A brief chat about coffee.

Up until recently, I was quite happy to drink instant coffee.

Not exclusively, mind you. My coffee of choice was Douwe Egberts ground coffee, brewed in a filter machine or (preferably) in a cafetiere. But on those mornings when I just couldn't be bothered, or if I needed to fill up a flask to take somewhere, I could cope with some Kenco instant. No problem.

No more.

I have always liked espressos but lacked the equipment to make them at home. Recently I did a bit of looking around on the internet and discovered that a little stovetop coffee pot was the next best thing to an expensive espresso machine, and one trip to TK Maxx later and £5.99 poorer, I became the proud owner of a little cream-coloured one. And to make my shopping trip even more successful, I found some pretty white and duck egg blue espresso cups and saucers in a House of Fraser outlet store - £3.00 for a set of four. It'd be rude not to.



For my first attempt with the little stovetop, I used my Douwe Egberts coffee. It was good. Really good.

The following day I popped into a coffee shop in the town where I work. They blend and roast all their own coffee and will grind it however you like. I bought a little bag of java mocha, which is apparently their biggest seller and which smells better than almost anything on earth. And you know what? This is the stuff that's ended my relationship with instant coffee for good. I can never go back now.

So I'm interested. Do you drink coffee? What type? How do you brew it? Tell me about your coffee habits.

The only thing that can improve a good coffee, by the way, is a good biscotti to perch on the saucer. So here's a recipe for a good chocolate chip & hazelnut biscotti (adapted slightly from Good Housekeeping Favourite Cakes, Bakes & Cupcakes).



Ingredients:

125g plain flour
75g caster sugar (golden, if you have it)
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of cinnamon
pinch of salt
1 egg
1 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
25g hazelnuts (remove the skins first)
25g chocolate chips, or chopped chocolate

Preheat the oven to 200ºC. Line a baking sheet with parchment or a Silpat or similar.

Mix the flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder and salt. In a separate jug or small bowl, beat the milk, egg and vanilla with a fork. Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour in the wet stuff, the hazelnuts and the chocolate and mix it all together with a fork until you get a sticky dough.

Knead this on a floured surface till it comes together and roll it into a log about 25-30cm long. Place this on the baking sheet, flatten it slightly and bake for about 20 mins till golden.

Remove from the oven and drop the oven down to 150ºC. Transfer the log to a chopping board and slice it on a diagonal into slices about 1cm thick. Stand the slices on the baking tray and put back into the oven for about 10-15 minutes until dry and golden.

This particular biscotti recipe produces biscuits that are very hard (this is traditional, but see here for a softer biscotti recipe) and you really need to dip them into your drink to make them easy to eat - but they are truly delicious!

Random Recipes: My New Cookbook

Dom's theme for this month's Random Recipes is "my new cookbook", and the book I've chosen has been my new cookbook for five months! So it's definitely about time I took it off the shelf and started actually using it.

Ever since I started reading food blogs, I've been aware of the Tuesdays with Dorie group, who bake from Dorie Greenspan's universally adored book Baking From My Home to Yours. Every Tuesday I would drool over that week's offerings on all the blogs I subscribed to in Google Reader, and for ages I longed for my own copy of the book.


Last Christmas, my lovely in-laws obliged, and I found a copy hiding under the Christmas tree. To say I was excited would be putting it mildly.

And ever since, I've been carrying the book around with me, reading it in bed, peering at the photos with my useless, dim little booklight while my poor husband is trying to sleep. But I never, ever made any of the recipes, and I've no idea why. Perhaps it was because of my hatred of cup measurements, maybe it was because there was so much to bake that I didn't know where to start. I don't know.

Anyway, enough. Even after all these months I still consider it my new cookbook, so this week it's taken pride of place on my little green cookbook stand and I've made not one but TWO recipes!


First I made Dorie's Lennox Almond Biscotti. I adore biscotti, but for some reason I've never made it myself. Now I have, and I will definitely do it again. The recipe uses polenta, which is unusual and gives it a lovely crunch without breaking your teeth like a lot of biscotti. I found some candied peel in the cupboard that was left over from making Christmas cakes, so threw that in and it was a nice addition. Next time I'll use some different nuts, perhaps pistachios. I love a recipe that's easily adaptable.


Then the other day I had a raging need for a brownie (in fact it was a post-migraine sugar craving - does anyone else get this?) so I had a go at Dorie's Classic Brownies. Now I have made a lot of brownies in my time, I've posted at least two different recipes on my blog and there are countless others from before the blog existed or that I haven't bothered posting because they were nothing special.


This one IS special. Very very special, and honestly this one recipe alone is worth buying the book for. The recipe calls for walnuts, but in the absence of walnuts I used macadamias and it was fabulous. Then yesterday I wanted another batch but had hardly any plain chocolate left, so I made it with mostly milk chocolate and pecan nuts, and you know what? That was fabulous too. I almost wish I hadn't discovered the recipe because I can see myself gaining a LOT of weight just by eating mountains of these.


Even after trying these two recipes, it still feels like a new cookbook. It's huge, and it'll take me years to get through it all. But I'll definitely be plodding through it one cookie, cake or scone at a time!

Dorie's Classic Brownie Recipe

2 1/2 oz butter
4 oz plain chocolate
2 oz milk chocolate
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp instant espresso powder (Kenco do a nice one)
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup plain flour
1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Line an 8" square tin with parchment.

Melt the butter and chocolate together. Whisk in the sugar (it will go grainy, and look almost as if the chocolate has seized, this is normal). Whisk in the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla and espresso powder. Fold in the flour, salt and chopped nuts.

Pour into the tin and smooth the surface. Bake for 30 to 33 minutes (it takes 30 exactly in my oven) until the top is dull and a skewer comes out clean. Sit the tin on a wire rack and let the brownies cool. Turn out, peel away the parchment, turn back the right way up on a board and cut into squares.

These are amazing with vanilla ice cream! And that's another recipe I'll be sharing very soon, because I might, just maybe, have bought myself another new toy...