Beer-leavened rye bread

Why is rye flour so tricky to get your hands on in the UK? I've been craving rye bread ever since we were in Finland, and ended up sending away to Shipton Mill in Gloucestershire, where you'll find some extraordinary speciality flours. How about mucking around with some Swiss dark flour, organic chestnut flour or something called Emmer wholemeal - an ancestor of modern wheat? There are eight white flours alone, including a specialist cake flour, a French white flour especially for baguettes and an Italian variety for ciabatta. Shipton Mill is fantastic for baking nerds.

I ordered a few kilos of flour, including some dark rye. I've not handled rye flour before, so I've started here with a relatively easy recipe (no sourdough starters, which need feeding for days), where the rye flour is supported by some strong white wheat flour. The gluten in rye is more fragile than wheat gluten, so you'll need to treat the bread dough a little more gently than you might with a loaf made entirely from wheat. The beer and brown sugar give the bread a lovely malty quality, and we really enjoyed it with some smoked salmon, capers, diced shallot and crème fraîche. To make two loaves you'll need:

375 ml beer (use something with some bite - I used an English bitter)
125 ml water
5 tablespoons softened butter
1 tablespoon soft brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
200g dark rye flour
350g-400g strong white bread flour
1 pack instant yeast

Melt the butter and heat the beer and water together until they are lukewarm. They should be around body temperature - test the liquid on the inside of your wrist. Stir two tablespoons of the butter, the sugar and the salt into the beer and water mixture until the sugar and salt are dissolved.

Sift the rye flour and instant yeast into a large bowl, and add the lukewarm liquid to the bowl, beating with a wooden spoon until the mixture is smooth. Add the strong white bread flour to the bowl a handful at a time, stirring all the time, until you have a soft dough. (You may find you do not need as much as 400g of flour to achieve a soft dough; you will probably need somewhere between 350g and 400g.) Make the dough into a ball and leave in the bowl, covered with a damp tea towel, for 15 minutes. This will help the gluten develop.

When the dough has rested for 15 minutes, knead it for five minutes. (This is less kneading than you would require with an all-wheat bread.) The dough should be soft and no longer sticky. Coat the inside of another large bowl with another tablespoon of butter and put the ball of kneaded dough into it, covering the dough ball with a tablespoon of softened butter too. Cover the bowl with the damp tea towel and leave in a warm (not hot) place for two hours to allow the dough to rise.

After two hours, punch the dough down and knead it gently for one minute. Divide the dough into two and form it into two round, flat loaves on baking sheets covered with greaseproof paper. Allow the bread to rise in a warm place again, this time uncovered, for forty minutes, while you heat the oven to 190° C (375° F). When the loaves have risen, drag a serrated knife across the tops to make a pattern.

Bake the loaves for around 45 minutes (start checking them from about 35 minutes in) until they are golden on top and sound hollow when you knock on the bottom. Glaze the loaves with the rest of the butter, melted. This bread is delicious served while it is still warm, but will keep for a few days in the bread crock.

Beer can chicken

Your eyes aren't deceiving you - this is a chicken with a can of Guinness bunged up its how-do-you-say. With a dry rub, it's a brilliant, if slightly obscene way to cook chicken. The beer, flavoured with some of the spicy rub, steams the chicken from inside, resulting in a juicy, delicate flesh, while the skin cooks to a crackling, caramelised crispness.

My friend Lorna pointed me at this extraordinarily cheap roasting stand from Amazon when I complained that my beer can often threatens to topple when I make this dish. It's worth spending a couple of pounds on a stand like this (bend one of the wire loops to fit the can onto the little dish; it'll keep the chicken nice and sturdy along with the can). If you don't own a stand, just make sure that the chicken is resting levelly on the can. Don't be fooled into using the chicken's legs to balance the beast - they'll shrink and change shape when they cook.

