Slow Cooked: 200 exciting, new recipes for your slow cooker (37 page)

1 teaspoon salt

25g soft butter, cubed

320ml warm water

Sift the flour into a large bowl and make two little wells on opposite sides in it. One is for your yeast and one is for your salt. If you add them together, the salt can stop the yeast from working and you end up with a sad, flat loaf.

Put the yeast and the salt in these wells and then scatter the chopped butter across the flour and add about half of the warm water. Bring the flour together with your hand and it will start to form a sticky, ragged dough. Bring it together as much as you can and then add about another 100ml of the water. Add the rest if the dough is stubbornly dry.

Strangely, adding more water makes the dough less sticky and easier to work with and you should be able to pick up the loose bits of flour and dough in the bowl at this stage and allow the dough to form a ball.

Turn this ball out on an oiled surface and start kneading. This activates the gluten, channels any life tensions and gives a sense of achievement. It’s useful to lift and slap the dough and give it some welly. The dough will soften and smooth after about 10 minutes of kneading.

Pop it into a clean oiled bowl, cover with clingfilm and leave to rise for an hour in a warm place. After an hour, it will have doubled in size. Take it out of the bowl, punch the dough down, knead for about 10 seconds and shape into a tight ball.

Line the slow-cooker crock with a sheet of reusable baking liner or double-thickness greaseproof paper. Don’t use foil as this will make the bottom of the bread burn. Place the dough into the slow cooker and then cover the top of the crock with 4 sheets of kitchen roll, doubled over. Put the lid on the slow cooker.

Either set the slow cooker on a timer to come on in the morning or switch to high and begin cooking the bread. Both ways allow the bread to rise a second time, which gives it a lovely texture. The bread will take about 2–2½ hours to cook. If you can, turn the loaf 30 minutes before the end to brown the top slightly, but if you can’t, don’t worry. It tastes just as good, only slightly paler.

Lift the bread out of the slow cooker and allow it to cool for as long as you can, then slice. It should keep for about 3 days, but honestly I’ve never managed to hold myself back long enough to test this theory. This is seriously delicious bread with the minimum of effort. Perfect, especially if you don’t want to heat the oven in warm weather or need it free over Christmas.

This bread was traditional in Boston when wheat flour was scarce and cornmeal was more common. Rather than baked, it was steamed in round cans over the fire. I first had it twenty years ago when I au paired out in Boston, but never knew it as anything more than ‘bread’.

While I haven’t quite got over some of the events of that trip, such as crashing a bike in the bush, falling off rollerblades and a small child standing on a baby stingray, I have continued to pine for the dark, molasses-rich rounds ever since.

I’ve tweaked the basic recipe for the slow cooker and so you don’t need to find a metal coffee tin to cook it in, but the moist treacle taste is the same. This bread uses cornmeal, which may well be labelled as polenta in supermarkets. It’s simply the uncooked meal made from grinding dried corn. It keeps beautifully.

MAKES 1 × 450G LOAF

75g plain or wholemeal flour

50g coarse cornmeal or polenta

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

60ml black treacle

125ml buttermilk or 75ml yoghurt (see home-made Yoghurt
here
) and 50ml water

1 egg, beaten

By some strange quirk, loaf tins are usually sized in pounds rather than grams. A 1lb one is perfect here. I used a foil-lined loaf tin for the bread, doubling up the foil to make it easier to lift the loaf out. Grease lightly with oil.

Sift the flour into a large bowl and add the cornmeal, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Pour in the oil and the treacle. (I use black treacle as it’s easier to come by, but if you have some molasses, use it instead.) Mix just enough for it to start to combine.

Add in the buttermilk. If you can’t get buttermilk then dilute some yoghurt with water or use the same amount of milk and add a teaspoon of lemon juice or vinegar. This sours it and creates a quick version of buttermilk. You need the acidity in buttermilk or yoghurt to activate the bicarbonate of soda in the bread, so don’t skip this stage.

Beat in the egg until all the flour and treacle is evenly dispersed. Pour the runny batter into the tin, leaving about 4cm for the bread to rise.

Carefully set the loaf tin into the slow-cooker crock and pour boiling water into the crock, making sure you don’t splash the bread. The water should come about halfway up the side of the tin. Put the lid on the slow cooker and steam for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, check the bread with a skewer. If the centre is still liquid, cover the crock with 4 sheets of kitchen roll, doubled over, and put the lid back on. Steam for another 30 minutes. Lift the tin out of the slow cooker when a skewer comes out clean and allow to cool for about 30 minutes in the tin. Upend it and allow to slide out. Serve warm with the Brixton Baked Beans
here
.

I love cornbread. It was the kind of thing people made in the books about the American West like
My Friend Flicka
, which I read endlessly as a pony-mad kid with a fascination for America. It made me think of billy cans and jackalopes, despite not knowing exactly what either was. I first ate it in the nineties when I was experimenting with yeast-free breads and I learned three things about it.

Firstly, if you make it with 100 per cent cornmeal, it will be so dense and heavy you could kill any marauding coyotes outside your wagon with it. It needs flour to add lightness. Secondly, it doesn’t keep very well — a maximum of 24 hours. And thirdly and most importantly, it makes the most depressing French toast ever.

