Today I made garlic bread.

You add flour, water, salt, and most importantly, yeast. When baking bread, you have to let the dough rise.

No reasonable intervention will significantly increase the speed the dough rises for really good bread, possibly the best bread in the world.

Most popular dishes of lockdown 2020

Street food lovers were the most distraught ones during the lockdown, especially those who are hardcore pani puri lovers. Many people satiated their gol gappa cravings by making them at home.

With all our go-to pizza joints closed, homemade pizza was the only solution to our cravings.

Another street food that most of us missed was the crispy hot samosa. So, why not try them at home? Just prepare some potato stuffing, roll out the dough, fill the stuffing, give the shape of a samosa and fry.

The combo of Samosa and Jalebi makes the perfect pair. Hot and syrup loaded jalebis were another dish that most people tried at their homes

Mini Hungarian language lesson: the secret dish.

"What's a dish universally known and eaten in your country but virtually unheard of outside it?" is a question that makes the rounds on Twitter every few months but I can't be bothered waiting for the next one.

It's "főzelék".

The word itself looks as simple as the dish: "főz" is "to cook" and "-elék" is a suffix roughly meaning "the result of", so "the result of cooking".

Thanks for nothing.

The official definition is "any kind of boiled or parboiled vegetable"; closer, but still a load of bollocks.

So here's mine: "főzelék is made of vegetables and it has a thick sauce".

What kind of vegetables?

Practically any: potato, cabbage, bean, pea, chickpea, spinach, squash, carrot, but usually only one veg at a time.

There is a mixed abomination called "finomfőzelék" but we don't talk about it.

Most of us have been scarred for life by school dinners featuring the pallid little harbingers of death suspended in a beige gel of doom.

In all honesty though, főzelék in general doesn't look very appetising: it has its roots in that old peasant staple of gruel and it has a serious image problem as a result.

Which is why, even in Hungary, you won't see many on restaurant menus, except in specialist outlets.

First broccoli cheese soup of the new year. I’ve made a pot almost every week since the pandemic started. Maximum comfort food.

I don't follow a recipe, I'll try to recreate what I do here.

3 heads of broccoli
1 onion
1 box container of chicken stock
1 cup of milk
2 tbls flour
block of sharp cheddar
salt/pepper/tsp mustard powder

Chunk up the cheddar and whiz it in the food processor. You want it to be little bits that will melt fast. I've tried using pre-shredded, but I think they put something in it to prevent caking and it makes a grainy cheese sauce.

Chunk up one of the broccoli heads and whiz it up.

Rough chop the remaining broccoli into bite size pieces.

Chop up the onion.

Prep the ingredients for the cheese sauce (two tablespoons flour, salt & pepper, mustard powder) in a little bowl so you can dump them in when needed.

OK, you want everything prepped ahead of time because the timing here is a little tricky (for me).

Sauté the onion in olive oil in a large pot. Once it's softened add your whizzed up broccoli (I like it to get a little toasted, I think it adds a nice flavor).

I’m clearly feeling slightly better as I’ve just spent a good ten minutes being furious about all the wrong trifles on the internet.

Excuse me, BBC Good Food?

This is an abomination.

There should be trials at The Hague for these.

*shakes head*

Okay, last night’s gnocchi recipe in one single Instant pot:
You’re gonna need gnocchi. I happened to have some that I rolled a while back, hanging out in the freezer. It’s cold mashed potatoes, flour, egg. Simple. But also, store bought is FINE!

Boil them JUST until they float. That’s, like, long enough to get out the rest of what you’ll need.

When the little potato dumplins float, scoop then out gently with a wire strainer like this one, and place them in a colander you’ve sprayed with cooking spray. They are sticky.

Pour out the gnocchi water except dor about the last cup and a half, the really cloudy bit. Set it aside. I use a yeti tumbler so it stays hot. You’ll need it later.

Don’t mistake ‘tater water for a hot beverage, though.

Get your instant pot back on the low-low setting, and put in a goodly-but-not-scary amount of butter. In this case, a teaspoon. Then another teaspoon of duck fat. (Or just a bigger scoop of butter if you don’t have duck fat).

The duck fat I used is from Fatworks:

To that, add a cup of whole milk, or if you’re me, a cup of 2%, and a hearty splash of half and half otherwise intended for your coffee creamer.

Now comes the thawed drained spinach. You want to press out all the green-brown water, and plop that whole block in: