Weezl and friends Phase 2 -giving it a whirl for Shirl! Testing meal plan for a month

Lesley_Gaye

Sian's hummous recipes sound super yummy :T can't wait to try them

Lesley_Gaye

weezl74 wrote: »

Lesley thanks for offering to be involved with building the database.

My guess is that it might be very workable if mr arty fancies building the db without the nutrition data, and you and I populate the nutrition parts since we've done quite a bit of that research already?

How might that sound?

sounds good to me - like our own (but much better!) version of Recipecal

have looked up most of the iron data now and populated the 'scones' version of the spreadsheet, with Comments on where I found the info. We needed 1618mg and it has come out to 1639mg so we're fine

I'll whizz it over so you can have a look if you want - don't feel you have to amongst all your other tasks you are covering

hornetgirl

Lovely photos Lesley, I'm very envious of your rhubarb. Mine is still in its infancy and a bit scrawny. We have tons of rocket though, starting to flower so I guess it needs using pretty soon. I thought I might use it instead of spinach in the sag aloo recipe later this week.

Hippeechiq

Thanks for your replies Weezl/Lesley/Shanks

Hippeechiq i am sorry that your pastry didnt work for you. Unfortunately i had the same problems and ended up making my own with the fat and flour which worked fine. I have tried Weezls method a few times and it went pear shaped every time. Sorry its not a helpful post just wanted you to know it wasnt just you.

Thanks for that Shanks, it helps show me that I'm not quite the lost cause I thought I was Be interesting to know how much flour you used - was it 110g or 175g like me?

hipeeechiq, the delia pastry we frugalised had these ingredients:

For the pastry: 2 oz (50 g) self-raising flour 2 oz (50 g) wholewheat flour pinch of salt ½ level teaspoon mustard powder 2 oz (50 g) butter 1½ oz (40 g) Cheddar cheese, grated

and so the 110g flour was to up the content a little as the cheese is gone, and then we replaced the fat with the oil.

the two resulting pastries weigh the same so theoretically they should both cover the same 8 inch pie dish...

I see what you're saying here, and would agree that in theory it should work if Delia is claiming that that amount of dough will line an 8" dish/tin, but it simply doesn't look "big" enough to me.

As I was uncertain about the amount of dough I had, I G00gled "How much pastry is needed to line an 8" flan dish" and the result was this:-

To line an 18cm/7 inch flan tin
200g/ 7oz Pastry i.e. 125g/5oz flour + 50g/2oz fat

To line a 20cm/8 inch flan tin
250g/ 9oz Pastry i.e. 175g/6oz flour + 75g/3oz fat

To line a 25cm/10 inch flan tin
300g/11oz Pastry i.e. 200g/7oz Flour + 100g/4oz fat

So I tried 175g/6oz and that amount worked very well....or would have done if I had rested it :rotfl:

Lesley_Gaye wrote: »

Hippeechiq, so sorry to hear about your pastry

I found the most important point is to use the same volume of water as I do of oil. It looks much too much when you first mix it in, but then the flour sort of slurps it all up and you end up with a soft, pliable dough.

I leave it for just a minute or so before it's fine.

Ah! That's worth knowing Lesley. The 2 tablespoons of water I added resulted in a gungy, sticky blob, so there is no way I would have considered adding almost another tablespoon of water to keep to the same water/oil ratio - so thank you for that :T It's also worth noting that 40ml is less than 3 tablespoons if quantities need to be amended on the website

Lesley_Gaye wrote: »

I still used the cheese last time I made the onion tart, but can't taste it, so will leave it out next time. Have just looked up the recipe version I use and it is
100g sr flour
2tsps mustard
40g oil
40g water
40g cheese

I put all the ingredients in a bowl all together, mix the sloppy mix gently with a spoon, then leave it for a minute, 2 at the most, and the flour soaks up all the moisture.

The 40g of cheese gives an additional 30g of "dry" mix here, so I can see that working better, and it would also make for a slightly larger ball of dough. Did you find it to be comfortably large enough to line your tin/dish?

Lesley_Gaye wrote: »

I made oil pastry today for a pie (no cheese) with my DGD, we left it for a bit, then it was still a tiny bit sticky, so added 1 tblsp of extra flour and it was fine.

Previously, when I added the amount of water I thought it needed to get a dough (ie in pastry made with lard/butter) it was just as you describe, short and impossible to roll

So more water is required because we're using oil and not lard?

queen_of_string

Hippie: I seem to remember this pastry wasn't keen on being chilled. I think (IIRC) that some people found that it was too crumbly if chilled but fine if not. I am really interested in the water thing, I think I too have been adding too little.

Lesley_Gaye

Hippeechiq wrote: »

Thanks for your replies Weezl/Lesley/Shanks

Thanks for that Shanks, it helps show me that I'm not quite the lost cause I thought I was Be interesting to know how much flour you used - was it 110g or 175g like me?