I worked the third one out after just one bite, but was slower to the first two. It wasn’t until I met my friend James and ate squares of his light, buttery, crumbly cornbread that I mastered it. In many ways meeting him was like striking gold, but especially with my cornbread skills!

SERVES 4–6

200g coarse cornmeal or polenta

75g plain flour (or rice flour to be gluten-free)

1 tablespoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

400ml plain yoghurt (see home-made Yoghurt
here
)

2 eggs, beaten

25g butter, melted

This is very easy and quick to make. Start by lining the slow-cooker crock with some reusable baking liner or greaseproof paper.

Put the cornmeal and flour in a large bowl along with the sugar, salt and bicarbonate of soda. Pour in the plain yoghurt and the beaten eggs and mix well. You’ll see the mixture puff up like a thick batter. Beat the butter in and pour the batter into the lined slow-cooker crock.

Smooth the top down and put the lid on the slow cooker. Cook the cornbread on high for 2 hours. It is ready when the top is still springy, but a skewer poked into the centre comes out cleanly.

Lift out of the slow cooker and serve in slices on the side of chilli or a rich stew. It is very filling. Don’t be tempted to cook it on top of the chilli as it soaks up the moisture from the beans and leaves them dry, while giving the cornbread the dreaded soggy bottom!

This is one of those things you mention making in the slow cooker and people look at you in bewilderment. Surely you can’t make fudge in the slow cooker due to those stages of heating sugar? But trust me, you can make this fudge in the slow cooker. It’s more like frosting than true butter-based fudge, but it’s amazing all the same.

This recipe is popular on the internet, but I’ve tweaked it to make it easier to cook and much less sweet than the previous versions I tried. It’s very rich and grown-up with dark chocolate and keeps for up to a month in the fridge as it’s dairy free.

SERVES 6–8

500g dark chocolate

120ml coconut milk

60ml golden syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

50g hazelnuts, chopped (optional)

Break your dark chocolate into the slow-cooker crock, leaving the chunks as they are. I use quite a basic brand here as the chocolate is enhanced as you go, but go for what you prefer. I wouldn’t use 100% milk chocolate though as it separates. A mixture of dark and milk works well.

Pour the coconut milk and golden syrup over the chocolate. Put the lid on the slow cooker and heat for 3 hours on low. Don’t stir it during this time.

After 3 hours, stir to make sure the chocolate has melted and then leave to cool down for about an hour. I usually lift the crock out of the slow cooker to speed this up.

Once it has cooled enough to be starting to thicken, beat it with a spoon or electric whisk for around 5 minutes. It will change from what looks like just melted chocolate to a fluffy, whipped texture that leaves the sides of the bowl clean. It will look like frosting and would work well as a cake filling at this stage.

Add the vanilla extract and the chopped hazelnuts and beat through well.

Pour into a dish you have lined well with reusable baking liner or greaseproof paper and chill in the fridge overnight. It will set into a firm fudge you can cut into 2cm pieces and tastes like a chocolate hazelnut spread.

The Scottish side of me is powered by oats. They make equally good breakfasts and biscuits and this baked oat treat is no exception to the rule. It’s fantastic in that you can add anything you fancy to this, from dried fruit, nuts, seeds, chocolate chips and apples to desiccated coconut. But the best bit is that it’s super easy and makes almost no washing up, while keeping well in a tin. I have been known to have it for both breakfast and lunch…

SERVES 6–8

300g porridge or jumbo oats

100g dried fruit

50g brown sugar

50g nuts, chocolate chips or desiccated coconut

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 medium apple, peeled and grated

50g butter, melted

2 eggs

250ml milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Line your slow-cooker crock with some reusable baking liner or double-thickness greaseproof paper to make it easier to lift the flapjack out when it is cooked.

Put all the dry ingredients, including the apple, in a large bowl. Pour the butter into the bowl. Break in the eggs and add the milk and vanilla extract. Mix well until it all becomes a soft batter.

Pour the batter into the lined slow-cooker crock and then put 4–5 sheets of kitchen roll, folded to double thickness, in between the crock and the lid. This soaks up any condensation in the slow cooker and stops it dripping onto the flapjack and making it damp.

Bake on low for about 5 hours. If your slow cooker runs hot, check after 4½ hours. The edges should have crisped slightly and a skewer in the centre should come out clean.

Lift out with the liner and allow to cool. Serve the flapjacks cut into slices. It is excellent slightly warm with plain yoghurt as a dessert or cold as a snack or if you like your oats more portable than porridge. It will keep for up to 4 days in an airtight container.

Steamed puddings are one of those things that Britain does really, really well and whenever anyone starts banging on about how terrible the food is in the UK, my mind turns to visions of a spotted dick or Sussex pond pudding or a treacle sponge and I think how wrong they are. Especially when you learn how easy it is to make a steamed pud in the slow cooker.

I use my slow cooker as a steamer quite a lot and, using these tips, I have foolproof puddings every time.

I use plastic basins with a fitted lid instead of a ceramic one. Partly because it’s lighter to lift out of the slow cooker and partly it saves on a lot of tin foil, but mainly because I’m absolutely rubbish at pleating tin foil and tying string into handles.

You cannot grease a pudding basin quite enough. Butter is best for this. Smear it round the basin with giddy abandon, not forgetting the rim and the lid itself. Then flour it all down lightly and your pudding will glide out easily.