Herman the German

Some of you will already know that Herman is the German Friendship Cake that is currently doing the rounds.  Herman is a sourdough cake that gets given out in goo form (i.e. as a starter) and needs to be tended to for ten days mainly through a schedule of stirring well everyday and feeding with flour, sugar and milk every few days.  Then at the end of the ten days you divide him into four, pass three onto friends to care for and bake one quarter yourself.  It has recently reached my friends and we've all been feeding and baking Herman feverishly.  Looking after a growing, yeasty mass for ten days is a strange experience but a distinctly enjoyable one.  There is something comforting in the routine of coming home to stir Herman and as you know I'm all about feeling comforted.  The recipe that came with my Herman seems to be the standard one on the internet involving apples, raisins and spices such as cinnamon but I thought I would tweak it a little.  I assumed the apples were to keep the cake moist as well as for taste so swapped two apples for four pears which may have been one too many in hindsight but it was just a very pear-y cake and it did definitely stay moist.  I don't like dried fruit such as raisins and wasn't keen on buying a bag just to try and figure out what to do with the rest so I left those out as well.  A pear Herman sounded good but I was sure it could be improved so I decided to make it a chocolate and pear Herman and leave out the cinnamon as it's difficult to balance cinnamon with chocolate I find. This was also a cunning ploy on my part as if the pear didn't quite work or the cake was too dry I would be forgiven as I had provided chocolate cake and everybody likes chocolate cake.  To give my cake a chocolate flavour I used 1 3/4 cups of flour instead of the suggested two and used 1/4 cup of cocoa.  The recipe also said it should cook in 45 minutes but I found mine wasn't ready until it had been in for 1 1/4 hours.  
My tinkering with Herman went down very well and he didn't even last twenty four hours in my office.  

I don't own a cake stand so my classy version is an upturned saucepan.  

Leftovers paella

I am a secret hoarder.  But only when it comes to my freezer.  In the rest of my life and my home I am decidedly clutter free and organised but my freezer is my shameful secret.  Every tiny little scrap of leftover food goes into the freezer.  I was going through it at the weekend and found five parmesan rinds I had forgotten I have.  I keep them for when I make soup because they give it a nice deep and savoury flavour.  I last made soup two years ago but did I throw these tiny bits of barely usable parmesan away? No. I tidied them neatly at the back of the top shelf.  I have tiny smidges of sauces, less than one serving of mashed potato and conversely, eighteen mini meringues.  Which I only made because I didn't want my liquid egg white to go to waste once it was opened.  If someone can suggest something to do with these then I am all ears.


Now I've told you my little secret it explains nicely how I came to made this dish which I have called paella but every Spaniard on the planet would probably want to throttle me for it. As I was trying to bring order to the freezer I found myself with one chicken breast in one hand and about a four inch piece of chorizo in the other.  Staring at these two items led me only to paella.  I have made paella before and it was really tasty but I fancied something slightly different so decided to try and cook it in the oven.  I also had some baby vegetables knocking around in the fridge alongside a tiny dribble of wine so I was all set to use up some leftovers.  This was remarkably simple and really amazing.  I'm certain not everybody would agree if they tried it but it was my dinner and this is my blog so I'm entitled to call it amazing!  


Nothing was said but I have a feeling the husband would have liked more meat.  If it had been in the freezer he would have had it but if you are buying the ingredients fresh I would recommend adding another piece of chicken.  Maybe even some prawns if it takes your fancy.  


Even my shockingly bad photography can't make this look anything other than true comfort.  

The lemon looks like it's from another planet because the zest went into a bakewell tart.  I have parmesan rind in my freezer for goodness sake, I am so not throwing away a lemon just because it's without zest! I'm not going to give quantities below because aside from the rice and stock ratio, it's fairly flexible.  


Ingredients:


1 cup rice
2 1/2 cups stock
chicken
chorizo
vegetables
white wine
lemon
2 tbsp olive oil
pinch each of turmeric and paprika
salt and pepper


Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade
Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the chorizo and chicken until cooked. Add a glug of white wine and reduce.  
Add the rice to the pan and turn to coat in the oil.
Pour the stock onto the rice and add the paprika and turmeric.  Bring to a gentle boil.
Transfer the mixture into a casserole dish that has a lid, add the vegetables, some salt and pepper and put in the oven for 30 minutes.
Add lemon wedges to the top and dig in.  

Polenta

When I first started teaching myself to cook a long while ago (you would think I would be better by now) somebody gave me a copy of the Silver Spoon, the essential Italian cookbook.  One of my favourites in this weighty tome was the simple sausages in tomato.  Just brown off some sausages and then cover in passata, throw in a bit of salt and pepper and cook with a lid on for about half an hour.  It sounds too simple to be tasty but it really is.  I have not had this in a very long time but it popped straight into my head when I was trying to think of something that I could accompany with polenta for my first foray into making it.  It seems weird to me now that I have never made it as it really is my type of food.  It's easy to cook carbohydrate that benefits greatly from the addition of parmesan.  That's my main food criteria hit.  It's May already and I shouldn't be seeking the comfort of dishes like this but with all the rain we've been having lately I am craving comfort food.  This has just rocketed right to the top of that list.  Even above cheese on toast which is about as good as it gets.  I'm not going to write a recipe for this because all you do is cook some sausages in tomato, make up some polenta to the instructions on the packet and add a generous sprinkling of parmesan on top. It doesn't get easier than that.  Even making mashed potato is more effort for goodness' sake.