I see what you're saying here, and would agree that in theory it should work if Delia is claiming that that amount of dough will line an 8" dish/tin, but it simply doesn't look "big" enough to me.

As I was uncertain about the amount of dough I had, I G00gled "How much pastry is needed to line an 8" flan dish" and the result was this:- So I tried 175g/6oz and that amount worked very well....or would have done if I had rested it :rotfl:

Ah! That's worth knowing Lesley. The 2 tablespoons of water I added resulted in a gungy, sticky blob, so there is no way I would have considered adding almost another tablespoon of water to keep to the same water/oil ratio - so thank you for that :T It's also worth noting that 40ml is less than 3 tablespoons if quantities need to be amended on the website

The 40g of cheese gives an additional 30g of "dry" mix here, so I can see that working better, and it would also make for a slightly larger ball of dough. Did you find it to be comfortably large enough to line your tin/dish?

So more water is required because we're using oil and not lard?

interesting about the dry weight of the cheese. I might need to adjust the tart mix a little then next time.

The pie pastry I did yesterday used 300g flour, 150ml oil, 150ml water to make a large white flan dish double crust pie, if that's any help at all. Can't measure it as they carried it off home to have for dinner.

I use the same half qty of fat to flour as you would with a solid fat, sometimes I need to add just a tiny bit more flour after letting it sit as a dough for a minute. Flours are different in their absorption aren't they. The dough I get is very soft and feels a bit like a ball of soft, kneaded, bread dough. It is very well behaved, doesn't split or crack and is pliable enough for my novice pastry chef DGD13 to be able to pick it up and put it in the flan dish.

I do hope you can get it to work for you. I am a complete convert, I have been making pastry for more years than I care to remember and this method is super quick and easy with a nice crispy, short, cooked pastry result

SusanC_2

Lesley_Gaye wrote: »

Edit - Wow! the food standards agency website says that 120g baked beans provides 1.7mg and an egg provides 50mg. There are 5 tins (2100g) of baked beans and 30 eggs in planner one, so these 2 items alone provide 1529mg of the required 1618mg, so the plan provides much more than enough iron for Shirley, Bob and the kids

[STRIKE]According to the Danish Food Database and the USDA, eggs have nowhere near 50mg so that must be a typo on the FSA website.

(Sorry if this has already been dealt with - I haven't got time to fully catch up at the moment.)[/STRIKE]
Just realised it's already been spotted.

SusanC_2

Murrell wrote: »

93!!!!!!!!! I only have 8 followers, so there much be a lot of people reading, but not signing up to follow. Gosh I find this so unbelievable that so many read my little blog, that I was wondering if I should give up! This has incouraged me to carry on with it. I don't know how to find out how much traffic I get, but this is incouraging.

You need site meter or stat counter to track visits. (And I am one of your followers.) I think the way you linked probably helped the click through rate i.e. you linked to specific recipes in a post about some recipes you were trying whereas I did a general post about the website as a whole. The way you did it is better both from a traffic point of view and from a google/page rank point of view.

weezl74

dh has just made the tart following recipe only with me not allowed to speak.

It went 1.5 ins up the sides of my mum's 8 inch pie dish. But I'm wondering if we are rolling it more thinly than people are used to. I can add 'roll out as thinly as a 50p piece' to give an idea that it's pretty thin (but puffs up due to the SR flour.)

Do people feel that will help?

We had no shrinkage after blind baking, but blind baked for 7 mins as my mums oven seemed hotter than our GM4 at home, again, do you feel mentioning they need to check the blind bake at the 5 min mark would be good?

Weezl x

Hippeechiq

Morning

The dough I get is very soft and feels a bit like a ball of soft, kneaded, bread dough. It is very well behaved, doesn't split or crack and is pliable enough for my novice pastry chef DGD13 to be able to pick it up and put it in the flan dish.

Well I most certainly didn't have that Lesley, but then had I have waited a couple of minutes for the flour to absorb the water I may have done.
It was just so very wet and if I'd have added the other four tablespoons of water...well...I think I'd have had almost a liquid :huh:

weezl74 wrote: »

dh has just made the tart following recipe only with me not allowed to speak.

It went 1.5 ins up the sides of my mum's 8 inch pie dish. But I'm wondering if we are rolling it more thinly than people are used to. I can add 'roll out as thinly as a 50p piece' to give an idea that it's pretty thin (but puffs up due to the SR flour.)

Do people feel that will help?

We had no shrinkage after blind baking, but blind baked for 7 mins as my mums oven seemed hotter than our GM4 at home, again, do you feel mentioning they need to check the blind bake at the 5 min mark would be good?

Weezl x

Um, not quite sure what you're saying here as the recipe says to bake blind for 15 minutes?

I had shrinkage because I didn't rest the pastry as my oven was already up to temp (at least, I'm assuming that's why) therefore I don't think shrinkage would be a problem for most people. I do think it would be helpful to say how thin you are rolling your pastry though

So just to clarify, are you saying that with 110g flour and 6tbs of water you had a workable dough that was enough to line an 8" dish?