What’s Stu Cooking

Believe it or not, this one beats an old favorite - banana nut bread - and gives us something to do will all the fresh rhubarb we get from the garden. The rhubarb really works to keep the cake nice and moist. Great sliced for breakfast with a nice pat of butter.

• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 cup buttermilk (substitute: 1 cup plain yogurt, or sour the milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 cups diced rhubarb
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Topping:

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon softened butter

Beat together the oil and brown sugar until smooth. Gently stir in the egg, buttermilk, salt, baking soda, vanilla, and flour; blending only until just moistened and combined. Do not over mix. Fold in the rhubarb and nuts. Pour into two 8×4x2 1/2-inch loaf pans.

For the topping, mix the sugar and softened butter until crumbly and sprinkle over the batter.

Bake at 350 F for 55 to 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean. Let stand for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and allow to cool.

From Sugar Snips and Asparagus Tips

Beef Stew

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 lb stewing beef diced
• Roughly chopped: 1 medium onion, 1 large carrot, 2 celery stalks
• 2 cloves garlic sliced thin
• Salt & pepper to taste
• 1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 1/2 cup red wine
• 2 cups beef broth
• 3 medium potatoes large diced
• 6 large closed cup mushrooms quartered or 12 or so small button mushrooms
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1 cup frozen corn
• 1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Dumplings

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon mustard powder
• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
• 1 egg beaten
• 1/4 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Heat the oil to its smoking point in a large Dutch oven; add the beef, some salt and pepper and stir occasionally until browned. Add the chopped onion, carrot, celery and garlic. Season and cook over medium heat until the onion turns translucent (about 3-5 minutes) adding thyme and bay leaf in the last minute or so. Sprinkle in the flower; stir and cook for another 3 minutes, then add the red wine. Simmer off the alcohol from the wine for a few minutes and then add the beef broth. Add the potatoes. Cover and simmer slowly for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours or until the beef is nice and tender and the consistency is quite thick.

Make the dumpling dough when the stew is almost finished. Combine the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately. Add the wet into the dry ingredients and stir with a fork only until they are just combined.

Remove the stew from the pot and set aside. Add 2 1/2 cups of water to the pot and bring to a boil, scraping up any stuck bits of stew into the liquid. Add the mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes or until they start to go soft. Add the frozen corn and peas and bring back to a boil.

Using a tablespoon to portion out the dumplings, drop the dough into the boiling pot. Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for 12 to 15 minutes. Do not lift the lid at any point before this. The dumplings will absorb most of the liquid in the pot.

Remove the dumplings and add the stew back to the pot to combine with the mushrooms, peas and corn. Bring it all back to temp then stir in the fresh parsley and adjust the seasonings with salt & pepper. Place the dumplings back on top of the stew to serve (cover the pot to reheat them if necessary).

No more sliced white bread! Kim’s been baking bread twice a week. She found a good recipe from Delia Online that she tweaked and perfected. I’m not much of a baker but I thought I’d give it a try today. It worked out!

The nice thing about a good white loaf recipe is that you can use it as a base to make different kinds of bread. Kim worked out that you can add a cup of granary or wheat flour and it gives the bread a great flavour. She also threw in some seeds and rolled oats. Ummmm.

Kim increased the size of the recipe to better fill out our loaf tins. The altered Delia recipe is as follows:

• 5 cups strong white bread flour
• 1 cup wheat or granary flour
• 1 level tablespoon salt
• 1 1/4 teaspoon of dry yeast
• 1 1/4 teaspoon sugar
• 510 ml hand-hot water
• 3-4 tablespoon mixed seeds and 3-4 tablespoon rolled oats

Follow Delia’s by-hand recipe except for the following changes:

• Combine the yeast with some of the warm water in a small bowl and leave it to sit while the flour warms in the oven.
• Use a ceramic serving bowl so that the dough doesn’t take on a metallic taste. But make sure you cover the dough loosely with the plastic wrap so that it can rise above the rim of the bowl.
• Rise the dough in a warm place.
• Don’t bother with the polythene bags once the dough is in the tins, just use the oiled plastic wrap from the first rising time
• Start the oven heating about 1/2 hour before you need to put the bread in the oven.
• Check the bread after 30 minutes of baking. Ours was done by then, but oven temperatures vary.
• We found that the bottom and sides of the bread are browned and crusty enough without turning the bread upside down and baking for an additional 5 minutes.

We haven’t tried it yet but I bet you could use all white flour and add in all kinds of stuff like herbs or sliced olives instead of the seeds and oats.