Edible Lives: Under the High Chair

The more food blogs I read and the more I follow trails of blogroll links, the more obvious it has become to me that each blog has its own story to tell. From simple home cooking to exotic dining experiences, from regional dishes to universally-loved favourites, each individual voice weaves a unique thread through the tapestry of the food world.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I would like to present a series of email conversations with food bloggers about the life, or story, of their blog – how they were inspired to start a blog, its high-points/low-points, their plans at the start for their blog and how they feel they’ve lived up to their own expectations … how their blog has changed them (if at all) … and everything else that may turn up in the course of a conversation between two food bloggers.

Luckily for me, Aimée from Under the High Chair liked the idea and was happy to participate.

All images courtesy of Aimée

Like me, Aimée also has young children who feature regularly in her posts. Unlike me, Aimée knows what she’s doing in the kitchen – she spent ten years in the professional cooking industry and worked as a personal chef before motherhood. I love how she combines her passions for food, nature and her children in her writing, and was keen to talk to her about her experiences of blogging.

Here, then, is the story of Under the High Chair …

Did you ever plan or think about writing a food blog before you had children, or was your ‘change of scene’ the strongest push into getting started?

I didn’t even know what a food blog was when I worked in the fine dining industry. There was no time for net surfing and I just wanted to crash and get a foot rub after completing a fourteen hour shift!

When I decided to stay home with my baby (now ‘babies’!), I felt like I still had a lot to offer the culinary world. The blog was the perfect platform for that and became something I could express myself with and connect with other gourmands. I’ve always worked best on my own, so it’s kinda nice to set my own deadlines and goals.

I never imagined I would actually form relationships and friendships with my readers, though. I think I’m still surprised people read Under the High Chair!

So … which were the first food blogs you read – the ones that gave you the idea of starting one for yourself?

Funnily enough, I honestly never read a food blog before I started mine! A few of my geekier friends had kept saying ‘you should put your recipes online’ and I figured that since I could talk all day about cooking, I could easily find enough to say for a blog. I probably should have done a little research first, as those first few months are pretty rough, but some of my original features such as Foodie Facebook and Top Ten have passed the test of time so it wasn’t all bad! Initially I blogged about anything food related that came to mind, but eventually fell into the rhythm of Photo-Story-Recipe, as that seemed to get the best response.

Top Ten Things To Expect When Dining With A Food Blogger

Shortly after starting UtHC, I remember clearly the very first food blog I did come across. I opened my dashboard and Blogger had listed Tartelette as one of their Blogs of Note. I gaped at the photos, sighed with pleasure at the recipes, and chortled at her stories. I was hooked. I swarmed her blog roll and the rest is food blog history. Although I probably follow close to a hundred blogs now, Helen is very dear to me and I am thrilled with her success.

It’s incredible how you launched into the food blogosphere without the inspiration of other food blogs! You say the first few months were pretty rough – why was that?

Oh, just in a ‘rough around the edges’ sense! The photos are atrocious and the formatting sloppy. There’s not a lot of focus, although the humor and creativity is ever present.

I had very little culinary experience when I started my own blog, and most of my posts are about things I’ve been making for the very first time ever. With a background in fine dining, you must have had quite a lot of ideas to draw on already when you started ‘Under the High Chair’. How does your previous life as a chef inform what you do now and how, if in any way at all, does your blog represent a learning experience for you, too?

I’d be lying if I said my blog has not been a learning experience; however the new territory is in every aspect other than cooking! The photography, networking, web design, and business aspects have all been new to a girl who’s spent the last ten years with a chef’s knife permanently attached to her hand!

Foie Gras Sushi

I often experiment in the kitchen, but tend to post only my utmost tried and true recipes. I’m blessed to have a wide repertoire of recipes and techniques to draw from and I haven’t even begun to exhaust them. Since most–if not all–of my readers are home cooks, I try to share restaurant and catering cooking tips in a way that they can be practically applied at home.

Seafood Creole Tagliatelle

How did you learn about all the things that were new to you – the photography, networking etc – and how do you see your progress reflected in your blog over the years?

