot of work, but then in the olden days, apparently, you couldn't buy philadelphia / cream cheese etc. Not sure I'd do it again apart from the dinner-party-conversation aspect. Or if I was on maternity leave.

As far as I know, no-one alive knows either of my grandmother's kez recipes, so through the wonder of the interweb, I have cobbled it together based on google-savvy, key words and guesswork. Also, my dad was pretty insistent about it being hung on the washing line to drain, but I feel like there are health and safety constraints to this. Or maybe she only made kez in the winter?

Anyway, here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
Just under 2 litres of whole milk (I was adivsed not to use skimmed or semi-skimmed)
60 ml buttermilk

Instructions:
1 Heat the milk in a heavy large saucepan over a low heat until lukewarm - About 90°F. to 100°F - you can also do this in the microwave
2 Pour the milk into large bowl, and stir in the buttermilk.
3 Cover with a kitchen towel, and leave to stand for about 24 hours at room temperature until the mixture has formed a soft curd, rather like yogurt.
4 Line a large colander with a clean muslin cloth (I bought mine in Lakeland) and set the colander in the sink. Pour the milk mixture into the lined colander, and let it drain for around 10 minutes.
5 Fold the cloth over the curd to cover it. I tied it losely by drawing opposite corners together and tying into a knot. Hang This over a wooden spoon and leave it in a deep bowl, so the muslin doesn't touch the base.
6 Refrigerate until a thicker cheese forms, draining off the liquid after 8 hours, about 24 hours.
7 Transfer the cheese to a small container. Cover and store in the fridge for up to 4 days (although mine got eaten a lot quicker than that).

West Wing thought: tuesday

I am so deeply entrenched in the West Wing (series five), that I can't help wondering if Simon Hochhauser, the The President of the United Synagogue, is also known as POTUS.

quite a lot of snow, for Kilburn

quite a lot of snow, for Kilburn
Originally uploaded by sashinka-uk

Everyone's talking about Snowday - we went out at the crack of dawn and just played with the wonder of it all.