Guest Post #2 by Master Baker Andy! Apologies first for the terrible title. But as I am currently back at my parents living on Merseyside temporarily. I've had to get used to seeing references to the Beatles everywhere... but you may have realised that I cunningly concealed the subject of today's bread making post in that title? Have you guessed what it is yet? Yup, the humble naan bread. Like fish comes with chips (er, not if you're a vegetarian...), ok then, like sosmix bangers and mash, for me the naan is as much of a part of a curry as the actual curry dish itself. When I was in India a few years ago, myself and my travelling companion John would have a naan bread with every meal. The only difference was that he ate "butter naans" with each meal whereas I would have a plain one. There was a bit of an increase in his weight during those 3 weeks in India. (For those who don't know I was John's best man at his wedding last week so I feel I am still in speech mode... and crucifying his personality... I'll stop now!).. Anyway naan bread. I'd never really thought too ...

Blimey I've been eating a lot of pumpkin! Since the Hallowe'en party last week which left me with about 10kg of pumpkin to use I've made it a bit of a mission to try use the pumpkin in as many different ways as possible and have come up with this list of ten things to do with your Hallowe'en pumpkin. I've tried to make them all quite different, so there should be something to suit everyone so you'll have no excuse to throw your pumpkin away to rot. If you got a bit giddy like I did and bought the biggest pumpkin you could find you should have enough to make all these things. You'd also probably need to be a little bit insane to want to make them all, well at least all within the space of a week, so you might want to freeze some. You can just peel and chop the pumpkin as normal and then bag the bits and pop them in the freezer. I did this last year and they were fine to chuck into soups and things. No reason they shouldn't be good for anything else too. I can't quite believe how much we managed to ...

I love this bright orange soup. A little bit of spice to keep you warm, good autumnal  chunky veg and a few lovely soft butter beans. Mmm, it's like a cosy duvet. This is the basic recipe, but if you have any other nice bright coloured autumn veg lying around spare, no harm throwing them in too. This recipe has tinned butter beans in. Generally I prefer dried beans. I find they usually have better texture than the canned ones. Butter beans are, I think, the exception to the rule though and I actually prefer them. I've been getting the Suma ones which have been really big and tasty. When I've used dried ones before they didn't end up with the nice soft texture that these have, plus it obviously takes more time and planning. But each to their own. When I made this soup I also intended to make some soda bread, but then realised we didn't have any wholemeal flour. I ended up using stone ground white flour and mixing in a bit of oatmeal. I turned out ok. Not as nice as real soda bread I've had before, maybe a little heavy, but definitely a good quick substitute if ...

I started this post weeks ago, then got distracted, so it's now well out of date and the recipe for summer pudding using the then seasonal fruits is not seasonal anymore, but since I've got his chance to catch up I might as well do it as it was really easy and a lovely treat. It's a couple of months since we were there now, here is a little post about our stay at Plan-it Earth in Sancreed, which is pretty much at Land's End in Cornwall. I think I might have mentioned it before, it's a seven acre small holding which runs eco-education courses and has two yurts for holiday rentals. We'd gone there wwoofing, intending to stay for just three days, but ended up staying over a week. It was a really great place. We learnt loads and had a great time. As an added bonus for the first couple of days we were able to stay in this lovely yurt before the next guests arrived. The first day there was a bit of a downpour and we spent most of the morning weeding the polytunnel, dashing out into the garden to pick artichokes and redcurrants in any dry spells. ...

On the advice of the people whose house we are looking after, in an act of blatant anarchistic rebellion, this week I baked my own bread! I've had a bread maker for a couple of years and have been using that regularly, hardly ever buying bread, but I've never actually made it myself. Apart from the fact that it is pretty enjoyable and rewarding and that hot bread straight from the oven with just a little butter is one of the nicest things in the world you could read this post from January for a few more reasons why it's a good idea to make your own. I was a little worried for some reason about making bread. All this kneading, resting, rising, blah blah makes it all seem quite complicated, hard work and likely to end in disaster. So we started simple, just made plain white loaves and I have to say it was surprisingly simple and they turned out pretty well. Basic Loaf 700g unbleached strong white bread flour 1 1/2 tsp salt 425ml tepid water 7g sachet of dried yeast Mix the flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl, make a well and pour in the water. Work the mixture with your hands ...