Progress was slooow! I should say that for the first few years, my blog was about fifth on my priority list and I didn’t put much effort into photography or networking. I had just had a baby, bought a house, planted a garden and there was always something else to focus on! One day I realized “Hey, people are actually reading this and connecting with me, I better take it a bit more seriously” and I smartened up. I bought a better camera (which I still know precious little about) and started actually reading the email offers/opportunities. Thanks goodness I did, one of the offers was for a position as food columnist for the hugely popular SimpleMom blog and I love partnering with her!

I enjoyed reading your post at SimpleMom about Six ways to thrive in the kitchen with kids – perhaps you could write one next about how to survive when they argue with their siblings about who got the largest egg to crack or who sieved the most flour (or whether sieving flour is a better job than weighing sugar!). I sometimes think it might be easiest just to make four separate cakes so that everyone gets to do everything all on their own!

Getting back to your own blog – what’s your most popular recipe and what’s your own favourite post?

After lying awake for a few nights, I’ve concluded that it’s impossible to pick my favorite post! I could no easier play favorites with my boys. I can tell you, however, that should you happen to stay for dinner I would probably tickle your palate with some Foie Gras Sushi then serve you Seafood Creole Tagliatelle, and finish with my Citrus Cheesecake for dessert.

Citrus Cheesecake

One of my most popular posts has no recipe, oddly enough! I wrote a tongue-in-cheek list of what to expect when dining with a food blogger and hoped people would see the humor in it. It gathered a fantastic response as people opened up in the comments section and shared all sorts of hilarious food blogging confessions.

My most popular recipe is probably my Lemon Ricotta Pancakes and I love what that says about my readers-comfort food rules!

Lemon Ricotta Pancakes

And finally … who do you nominate to be the next person I invite to talk to me about their food blog, and why?

I’ve so enjoyed this conversation series and the trip down memory lane. Thank you for inviting me to participate!

I would love to read an interview with Emily of Sugar Plum.

She is certainly a young blogger to watch! I love her sense of humor and her ‘who cares’ attitude. All her recipes are original and she has big dreams for the future…

Thank you ever so much, Aimée. It’s been lovely talking to you (and I’m looking forward to dropping in for dinner one day …!).

13 Comments

by amerrierworld on March 24, 2009 • Permalink

Posted in edible lives

Posted by amerrierworld on March 24, 2009

https://amerrierworld.com/2009/03/24/edible-lives-under-the-highchair/

Cheese Scones and Brioche

Whoosh, where did this last weekend go? One moment I was standing in the school playground on Friday afternoon and the next I was there again, delivering L to her classroom at the start of a new week. We’ve been busy, busy, busy.

But I have to tell you, I have the most gorgeous children. Okay, I’m probably biased, but whose heart could fail to melt when given such a beautiful gift as this Mothering Sunday card?

mothers day card

Believe me, I know my elder daughter and she’s not the speediest of people – it must have taken her ages to make that card for me! She rushed home from school when I collected her on Friday and secreted herself in her bedroom with her bookbag and the ‘something special’ that she’d carried back inside it. She emerged a little while later telling me that I was banned from looking in the corner (which did make me worry slightly – if she’d hidden something in the corner of her room, I had grave doubts about whether or not it would ever see the light of day again).

How proudly she presented her special card to me yesterday, Mothering Sunday. M joined the ceremony by (somewhat reluctantly) handing me two gigantically enormous bars of chocolate (while L helpfully reminded me that I had to share). And T baked me some cheddar cheese scones 🙂 (well … T apparently fell asleep on the kitchen table while I was out with the girls on Saturday afternoon, so that O found himself with a surprisingly undisturbed opportunity to find his way around my recipe books and flour cupboard).

mothers day cheese scones

Beautiful! We ate the scones in our own version of a Devonshire Cream Tea – runny slices of brie in place of clotted cream, topped with spoonfuls of the Bay Tree’s chipotle chilli jelly instead of our homemade blackberry jam (the last jar of which I’m saving for a special occasion). The cream tea purists will be turning in their graves, but the brie and jelly were the perfect accompaniments to the cheesy tang of the scones. As I said – beautiful!

