Witchy Kitchen

Tag: bread

  • Apple Charlotte

    Apple Charlotte

    I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife’s badly cooked dinners and untidy ways. -Isabella Beeton

    Though Apple Charlotte never actually got made on Downton Abbey, its absence led to poorly sighted Mrs Patmore’s raspberry meringue, which led to spoonfuls of salt in place of sugar, which led to Sir Anthony Strallan nearly choking and Lady Grantham with one of her Lady Granthamest lines ever: Bring fruit, bring cheese, bring anything to take this taste away!

    I made a recipe from Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, an extensive guide first published in 1861 by Isabella Beeton, and the standard for all English households from the Victorian era onward. Served with a lovely Lady Grey creme anglaise; it’s like Earl Grey but it’s for ladies.

    Apple Charlotte

    Adapted from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management

    • About 6 large slices bread, crusts cut off and buttered, more if needed
    • About 2 large Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced, more if needed
    • 3 pinches of salt
    • zest of one lemon
    • 3 heaping tablespoons brown sugar

    Heat oven to 350°

    Butter a pie pan. Tear large pieces of bread and place in a single layer. Arrange a layer of apple slices on top, then sprinkle with a pinch of salt, a third of the lemon zest, and a heaping tablespoon of brown sugar. Repeat for the other two layers. Gently press down and cover with foil.

    Bake for 45 minutes to an hour (I checked at 45, the apples were cooked but firm, by an hour they were cooked down properly).

    Allow to cool, then overturn on a plate, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and serve with vanilla ice cream, or creme anglaise (recipe follows).

    Lady Grey Creme Anglaise

    Adapted from Biscayenne

    • 3/4 cup milk
    • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
    • 2 Lady Grey tea bags
    • 2 egg yolks
    • 1/4 cup sugar

    Bring milk, vanilla and tea bags to a simmer, then remove from heat and steep 10 minutes. Remove tea bags (after squeezing out the liquid).

    Meanwhile, whisk egg yolks and sugar until mixture is pale yellow. Pour half the milk mixture into the eggs, whisking constantly. Pour everything back into the sauce pan and reheat over medium heat, constantly stirring, until mixture has thickened. Do not boil. It is ready when it coats a spoon, and you can run your finger over the creme and the trail remains.

    Pour into a bowl placed into a larger bowl of ice and stir until the sauce is cool. Refrigerate to thicken further.

    Recipe for Fiction Kitchen Episode 8: DOWNTON ABBEY in which Diana and Carrie discuss Downton Abbey in its Edwardian glory, including Mrs. Beeton, food styling, frozen gravy, Mrs. Patmore’s dark side, and the best table scraps in Yorkshire.

    Ms Beeton Desserts Downton Abbey

    Illustration from Mrs Beeton’s

    Love apples? Try:

  • Khobz Eddar – Algerian Bread of the House

    Khobz Eddar – Algerian Bread of the House

    The MENA Cooking Club celebrates the food of the Middle East and North Africa, and this month we’re cooking Algerian food! I chose to bake khobz eddar, or “house bread.”

    You can learn so much about a country from its folklore, so I spent some time reading about the stories from Algeria. Lots of tales trace back to the Kabyle people, a Berber group from the northern side. For the most part, the stories are about clever animals playing tricks and getting stuff done, but I was most excited to see that there is an Algerian Snow White story, similar to the Grimms version those of us from the West are more familiar with, but with some distinct Algerian flavor.

    yvonne-gilbert-snow-white
    Illustration for Snow White by Yvonne Gilbert.

    It’s very common in Algeria to bake bread at home to accompany meals, so certainly little Snow White regularly baked khobz eddar for the seven ogres! I made some to accompany my Algerian meal, which included a white bean stew and Teal Tadjine’s lovely garlicky meatballs.

    Khobz Eddar

    Adapted from La Petit Panière

    • 1 packet yeast
    • 1 teaspoon sugar
    • 1 cup warm milk
    • 200 grams semolina flour
    • 200 grams all purpose flour
    • 1 teaspoon salt
    • 1 egg
    • 1 egg yolk for the brush
    • nigella seeds for garnish

    In a mixing bowl, mix yeast, sugar and warm milk and set aside until foamy, about five minutes.

    In another bowl whisk together flours, and salt. Lightly beat the egg and combine with to the yeast and milk mixture. Gradually add the flours to the yeast mixture until a sticky dough forms (you may not use all flour). Knead for 10 minutes on a floured counter, adding a little flour if the dough gets too stick. Roll into a ball and place in a clean, greased bowl to rise, covered, for one hour.

    Knead the dough again for about 10 minutes. Grease a 9 inch cake pan. Flatten and spreadthe dough with your hands into a nine inch circle, and place in the pan. Brush with egg yolk, sprinkle with nigella seeds and slice the top into 8 wedges. Cover and let rise for another hour.

    Heat oven to 400° Bake for 30-35 minutes until golden brown. Cool, slice, and serve!

