Culinary

This week's bread: Marriage's Moulsham Strong Malted Seeded - v nice.

Saturday breakfast rolls: raisin rolls rather loosely based on James Beard's mother's raisin bread - raisins were soaked, if not overnight, in brandy with a little mace - with Marriage's Golden Wholegrain Flour.

There was still a small amount of Angel Biscuit dough left in the fridge, which I baked and we had with gravadlax for Saturday lunch - mmmmm.

Today's lunch: essayed a tofu and red pepper crumble - sauteed a chopped red bell pepper and some onion in olive oil and then added some chopped up tofu, seasoned with salt, pepper, basil and thyme, a little bottle of red wine, and a crumble topping (2:1:1 wholemeal flour, strong white flour, coarse oatmeal, with butter cut in - to make this vegan I daresay there are substitutes) and baked for 30 mins in a moderately hot oven - okay but worth further experimenting with; served with slow-cooked broccoli based on a recipe of Alice Waters' - cut up the broccoli fairly small, warm some olive oil in a heavy-based pan or casserole, slice a few cloves of garlic, stir in, add the broccoli, some chile flakes, stir a little, add a modest amount of water, bring to the boil reduce to a very low simmer and cover - may need water boiling off at end (this didn't) - squeeze over fresh lemon before serving; and padron peppers.