Parathas

It's the day before I start my little boy in daycare and go back to the office full-time. How to prepare? Cook the entire week's dinners, of course! Since I find the flavours develop in the fridge and it's easy to mix and match what I want, I made three different kinds of curry, and sealed them up in tupperware. None of them were particularly amazing -- Rick Stein's aloo gobi is rubbish compared to mine --- but I did take a little time out to make parathas for the first time. Skipping chapatis: go straight to the flaky version!

I was a bit nervous because the only time I made decent naan, I did it by accident. So I expected these to come out terribly. Fortunately, they are really really easy, and they came out totally deliciously! They also were easy to make ahead and then fry quickly just before serving. I bet they would freeze perfectly as well. I think next time I make them I will enlist a helper, and then the process would be really fast. Otherwise you're constantly switching back and forth between rolling (floury) and brushing (buttery) and everything gets a little sticky. The following quantity serves four people with curries.

Ingredients

• 250g chapati flour (finely milled wholewheat flour), or half wholemeal, half plain flour, plus extra for dusting
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp melted butter, plus ~5 tbsp for brushing
• 120-150ml warm water

In a bowl, mix the flour with the salt, then add the melted butter and 120ml of the water. Mix together, adding a little more water if needed, until you have a soft but not sticky dough. Knead in the bowl for a minute then cover and leave to rest for 15 minutes.

Set out a ramekin of the ~5tbsp melted butter with a pastry brush, a ramekin of plain flour and a rolling pin, plenty of kitchen paper (great for mopping up butter spills), and a plate with a wet tea towel to cover your parathas as you make them. Lightly flour a surface and the rolling pin, and give yourself plenty of room. (mis-en-place is super important here!)

Divide the dough in half, then each half in half again, and again, to make eight pieces. Roll out a piece of dough to a circle about 13cm in diameter. Brush the top thinly with butter, dust over a little flour, then fold in half over the butter to form a half-moon. Repeat the brushing, sprinkling, and folding again, to form a triangle. Roll the triangle out so that each side is about 13cm long. Repeat with the remaining dough.

Heat a heavy-based frying pan and fry each piece of dough 1-2 minutes each side; they should become golden, slightly singed, and puff up a little as they cook. If you like you can brush the sides with yet more butter as you do this! (I didn't, and they were still yum.) Remove them to a warmed plate, cover with a (dry) tea towel,
and serve as soon as you can.

Microwave Hollandaise Sauce

The asparagus season has started, new potatoes are out, and salmon is fresh and tasty at the supermarket, so what better accompanying sauce than a home-made Hollandaise? I have never made one before but they're notoriously difficult, so I looked for a microwave recipe. This one worked first-try, and I made 2/3rds of the website quantity, which gave generous helpings for two people.

Ingredients

• 125g butter
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tbsp lemon juice (about half a lemon), well-strained

Method

Put butter in a small pyrex bowl and microwave for 10-30 seconds, until the butter is soft, and no warmer than 45C. In a separate bowl or ramekin, mix the yolks and lemon juice. Add this mixture to the softened butter and combine well. Microwave on high, stopping to whisk every 10 seconds, which will feel very frequent but is necessary. Suddenly the sauce will thicken as the yolks cook: don't overbeat or overcook beyond a good consistency.

Soft Buttery Dinner Rolls

I usually suck at making rolls. I don't know why, but they always come out dry, or rock hard. It's probably because I never used to look up any specific recipes, just took some bread dough and divided it. This time I wanted to make one of those Vietnamese/French fusion sandwiches, like banh mi, but cribbed from Nigel's second Kitchen Diaries. I really wanted a soft, fresh, buttery roll, the kind you get in a five star restaurant and can't help but take two of, even though you know you shouldn't fill up on bread. Fortunately I found an awesome recipe first-try! My main modification was to use the dough setting of the breadmaker, because I have a three-month-old I'm lazy.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon active-dry yeast
• 1/2 cup (110ml) warm water
• 1/2 cup (110ml) milk (I prefer whole)
• 1 large egg
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 cups (400g) plain flour
• 1 tbsp butter
• melted butter for greasing and topping

Method

Put the ingredients in the breadmaker and put on a dough setting. Once it gets to the first rise cycle, switch it off, and leave for about an hour, until doubled in size.

Flour a kitchen counter and turn the dough out; divide in half, in half, and then into thirds, to form 12 little dough balls. Without totally knocking the air out, tuck any rough edges away, and make the balls fairly round-shaped. Line a 9x13" (23x33cm) pan with greaseproof paper, then brush with melted butter. Lay 12 dough balls in a 3x4 grid, evenly spaced. Cover with a warm damp (but not heavy) tea towel and let rise in a warm environment (I use my oven on 40C, no fan), for 30-40 minutes, until pillowy.

Preheat the oven to 190 C and brush the rolls with more melted butter. Bake for 13-18 minutes, until risen and golden. Don't overbake -- you want to catch them while they're still moist and tender.

Bacon and Chilli Yoghurt Muffins

I'm in a muffin mood! Specifically I seem to be hooked on bacon muffins. SO GOOD. This recipe comes from an awesome Christmas present, The Flavour Thesaurus. It's an incredible book in which the author set out to describe every possible flavour combination, scaling back from an insane number that could only be represented in scientific notation to a 'more feasible' 4,591 combinations - of which, to be fair, only the edible ones are described. It's brilliant to flick through as the prose is amusing and filled with interesting historical and cultural tidbits- it was in the 'everything goes with bacon' chapter that I came across this lovely recipe. I didn't have any cornmeal, so in place of the plain flour and cornmeal, I used a 'corn bread' baking mix, which is half-and-half white flour and coarse corn meal flour. Don't be scared by the quantity of chilli flakes: their heat is well-tempered by the yoghurt and butter. I also took the advice in the recipe and served with cream cheese: a wonderful combination.

Ingredients

• four rashers of bacon
• two eggs
• 450g plain yoghurt
• 50g butter
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 65g plain flour 
• 275g fine cornmeal
• 1 tsp dried chilli flakes

Fry or grill the bacon until crispy and easy to snip or crumble. Whisk the eggs together with the yoghurt in a large mixing bowl. Melt the butter and drizzle it in, whisking all the while. Combine the salt, soda, flour, cornmeal and chilli flakes in a bowl and then fold into the yoghurt mixture, stopping as soon as you no longer see any dry flour. Pop into 12-18 muffin cases or trays and bake at 200 C for 20 minutes, until golden and risen.