    Story time! This is a little long and winding, but there are some interesting details – the wicked woman is the girl’s own mother, the moon is an oracle, tricks with henna, and death from needles. Oh yeah, and ogres!

    More Beautiful than the Moon

    A beautiful and vain woman asked the moon each night “Is there anyone more beautiful than me?” to which the moon responded “I am pretty and you are pretty, but no one is prettier than you!”

    The woman had a child, a girl, who grew very lovely. One night when the girl was still very young, when asked the moon responded, “I am pretty and you are pretty, but the girl is prettier than everyone.” The woman was jealous and asked the moon if she should kill the girl. The moon allowed her to wait until the girl grew older, learned to cook and sew, then told the woman “now she is old enough to marry and have children; kill her or I will kill you!”

    The woman paid a butcher in jewels to take her daughter to the forest and kill her, returning with a flask of her blood that she could drink. The butcher tried, but could not bring himself to kill the beautiful girl, so he hid her in a cave.

    She fell asleep, and when she awoke she was surrounded by seven ogres. They made her their sister, and she stayed with them and kept their house.

    Meanwhile the woman revisited the moon, who told her her daughter was alive still, so she was killed.

    The ogres fell in love with the girl and all wished to marry her. To decide which one she would marry, she put henna on their hands, covered them in cloth, and told them she would marry the one whose henna turned the reddest. In the morning, none of the ogres’ hands were red at all, as she had tricked them by using another herb, so she remained unmarried as their sister.

    One day when the ogres were out, the girl was visited by an ogress who put seven needles in her head, so that when the ogres returned they thought she had died. They put her body on a horse and led her through the forest, where they came upon a prince who was hunting. He fell in love with the beautiful dead girl, but his father the king insisted she be buried; however, the undertaker discovered the needles and removed them and she awoke. She was married to the prince and they had a son.

    The son grew, and asked his mother about her family. She took him to see the seven ogres, who thought she had died, and embraced her with happiness. They visited the house of the ogress that had stuck her with needles and set her on fire. They discovered the ogress had seven daughters, to which the ogres were married, and lived happily ever after with the girl and her prince.

    Original story can be found in Tales Arab Women Tell by Hasan M. El-Shamy

    More MENA Cooking Club Recipes


  • Fig and Ginger Barm Brack

    Fig and Ginger Barm Brack

    Barm brack is an Irish sweet bread studded with dried fruits and candied peel. Though traditionally made with sultanas, I changed it up with dried figs and ginger, one of my favorite combos. It’s a Halloween tradition to eat it and play a fortune-telling game for the coming year based on little trinkets wrapped in muslin cloth baked into the bread.

    A pea: no marriage for you this year
    A stick: even worse, an unhappy marriage, or continual disputes
    A cloth or rag: rotten luck, poor poor poor

    ….hmm so far not sure I want to play this game…but then!

    A coin: good fortune, riches!
    A ring: marriage! This year!

    (Thanks again my favorite academic source Wikipedia)

    I am not even going to bother linking to the recipe I worked from because the liquid to flour measurements were way off! (At least for me). I had to add almost double the flour the recipe called for before it would come together in a dough…however, through some unexplained wacky kitchen witchcraft the end result was madly marvelous!

    So because of this, apologies for the flour measurements, but if you add a little at a time you can’t go wrong. This was fantastic, so I will definitely make this again and try to close the margin a little.

    Fig and Ginger Barm Brack

    • 1 packet (.32 oz) rapid rise yeast
    • 3/4 cup warm water
    • 4 tbsp sugar, divided
    • 3-4 cups all purpose flour, plus more for kneading
    • 1 tsp salt
    • 4 tbsp (half stick) butter, melted
    • 2 eggs, lightly beaten
    • 4 oz dried figs, chopped
    • 2 oz candied ginger, chopped

    In a small bowl, combine yeast, warm water and 1 tbsp of the sugar and let stand for 10 minutes or so (after which time it should be foamy – if not, use new yeast).

    Meanwhile, whisk together 3 cups of the flour, remaining 3 tbsp sugar and the salt, then stir in butter and eggs (does not need to be homogenous). Add fruit and the yeast mixture, stirring and adding more flour little by little, just enough until a dough forms (will be a little sticky).

    Turn out onto a floured board (or your counter) and knead for 10 minutes, adding sprinkles of flour as needed as it gets too sticky to handle. Roll into a ball and place into a lightly oiled bowl and cover with a tea towel or plastic wrap. Put in a warm spot to rise for one hour.

    After an hour, lightly oil 9×5 loaf pan. Knead the dough for a few minutes and spread the dough into the loaf pan. Cover and allow to rise for 30 minutes.

    Bake at 400° for 30 minutes – near the end if it starts getting too brown on top you can cover with foil and finish baking.

    Cool in the pan.

    Have with tea, sliced, toasted, slathered with butter and sprinkled with sea salt.