For my own part, I thanked my wonderful family by baking a brioche for breakfast on Sunday morning.

O has been dropping hints for some time now that he’d like brioche to go with his marmalade, but that would have meant digging out my dough hook from wherever it might have ended up buried in our garage after our move to Devon four years ago. Although a comfortingly familiar activity to me now, bread-making is something that I’ve only come to fairly recently and I have, until this point, managed with only the most minimal of kitchen tools (aka my hands). I knew from reading Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Basic Brioche Recipe however that my hands were not an option here, unless I wished to spread all of the dough into an unmanageable sticky mess along my worktop. And so, on Saturday evening, I ventured into the darkest reaches of the garage, armed only with L’s small, dynamo-powered torch.

The brioche was obviously meant to be. I found the dough hook in the very first box I chose to open. I even woke up unusually early on Sunday morning, which allowed me time to remove the chilly dough from the fridge and shape it in my teeniest loaf pan so that it could rise and bake with minutes to spare before the rest of the family were stirring from their sleep.

Needless to say, Rose’s instructions were spot on. The meltingly golden brioche that I took from the oven was devoured so quickly that I didn’t get much of a chance to take many photos. The ravenous hoards couldn’t even wait until it had fully cooled. It went from being a shiny, blooming creation to a few silky crumbs on the bread board in the space it took me to vaguely contemplate the lack of daylight at that time of the morning.

mothers day brioche

O says he’d be happy to have this brioche every time he fancies marmalade for breakfast (which is him being wildly enthusiastic, jumping up and down and clapping his hands together in joyous excitement). I agree.

5 Comments

by amerrierworld on March 23, 2009 • Permalink

Posted in bread and pizza, cakes, muffins and cupcakes and scones

Posted by amerrierworld on March 23, 2009

https://amerrierworld.com/2009/03/23/cheese-scones-and-brioche/

Hot Cinnamon Chocolate

I never imagined I’d be starting a post in Spring with a mug of hot cinnamon chocolate. Surely this would have been much better for those cold depths of winter and flurries of snow that brought Devon to a standstill only a month ago, wouldn’t it?

snowy T

It was T’s first experience of snow. You can tell he wasn’t very impressed by it all!

But now, the birds are furiously building their nests and perching on the telephone wires to sing out their dawn chorus. M is delighted by the exuberant sprouting of yellow daffodils and crocuses (yellow being her favourite colour) and we have welcomed clear blue skies and a burgeoning warmth as a teasing promise of lazy summer days ahead. Yes, it’s hardly the right moment to be thinking of spiced, steamy chocolate.

Nevertheless, there’s a nip in the air that makes us reluctant to take off our coats too soon and the heavy morning dew soaks our shoes on the walk to school. And while it may be the very beginnings of Spring in our neck of the woods, Autumn is just around the corner for many. Perhaps a warming drink may be just the ticket after all.

However I attempt to justify my sudden irrational craving for hot chocolate, I was pleased today to be able to find a use for some cinnamon sticks that have been slowly making their way towards the very furthest back corner of my cupboard. I bought a big bag of these sticks thinking they would be a saving, only to find that they are so very ‘bark-like’ and woody that I can’t grind them finely enough to use in any cakes, pies or cookies. A huge plank of cinnamon is one thing when subtly adding aroma to a chilli, but quite another when picking splinters of it out from between your teeth as you eat a spiced apple muffin.

cinnamon sticks

Here’s an incredibly simple use for these lumps of wood. Hardly a recipe, you just make your favourite mug of hot chocolate and stir it with a cinnamon stick. Et voilà … (and my trusty book of herbs and spices tells me this is something they like to do with cinnamon sticks in Mexico).

hot cinnamon chocolate

This post is my entry to CLICK: Wood.

