COOK’S NOTES
It will become obvious when reading or cooking from this book that I use some unorthodox methods.
For instance, I never cream butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon but use a wire wisk instead. None of the bread recipes requires extended kneading, certainly no more than 2 minutes. And I never would sift flour for any recipe. These are stages that I have eliminated as a matter of course due to time, energy or inclination constraints, and the recipes still work perfectly.
In this respect I learned a lesson when I was a young woman from a dear friend and fabulous German cook, Paula. I always aspired to be like her. One day she gave me one of her prize recipes for a cake. She told me that when baking, it doesn’t matter if the butter is creamed with the sugar, or if the butter melts. There will be no perceptible difference in the end result.
It was one of those light-bulb moments and gave me the confidence to stop being so fastidious in following detailed and sometimes onerous recipe methods. A good example of this is the sweet shortcrust pastry — if the butter melts rather than softens, it won’t make any difference at all. The pastry gets chilled and will bring itself to the right texture regardless.
Many of the recipes in this book contain butter and cream. You can substitute a lower-fat substitute if you like, but the results will not be quite so good. The food I cook has maximum flavour and, in this respect, butter and cream are irreplaceable.
For those who are on a salt-reduced diet or who just prefer to cook without it, the amount of salt can be reduced in the savoury recipes, and salt-reduced or salt-free stock should be used.
Cup measurements are based on a 250ml measuring cup, tablespoons 20ml and teaspoons 5ml.
Oven temperatures are for fan-forced ovens; increase by 10–20ºC for those that are neither fan-assisted nor fan-forced.