To roast one rude-looking chicken to perfect succulence you'll need:

1 plump chicken without giblets
1 can of beer
2 heaped tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 heaped teaspoon mustard powder
1 teaspoon chilli powder (I like powdered chipotles for this, but you can use cayenne pepper)
1 teaspoon allspice
1 tablespoon salt
3 heaped tablespoons soft dark brown sugar

Snip through any strings holding the chicken's legs neatly together, and spread them out. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl and rub them all over the chicken, then add a tablespoon of the rub to the cavity of the chicken and smear it around a bit with the back of a spoon. Leave for the flavours to penetrate for two hours at room temperature. Meanwhile, open the beer can, pour half of the beer out and drink it. (This is a fun recipe.) Use a metal skewer or a nail and hammer to make a few more holes in the top of the half-full beer can.

Put a tablespoon of the remaining rub in the can with the beer. It will froth and bubble, so add your rub carefully. After the two hours are up, rub any remaining spice mix onto the chicken and push the bird carefully, bottom (that's the end with the legs) first, onto the upright beer can, as in the picture. Roast the whole apparatus at 180° C (350° F) for 1 hour and 30 minutes, remove the bird carefully from the can without spilling any beer, and rest for ten minutes before serving. (If you are a lucky person with a large and easily controlled barbecue, try cooking the chicken in there over some flavourful wood - it'll be delicious.)

Don't be tempted to use the hot beer as a sauce. It'll taste bitter and revolting, so just pour it down the sink. Let the chicken's natural juices (there will be plenty, and they'll come out of the bird as it rests) act as a gravy. This is a great dish with a salad and a pilaf or cous cous. Serve with a couple of nicely chilled cans of whatever beer you used in the cooking.

Prague - beer, dumplings, veal, more beer

I think they knew I was coming; nothing in the world is more likely to get me into a restaurant than the words SLOW FOOD in great big yellow capitals.

I am delighted to note that every single restaurant menu in Prague appears to be bi-, and occasionally tri- and quadri-lingual, so ordering is a doddle. This sign was displayed outside a restaurant called U Modrého Hroznu (Husova 15 Praha 1 - Staré Mesto). It's next to a beer hall frequented by Václav Havel, the ex-president (it was shut this morning; I'll try to post from there later in the week), and good smells were seeping out through the cracks around the door. We spent about thirty seconds wondering just how we would feel about dumplings, decided that those feelings were mostly positive, and went in.

The restaurant is tiny, and has two rooms; the one we were in has only three tables, so if you're going in the evening you'd be well-advised to book.

Our waiter was strangely dour. I can only surmise that his puppy had just died. We grovelled with gratitude over the excellent food, beamed at him, told him how happy we were to be in his beautiful city - and were rewarded with a stubbly glare which later degenerated into an outright snarl. No matter. The food was coming thick and fast, and my, it was good.

Czech food is heavy. This is a country where protein is king, and offal is treated with the respect it deserves rather than being consigned to emulsified bags of pulp, fried and fed to schoolchildren and cats, which is what we seem to do with it in England. Dumplings there were in profusion. I had spoken earlier to a Czech lady who told me the story of her parents' courtship; her father had nearly jilted her mother a week before their marriage, when she first cooked him a dumpling. 'It was like tennis ball, or dinosaurus egg', she said. 'Fortunately she also was very pretty.' The dumpling clearly occupies an important place in Czech culture which elevates it to the position of National Preferred Starch, and is, apparently, surrounded by all kinds of arcane etiquette. Perhaps our attitude to dumplingkind was what was making the waiter so grumpy.

Flavoured butters arrived. The red one was pounded in a pestle and mortar with sun-dried tomatoes and a very strong onion, the round yellow one with roast garlic. The long sliver is a beautifully lactic and sweet butter of the kind it's easy to find on the continent and almost impossible to get your hands on in the UK.

Mr Weasel and my Dad led the field in beer-ordering. Only one was on offer in this restaurant - a pale, wheaty Pilsner with a glorious flowery aroma.

Intent on the whole Czech experience, I ruined it all by ordering something Italian for a starter - a carpaccio of beef. My Mum, across the table, had an endive and carrot salad with a sugary lemon dressing, and Mr Weasel and my Dad opted for a pate. The carpaccio was advertised as coming with Parmesan shavings, so it was a surprise to find soft gratings of something a bit like Gouda spread about the plate, but it was extremely good; the raw steak was soft, tender and meaty. The pesto in the centre of the plate was home-made and sharp, but again made with something that wasn't Parmesan; it was still very good indeed.