9 Comments

by amerrierworld on March 17, 2009 • Permalink

Posted in drinks

Posted by amerrierworld on March 17, 2009

https://amerrierworld.com/2009/03/17/hot-cinnamon-chocolate/

Red Velvet Madeleines

The school playground this morning was full of red noses. Not the usual sore, runny kind that go hand-in-hand with childhood during the winter months, but red noses with glasses, smiley faces and various bits of tape or string added at home to hold them in place on such very small faces. Being too grown-up, L had declined to wear her own red nose for the event. She said there wasn’t any point as it kept falling off anyway and then she’d just lose it. She was probably right – this child does seem to be quite capable of losing just about anything in the most peculiar of places (I won’t talk about purple bunny just yet – we still have hopes that he’s hiding somewhere in the house).

The playground this morning also appeared to be full to the brim with fairycakes (or cupcakes, depending on your side of the Atlantic). Now here, the maths just doesn’t quite add up. To raise money for Red Nose Day 2009, everyone was asked to bring in some cakes that could be sold during the day. And so, there they were this morning, standing dutifully in line, each child clutching the requested batch of 12 or so cupcakes in one hand … and in their other hand, their 20 pence coin with which they would be able to buy one cake at the cake sale. Hmmm. That’s an awful lot of excess cupcakage. These teachers must really love cake!

For our part, we contributed a shiny platter of red velvet madeleines (which gave me a perfect excuse for using the beautiful madeleine moulds that my Mum brought back from a holiday for me some time ago now).

madeleine tray

Maybe I’ve just been somewhere else, but I’ve honestly never before seen or tasted a red velvet cake. I only came across the notion when I started reading other people’s food blogs a few years ago. I’m sure I would have remembered if I’d ever been served such a gloriously red thing as this.

red velvet cake

The name sounds so very dreamy and luxurious that I was taken by surprise by the sheer amount of food colouring a red velvet cake seems to contain. I think I must have confused it with Devil’s food cake somewhere in my reading as I was expecting the red colour to arise from an interaction between the baking soda and cocoa powder. But then, dear old Wikipedia tells me that the two names for the cakes have a long history of being used interchangeably, so I at least feel in good company in my confusion.

I hesitated about the red dye. Some chefs use colouring from beetroots instead, but the effect is not quite as traffic-light red. And it is Red Nose Day and not ‘Mahogany’ or ‘Brown-with-a-Reddish-Hue’ Day, after all. Would I be a really bad mother if I made my one-time-only-for-a-special-event madeleines red with food colouring …?

My conscience was finally silenced by this lovely quote from an article in the New York Times:

Perfect Endings bakes the excellent red velvet cake that Williams-Sonoma featured in its catalog for the first time at Christmas. Mr. Godfrey said he uses a recipe he learned to bake with his grandmother, a native of Little Rock, Ark. “But for the bakery I couldn’t bring myself to offer a cake using red food coloring,” he said. “I tried cherries and beets, but it wasn’t right. Then I decided to honor my grandmother, so I went ahead with the food coloring.”

And the madeleines would be small and gone in a couple of even very child-sized mouthfuls … and I wouldn’t be sticking any candies or sugary frosting on the top … and they would be ever so wonderfully the perfect colour for the day.

Here then, in honour of Red Nose Day 2009 (and Mr Godfrey’s grandmother), are our extremely red velvet madeleines (based on a recipe by Pinch My Salt, except I converted her measurements into weights and used the batter to make about 40 madeleines).

red velvet madeleines

Red Velvet Madeleines

8 3/4 oz cake flour (or kate flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 oz (5 tbsp) red food colouring
4 oz unsalted butter, softened
10 1/2 oz caster sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
8 1/2 oz buttermilk
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F/180 degrees C. Lightly oil the madeleine moulds.

Place the cake/kate flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl and whisk to combine. Set aside.

Mix the food colouring (yes, all of it) and the cocoa powder together in a small bowl (I bet you can’t do this without getting your hands red … if you give it to a small child to mix, be prepared for a red-splattered kitchen, too). Stir until the paste is smooth and without lumps. Set aside (don’t you think this recipe is beginning to sound a lot like an EU farming policy?).

