Strictly speaking, these are made with the discarded part of your sourdough starter, which some careless people throw away. Because the starter has been lingering, unloved, in the fridge for a week or so, it has lost a bit of its ‘oomph’, so might struggle to provide a satisfactory rise for a loaf of bread (not that it’s ever stopped me in the past when I’ve forgotten to feed my starter). However, it is also brilliant for giving a tangy je ne sais quoi to English muffins, crumpets, flatbreads, and all manner of cakes and American-style muffins (more of which in the weeks to come).
If you don’t have sourdough starter, you can easily make these muffins with rapid-action dried yeast – directions are given in the recipe below. The flavour and texture will be slightly different, but they will still be delicious, and far superior to the muffins you buy in the supermarket. Continue reading “Sourdough English Muffins”
It has to be said that lockdown is beginning to lose any appeal that it may have had in the beginning (the fact that it has rained non-stop for the last ten days may have had some bearing on that, I admit). I can’t remember whether we are 11 or 12 weeks in, I can no longer be bothered to count, and anyway I can’t see out from under my fringe. We remind ourselves daily that we and our families are incredibly fortunate – none of us has had Covid-19, nobody has lost their job, everyone has a secure home and we are all financially keeping heads above water – for now at least. 
I am fully stocked with flour again – a box containing five large bags of organic plain flour from the 
With the end of Week Two of temporary ‘lockdown’ fast approaching, we are starting to get the hang of it. This week we should have been in Warwickshire and had planned to meet some friends for lunch – instead we had afternoon coffee and buns and a surprisingly satisfactory chat via Zoom. 
Well, these are strange times. I hope you and all your loved ones are well. We should have been going back to Turkey about now, but it looks as though we will be in Cornwall until after the summer.
I promise I am not on a mission to simplify other people’s recipes, but I saw a recipe in this weekend’s Guardian newspaper that I was keen to try, but didn’t actually have all the ingredients to hand. However, I couldn’t see anything in the list of ingredients that couldn’t be replaced with something I already had lurking in my pantry, so threw caution to the wind and gave it a go. And the result was excellent, even though I say so myself.
We seem to be making a habit of going to St Mawes – one of Cornwall’s prettiest towns – at the moment. It must be the lure of the £13.95 crab sandwiches in the pub there – or possibly not! Thinking they must be the most expensive crab sandwiches on the planet, that illusion was quickly dashed by our friend Jean spotting that the ones on the terrace at the 
Weather report: extremely grumpy. Violent flashes, thunderous bangs, strong winds, torrential rain and a whole crop of waterspouts. For Pete’s sake people, we’re in the Mediterranean, it’s supposed to be sunny. The weather has forgotten how to behave. 
I’m going to utter the ‘D’ word. Here it comes: DIET. Ugh. Must do better next Christmas and remember, as I fall face down into Batch 28 of the homemade mince pies, that they will, without question, make my bottom big. Along with other bits of me. Their consumption will apparently make my rain jacket so tight that when I bend over to pick something up from the floor, it will unzip itself – unprompted by human hand – from the bottom upwards. Ooops.
Have you ever seen such a forlorn fruit bowl? A couple of pomegranates – fresh from the tree in the garden of Erol’s garage, where our car had its pre-MOT checks this week – alongside the inevitable black bananas (see last week’s post) and a lonely as-yet-unripe avocado.
aviewfrommykitchen.com 