The main course arrived, heavy with dumpling. These were bread dumplings (that which looks like moulded potato around the edge of the plate), and I had been expecting something small and round; instead we got slices of something loaf-shaped. (I found a recipe here if you feel like having a go. The dumpling is so light that it has to be sliced with a thread.) The dumplings were airy, and soaked up the rich, reduced sauces with our meats. In the picture is a pork potroast which was strangely delicious, but somehow not entirely European. The glossy, dark sauce had been spiked with a light soya sauce and some sesame oil; the richness of the sauce, the thick meat and the light-as-air dumplings were a triumph together.

Weiner Schnitzel came, fried to a perfect gold in that delicious butter. Two goulashes ('the best in Prague', according to the waiter, who now appeared on the verge of suicide) were inhaled by the men almost as fast as the beer. The only low point came with the one dessert that was ordered (Mr Weasel, hypoglycaemic again); his chocolate banana was a banana dipped into Nutella. In the restaurant's defence, it was pretty clearly a dessert marked out for children, and, as my mother pointed out, it was a very nice ripe banana.

Now, clearly, it is not in your interests if I keep going back to the same restaurant every day until Tuesday. I am, however, sadly tempted. Tomorrow, I shall be investigating the Christmas market, and attempting to purchase edibles and somehow store them until Christmas for presents without eating them. Perhaps I will get something for the sad waiter and see if I can make him crack a smile.

Beer or pudding?

Meantime Chocolate Beer, from the Greenwich brewery, is, they say, specifically aimed at women, who, according to those marketing it, drink alcopops in preference to beer. Nonsense. Some of the best nights (and worst mornings) of my life have been courtesy of the Cambridge Beer Festival, where both Mr Weasel and I have 'worked' (I use the term advisedly) as staff in previous years. One of the things that swung the choosing of our present house for me was its handy location next to a real-ale freehouse with a fantastic restaurant (nothing like having your Fenland ale within staggering distance - those who email me and appear reasonably sane will be told where it is, but I'm not publishing its name here for fear of people breaking into the house to steal my cake). Beer and I have a glorious, long and ultimately pretty intimate relationship. Girlie beers are not for me.

Or are they? A while ago, when Sainsbury's started stocking Meantime Chocolate Beer, I thought I would try an experimental bottle of the stuff. Damn me if they haven't come up with something grown-up, silky and both beery and chocolatey at the same time. I may be a real-ale bore, but this stuff, marketed to death and not out of a pump (it is, however, bottle-conditioned, which means that new beer and yeast is added to the finished beer in the bottle, making it finish its fermentation and develop fizz after the lid has been put on) is just magnificent. There's not a hint of sweetness to it; any chocolate flavour is the smooth, dark, dry taste you get from a very high cocoa-mass chocolate and not overpowering, and it combines beautifully with this extremely malty, quietly hoppy beer to make something quite disturbingly drinkable. A note of vanilla ties the malt and chocolate together. This is definitely not a novelty beer. If you're in Sainsbury's, pick up a bottle; I think you'll like it.

Now, clearly, buying only one bottle of beer would be the action of someone who wasn't thinking awfully hard. I was thinking hard. So I bought another. My second bottle was one of Liefmans' utterly gorgeous Kriek, or cherry beer, which comes wrapped in a pretty twizzle of printed paper.

Perhaps I do like girlie beers.

Liefmans Kriek is considered one of the very best cherry beers. (Kriek, by the way, is pronounced 'Creek', if ever you are in Belgium and struck with a terrible craving.) It's an unexpectedly sour drink which almost makes your mouth pucker; tart and fruity, but rounded and terribly, terribly delicious.

The beer is a deep, wine-red, with a pretty pink head. (No photograph in the glass, I'm afraid; I forgot to take one before I started drinking, and the glass has lipstick and fingerprints on it. Disaster.) It's unfiltered and unsweetened (important, this; lots of cherry beer is sweetened, and it's not anything like as good), and so full of cherries they almost dance in front of your eyes as you sip it. There's a hint of almond, possibly from the cherry stones. It's like a wonderful fruit juice. A wonderful fruit juice that makes you fall down and giggle.

Yeast. This week it's my number one microbe.