Yesterday I made cottage cheese with my old milk. Today I did the next stage of my sourdough loaf, adding whey instead of water. The bread will be ready tomorrow; pictures and taste review to follow!
I had a small amount of whey left; see the picture below:
So I made a soda bread loaf, using whey instead of milk or yoghurt. I have to say that it turned out really well and was so good with the spicy soup. Recipes for both dishes are below:
Parsnip, Cheese and Apple Soda Bread
Ingredients:
6oz (150g) plain flour
6oz (150g) rye flour
1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 tsp cream of tartar
(you can use 2 tsp of baking powder instead of the above two ingredients, or use self-raising flour if you like)
4oz (100g) butter
2oz (50g) cheddar or other cheese
1/2 large or 1 whole parsnip
1/2 apple of your choice
1/4 pint (150ml) whey, buttermilk or a mixture of milk and yoghurt, or even slightly off milk
Method
Preheat the oven to 200 C or 400 F Gas 6
Grease a baking tray
Weigh all the ingredients into your mixing bowl apart from the liquid, grating the peeled parsnip, the apple (no need to peel) and the cheese. You can also grate the butter into the bowl if it is very hard, or rub it in with your fingers.
Carefully mix in the liquid of your choice. You might not need it all but you do want a really soft dough, wetter than pastry.
Try not to over-work the dough, then form it into a round or oval shape. Lightly brush it with a little left-over milk or whey. I like to slash a few knife marks in my loaf. Alternatively you could make small scones if you prefer, using a round cutter. If you do this, don’t roll the dough out, but just pat it lightly so that you have thick scones (about 1/2 ” or 1.5 cms).
Bake in the hot oven for about 35 minutes for a loaf or about 12/15 minutes for small scones. Unlike yeasted or sourdough bread, it is fine to cut soda bread when it is quite warm; this does not squish and spoil it.
Spicy Roast Squash Soup with Parsnip and Apple
This recipe is very flexible and I am not giving very precise quantities. This is roughly what I did today.
Ingredients
1 butternut squash
1/2 Parsnip
1/2 Apple
(you see that I have used the other half of these two ingredients in my soda bread)
Spices – about a tsp each of whatever you fancy eg cumin. ras el hanout, coriander, turmeric, fresh ginger
I onion
Stock or water as needed
Method
Roast your squash in a hot oven (200 C or 400 F Gas 6). I cut mine into big pieces without peeling and drizzled with olive oil and spices. I saved about a third of the squash to use in a salad on another day, but you could just make more soup! The timing will vary depending on how big you cut up the squash. I just cut mine into 4 pieces. I removed the seeds and stringy bits from the bulbous end. So mine took about 40 minutes to cook. You could of course cut the squash into smaller pieces and even peel it if you want to. When mine was cooked and cool enough to handle, I scraped the flesh away from the skin.
Whilst the squash is cooking, cook the onion, parsnip and apple in some olive oil in a big saucepan. Add the squash and let it all cook together for a while until all is soft. You then just need to add water or stock (chicken or vegetable would work, but I used enough flavours to manage without stock) to generously cover the veg in the pan. Season well with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and cook for about another 15 minutes. Go easy on the liquid, as you can always add more later if it is too thick.
Blitz your soup as you like it. With squash I tend to make it quite smooth with just a few chunks left in for texture. Check the seasoning and enjoy with your soda bread. I also tried some of my cottage cheese from yesterday and it all went together really well!
This made enough soup for roughly 4 people. Using the whole squash would probably make enough for 6.
