Last month, my friend Ella Dee wrote a blog post titled “It doesn’t have to be hard”.
She was talking about the lovely relaxed relationship she has with her Gorgeous Other, but I found myself reflecting on her words last weekend as we happily ate our way through some simple meals.
A qualifier: I know that our definition of “simple” isn’t the same as everyone else’s, but now that our garden is established and our bread baking routine is in place, putting food on the table really doesn’t feel like hard work. Every family’s situation is different though, and we all do the best we can with what we have. The aim of this blog has never been to tell others how they should live their lives, but rather to share with you how we choose to live ours.
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Ciabatta is a doddle to make, but friends rarely believe me when I say that. It’s not until they try it for themselves – as Alison, Sally and Claire have done – that they really understand how little hands-on time is required to produce this bread! If you’d like to give it a go, here are the detailed tutorials I’ve written for both our sourdough and yeasted versions.
The four sourdough ciabatta loaves I baked last week took – literally – ten minutes of dough handling time. I squelched everything together on Friday night, and baked it twelve hours later on Saturday morning…
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Our garden is awash with broccoli at the moment, so dinner on Friday night was this delicious pasta (based on an old Jamie Oliver recipe).
The broccoli stems were chopped finely and fried in butter and olive oil with garlic, chilli and anchovy fillets, then the drained pasta and broccoli florets (boiled together in the same pot), were stirred into the sauce. It was topped with fried breadcrumbs made from stale sourdough…
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On Saturday night, I glazed a leg of ham with Pete’s quince jelly and baked it until it was caramelised and delicious. We only made a small dent on the leg that evening – it will now provide us with a supply of easy meals for the next few weeks…
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On Sunday morning, I blitzed two chocolate pound cakes through the food processor – they took just minutes to whip up, followed by a long slow bake…
…before being topped with a basic chocolate glaze…
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A quick Sunday morning recon of the garden produced a handful of veg…
…which were combined to make a simple pasta for lunch.
The peeled carrots, leeks, asparagus and capsicum were all diced and sauteed in my Emile Henry stew pot in a little olive oil with a handful of chopped ham. Once everything was lightly browned and glossy, a litre and a half of water was added, along with a spoonful of Moroccan spice mix and a little salt. Half a packet of pasta went into the boiling soup and, just before serving, the podded peas were stirred through…
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We can’t always control the ebb and flow of life, so it’s good to have some easy meals to fall back on when things get hectic. Ella Dee was right – it doesn’t have to be hard!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
Good meals don’t have to be complicated. Well done for enjoying your weekend AND eating well!
Thanks Pat! It was a hectic weekend – I was grateful not have to work too hard at the meals! :)
I make your pound cake recipe often, using Stevia or Half Spoon. Works a treat, and makes my Peder happy! :D
Misky, that’s great to know! I’m so glad Peder enjoys it! :)
One of the many reasons I’m glad to have friends like you on the web…my in-person friends think I am crazy/ridiculous/exaggerating when I talk about “easy” homemade, fresh meals or easy homemade breads. And of course I love your recipes and posts. :-)
Abby, my friends have gotten use to us now, they just smile indulgently.. :) Thanks for reading our blog! x
Love it Celia! Sourdough ciabatta is my absolute favourite and haven’t made any since we’ve been home from Nepal. I must get onto it. We’ve also been eating our version of simple meals. Tuna casserole, lasagne, using up frozen foods. Perfect for this time of year.
Easy is wonderful, Clare, and so often so tasty! And you need your rest at this time! :) xx
Ah, a wonderful demonstration of it doesn’t have to be hard, and the more you do it the easier it is :) It’s also addictive, I’ve found, food wise especially. The simpler we eat, the less inclined we are to do exxy or fancy or fussy. Pic of ham was great, I will show the G.O. as ours was similar but we weren’t sure if it was how it was meant to look. Yum. I’ll keep some aside next time for the easy pasta :)
ED, it was a HUGE half-leg – about 5kg – and I suspect we’ll be eating our way through it for a while. Having it in the fridge makes life much easier though! :)
Your post has me drooling – please pass me a knife, fork and spoon – ha! Have a Great Day:)
Thanks Renee! Hope you’re having a great week too!
I love your simple food Celia. Have just baked a glazed ham myself but with lots of family coming over the next few days I don’t think it’ll give us 2 weeks of meals somehow. I also love grabbing a handful of veg from the garden and seeing what sort of meal I can make out of it with some risotto rice or pasta. But have never tried making ciabatta, you have me very tempted to give it go though.
