Baking bread

Who doesn't love freshly baked bread? Here's my adapted version of the Cheese and Parsley Braid recipe from Shanaaz Parker's cookbook, Indulge.

4 x 250 ml flour
5 ml salt
5 ml sugar
30 ml butter
10 g instant dry yeast
250 ml grated cheese
45 ml finely chopped parsley
1/2 onion finely chopped (I sometimes add a little bit of finely chopped peppers.)
160 ml milk
180 ml lukewarm water
beaten egg to glaze
melted garlic butter

Preheat the oven to 180℃. Sift flour, salt and sugar and rub in butter. Sprinkle in yeast and work through. Stir in cheese, parsley and onion (and peppers if you want to use that). Add milk and water and mix into a soft dough. Knead on a floured surface until the dough is elastic and smooth.

Place in an oiled bowl and cover. Let it rise to double it's original volume and knock it down.
I didn't braid this bread, I used a silicone loaf pan, brushed it with beaten egg and let it rise again. Baked it for about 45 minutes until cooked and brushed it with the melted garlic butter. (The photo's a bit blurry... was having a shaky-hand camera day.)

Hungry for haddock?

One of my favourite fish to eat, is smoked haddock. I regularly serve it for supper and whether baked, fried, poached or however, I love its salty and pungent flavour.

I'm sharing two of my haddock recipes...
This is my favourite recipe of the two... For about 4 pieces of haddock:

1 and a 1/2 onions, sliced
1 tablespoon of crushed garlic
1/2 of a green, yellow and red pepper, for wonderful colours, sliced
1 teaspoon of crushed mustard seeds
a little bit of cajun spice
butter
crushed black pepper

Braise the onions and garlic in some butter. Add the mustard seeds, peppers and cajun spice. When everything is caramelised, place the haddock on it and put small pieces of butter on each. You can sprinkle some cajun spice on them if you want. Turn a few times, until cooked. Get some black pepper over it and it's ready to serve. Really yummy with fresh bread or baked/fried potato chips.

This one is very simple too. I was hungry and was desperate to have lunch quickly and without much effort. I simply dipped haddock steaks in some spiced crumbs and fried them in a little bit of butter. Had it with some baby potatoes and a fresh salad, I was stuffed!!!

You can use whatever spices to flavour the crumbs, I used the prepacked kind you find in the shop.