Kitchen diary: plum duff!

No, dear diary: I am not making plum duff. I am making a pune, or play on words. "Duff" is indeed the same word as "dough", and "plum" is an old Englishism for top-notch, first-rate, finest kind.

Actually what I'm doing is using my new-to-me vintage KitchenAid for the first time, to make a batch of sesame seed buns for the yogi tonight. It's a recipe I'm very familiar with as a hand-kneaded dough; I wasn't at all sure at first whether what came out of the mixer would be up to snuff. But I added a little more buttermilk, left it grinding away, and went back to look when the note changed - and lo! A perfect-looking dough!

We'll see how it comes up, how it bakes, how it tastes. So far, though, I'm pleased (and interested: is the need for a little more liquid common, I wonder, with machine-mixed doughs? And if so, why?).

Now I must hie me to Lucky's, to find out what else is for dinner. Yogi shall not live by buns alone. Tho' they will happily leap on the chance to make many a mighty pune* about my buns and the quality thereof. Hey-ho.

*or play on words

Kitchen diary, 08/07/13, ongoing

Tonight's dinner is rapidly becoming the barbecue that never was, the grill that simply didn't.

Because I wanted to make the sesame buns, just to test out the mixer, therefore I thought I should be grilling; sesame buns and grilled meats seem to go together. Besides, it's another lovely day (sigh...), and what else is summer for? And I have some soaked kidney beans and some left-over beef which will all make a yummy beefy chilli beans, and nothing could go better than a bit of barbecue with beans...

But my first plan - a vasty joint of something, slowly smoked - ran out of time, as I had to do this and that and then the other thing before I could even get to the grocery store. So okay, I'd pick up some steaky-type meats and grill those, and make a slaw of some kind to satisfy the cruciferous cravings of certain other parties, and hey-ho.

Only then I found these chorizo sausages, and decided to grill those instead; and some chicken thighs which actually I'd rather not grill, as I have an oven-baked recipe with olives that I'm curious to try and the oven would be on anyway, what with the buns and so forth (and the sourdough which I was baking already, just for a family loaf), and...

And I was looking at the cabbage and thinking that I'm not mad keen on all the shredding that a slaw implies, and I thought "I could make braised buttered cabbage. In the cast iron pot, after I've browned off the chicken, there'll be all that yummy chicken fat..." - and it wasn't really too great a step from there to, "Oh: I could do the chorizo sausage in with the cabbage, actually, and save lighting the grill at all..."

So that's where we stand at the moment: the beans are done, the buns are rising, the chicken's browned and ready to be baked with tomatoes and olives and thyme. I should get the sossidges browning, because it's a shame to hurry a sossidge; the cabbage can go in later. I might put some onion in too, with the sossidges, now to brown and sweeten. It's all invention, from here on in.

Oh, and I've got some beetroot in the oven, baking away - but that's for another day. It's good to be prepared.