Andrea, the ciabatta is our house loaf, it’s the one I make all the time, especially when I don’t want to think too hard! It’s lovely when our meals are dictated by what we forage from our gardens, isn’t it? :)
I love the way you live! What wonderful food. I love the look of the broccoli pasta with the toasted breadcrumbs and the ham looks amazing (why wait until Christmas to have a leg of ham!) and those glossy chocolate pound cakes would be the perfect finish to all of these meals. Well done! xx
Charlie, thank you! I sometimes think our meals are determined by what I can make without having to go to the shops! I can’t remember the last time I had to duck out to get something at the last minute – we’re more likely to make do without these days! :)
So much better than an ‘easy’ meal of frozen pies or lazy greasy take away Celia! You might live simply, but you still live like kings sweetie- and why not indeed :) xox
Thanks Becca! We do feel very blessed! xx
Love that little pasta dish at the end! (And everything else!) I have never considered a leg of ham outside of Christmas, what a most excellent idea Celia.
Rose, it can be hard to track down – our local butcher wouldn’t do a half leg at this time of year, so we found this one at Haverick’s. Having said that, I think even a a large wedge from a boneless ham would work (but not with my Pete, who prefers the meat off the bone!). :)
There are so many ads these days for premade meals and packaged seasonings as if it’s an easy and quick way to cook but I think it’s not good for you and it’s much easier to plan your meals, learn the right skills and cook using fresh ingredients like you have done! Thanks for sharing your weekly meal schedule :)
Thanks Ai-Ling! I have teenage boys though – this wasn’t a weekly schedule, it’s what they ate in the one weekend! :)
What a wonderful post Celia and I couldn’t agree more. When you have fresh produce available, certain routines in place and a little forward planning good food is easy. All of this looks absolutely delicious as usual x
Jane, it takes a little bit of planning, doesn’t it? But it IS very rewarding! :) xx
Hi Celia, this is kind of not related to this post but I see comment are closed on your sourdough 101 tutorial and I was hoping for your help! I made my first loaf yesterday but when it was proofing it didn’t hold its round shape, it kind of flattened out to more of a disk shape (it could be an alien spaceship sourdough!) about an inch high and about 20cm wide. It jumped in the oven, but not a huge amount and certainly doesn’t look like your loaves! Do you know what I might have done wrong? My starter was very chirpy, but it was only its first go since I woke it up. Maybe too much water? Or should I use a loaf tin? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Hi Sally! I suspect the difference will be in the flour – some flours absorb more water than others. Did you use plain flour rather than bakers flour by any chance? That also makes a huge difference. The dough shouldn’t have been sloppy, as it’s quite a dry (low hydration) formula, but it might be due to variations in the flour. How did it taste? :)
HI Celia,
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. I checked and I did use just plain flour :(
It tasted okay, although I’m not an expert on taste as this was my very first homemade loaf of sourdough (made or tasted). It just looked very flat.
I will try baker’s flour and see how I go.
Thank you so much again. Perhaps I’ll be able to try the Ciabatta once I’m a bit more experienced!
Thanks again.
Sally
Sally, that’s actually a really GOOD mistake to make early on, because now you’ll never make it again! :) The reason your loaf was flat is because the sourdough organisms (or yeast, for that matter) feed on the protein in the flour, which causes the rise. Bakers flour has a higher protein content, plain flour has a lower one. You’ll also need to feed your starter with bakers/bread flour in order to keep it active. Have fun with your next attempt, but don’t be disillusioned if it takes a couple of tries to get the result you want! :)
All of your dishes & breads, Celia, look fantastic. You know me, though, my eyes were drawn to your pastas. The first, made with the anchovies and broccoli, would be very welcome here or at Zia’s. I cannot wait to show it to her. She’s always adding roasted broccoli to pasta for a quick meal. Ella Dee was right and you’ve just proved it, Celia.
John, apparently the broccoli and anchovies is a very traditional dish, although the original method would have been to cook the broccoli until it turned to mush and formed a sauce. Pete didn’t want to do that with our just picked and oh-so-fresh broccoli heads! :)
I really envy your routine most of all Celia. You’ve got your baking completely sorted and I wish I could manage that. Instead, you’ve just reminded me that I haven’t fed the sourdough starter for weeks. Again.
Excuse me, while I just go grab it out of the fridge …..
Amanda, I barely think about the bread baking anymore. When the stash in the freezer gets down to a couple of loaves, I bake another batch – but mostly it sits on the bench overnight so I barely touch it! :)
That glazed leg of ham looks amazing, so much food you have prepared….well done you…I make my bread in a bread maker…is this cheating??.
Hardly cheating! I truly don’t think anyone “cheats” – we all have different things that work for our lives. And I think it’s wonderful that you make your own bread at home! :)
I often get the raised eyebrow and look of disbelief on how little hands on time sourdough actually is. People hear three day process and baulk. Making croissants, now that’s a lengthy process that scares me!
Simple and intuitive cooking Celia, just how I like it :-)
Brydie, I have to say that I’ve never tried proper croissants either. Too much effort, too much butter! :)
That ham looks fantastic! I love that you used it in other dishes as well.
This is the way I cook, too, Celia- using up what I have- putting together new with leftover and making more than one of loaves and breads. Everything looks really yummy, too!
Heidi, you’re a kindred spirit, especially in the kitchen! xx
Look at that glorious blanket of glossy chocolate glaze! Food porn indeed :) And I’m still deciding on what to do with Pete’s quince jelly :)
Can’t wait to see what you do with it, Lorraine! xx
Your broccoli and pasta looks wonderful. I need to try a recipe I learned at a local cooking school. He cooked onion and garlic in way too much butter and tossed in leftover broccoli and cooked it until the broccoli dissolved into a sauce. It was magic.
Maureen, I think this is the original way to make the pasta dish, with the broccoli turning into a green sauce. That’s the way I like it too, but Pete prefers the florets to retain some of their texture, especially when they’re so fresh!
Celia, I can just imagine the aromas in your kitchen after all this baking… we are doing Atkins for a little while, so am now craving all the good things in your kitchen oxox
Lizzy, I’ll save you some ham! :) xx
There’s such pleasure to be had from gathering in the harvest from your own garden (just ask our resident possum). Our young chooks have now started to lay so we are once again egg-sufficient and i get so much enjoyment from baking sourdough – loaves as well as rolls and, yes, I am surprised at how ‘not hard’ it is. Simple things, but so good.
Jan, your chooks are laying! And you’re still baking sourdough – I’m so happy to hear that! :)
I would grieve if Princess Patsy stopped producing bubbles and if she puts in the effort, so must I – and it’s soo satisfying learning about the feel of it and what I can do with it – her:)
Jan, I’d love to see some photos if you ever take any! Are you still making kissing loaves? :)
I believe that this post is a wonderful reflection of your life. It seems that you are very happy. To a degree you are very self-sufficient which takes a lot of pressure off…I think it is a lovely way to live.
Karen, we are very happy. That doesn’t mean life is easy – I think they’re too different things. Not having to worry about how we’re going to eat well makes a big difference to everything though! :)
Hi Celia, I wanted to ask you about making your ciabatta. I am quite new to making sour dough and so far I have used my mother, fed it to not quite 100% hydration (250g flour to 275 ml water) to make my sponge and then continued on to make my sour dough, and I’m wondering what steps I need to go through from my mother to reach the stage you are talking about with making your ciabatta? I’m sorry if someone else has already asked – I looked through the comments but couldn’t see this information :) Also, I have been using a 00 flour for the past 4 months to make bread. I use it with rye flour and make a rye/white sour dough. I have found it makes a softer dough, especially if I’m making pizza dough or a yeasted white roll. But, my mother breaks it down too easily so I think I will need to use a harder flour for this purpose.
Hi Melissa,
If you want to try making my version of ciabatta, try taking just a little bit of your mother – say 1/4 cup, and feeding it up by giving it a few small feeds of equal parts (by volume) of water and bakers flour. I think you need to use bakers or bread flour as it has a higher protein and will really feed your starter up and get it very active. I wrote a bit about how I feed my starter here:
https://figjamandlimecordial.com/2013/02/11/bread-101-a-basic-sourdough-tutorial/
Once you have a bowl of active starter, you can follow the tutorial I wrote here for the ciabatta…
https://figjamandlimecordial.com/2011/03/23/ciabatta-con-semola-rimacinata-di-grano-duro/
If you don’t have access to semolina flour, you can try substituting 00 flour instead (so you’ll end up with a 50/50 bakers flour/00 ciabatta) or using 100% bakers flour – both should work, but it will taste a little different. If you make either of these substitutions, reduce the amount of water you add by about 5% as the semolina flour absorbs more water than either bakers or 00.
Hope this all makes sense! :) Have fun!
Thank you for replying Celia! I will get some more bread flour this week and have a go next weekend :) One of my friends is also keen to try making the ciabatta sour dough so I will pass the link along to her as well.
Baker’s flour purchased. I shall report back on my next try :) Thank you again for your help!
Now I just need to work out what my starter’s name is. He comes from 100 year old German stock (Northwest didn’t have any available when I was ready to buy :( ).
Sally, have fun! An old German starter, how cool! Maybe once you get going you can use him to make rye loaves! :)