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until fluffy (about 3 mins). Add the eggs gradually, beating well to combine. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Add the vanilla and red cocoa paste. Beat then scrape down the sides of the bowl again.

Sift in one-third of the flour mix and beat to combine. Then beat in half of the buttermilk. Scrape.

Sift and beat in another third of the flour mix, then the rest of the buttermilk. Scrape.

Finally, sift and beat in the remaining third of the flour mix. Scrape.

In an egg cup or small bowl, mix together the vinegar and baking soda (fizzzzz – T liked this part!). Add the fizzy potion to the cake batter and beat to combine thoroughly.

Fill each madeleine mould with the batter until about 3/4 full. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the centre of the oven. Leave for 2 minutes in the pan before releasing each madeleine with a palette knife and transferring them to a wire rack to cool.

11 Comments

by amerrierworld on March 13, 2009 • Permalink

Posted in biscuits and cookies, cakes

Posted by amerrierworld on March 13, 2009

https://amerrierworld.com/2009/03/13/red-velvet-madeleines/

Chocolate-Orange and Courgette Cake

chocolate orange cake

It all started when O brought home a couple of courgettes (zucchini, for anyone who’s now googling ‘courgette’) that were near their sell-by dates. Unfortunately, they didn’t fit into my plans for dinner either that day or the next – the girls don’t like green bits in their spag bol and T just doesn’t like green at all yet. And so they sat in my fridge feeling very sorry for themselves.

The great green god of courgettes was smiling down on this lonesome pair, however. It just so happened that today, whilst I was finally getting around to adding Melinda’s Kitchen Diary to my blogroll (sorry it’s taken me so long, Melinda – blame the cat … or the weather … or … okay … my goldfish attention span), I was inexplicably diverted to a recipe for Zucchini and Orange Marmalade Tea Cake. I dutifully bookmarked the page and gave a fleeting thought to my less than youthful courgettes. But no – their great green god had loftier intentions for them. Not only did I have exactly the right amount of courgette for the recipe, I also had every other ingredient in my cupboards, even down to the marmalade and walnuts (ah, the walnuts …).

My courgettes weren’t out of the woods (or the fridge) yet, though. M declared that nothing short of a chocolate cake would be acceptable to her this afternoon, and I’ve learned through bitter experience that it’s best never to attempt to argue with a three-year-old. Especially not when they’ve set their heart on chocolate cake.

Far from being daunted, the great green god of courgettes planted the idea in my mind that here was the perfect opportunity to slip one of those five daily portions of fruit and veg past my eagle-eyed three-year-old unawares. Maybe even T would be fooled – I mean, I know chocolate cake doesn’t look anything like his usual diet of sausages, but hey … chocolate! How could he refuse?

They were all there when I took out a loaf pan and oiled it. They watched as I weighed the walnuts and started breaking them into small pieces.

“What are you doing, Mum?” L asked.

“She’s making a chocolatecakecanIhelp,” said M. This was a statement, not a question. T started dragging heavy chairs across the kitchen floor to the worktop where he knew the Kenwood mixer would soon appear. He climbed up onto one of the chairs expectantly.

Together, somehow, the cake began to be made. Miraculously, everything seemed to be happening in the same mixing bowl. L cracked an egg; M cracked an egg. T put his fingers into the yolks. M sieved the flour; L weighed the marmalade. T gudgled about a bit in it all before turning the mixer on.

Somehow, among the chaos, someone forgot to add the toasted walnuts. Perhaps it was the great green god of courgettes – after all, L did say afterwards that she wouldn’t have eaten the cake if it had had nuts in it.

chocolate orange cake sliced

Chocolate-Orange and Courgette Cake (adapted from Elizabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson via Melinda)

9 oz plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 large eggs
5 oz sunflower oil
5 1/4 oz caster sugar
4 oz marmalade
7 oz grated courgette
1 1/2 oz cocoa
3 oz boiling water
1/2 tsp sea salt
4 oz walnuts, lightly toasted and chopped (add only if you are unafraid of incurring the wrath of the great green god of courgettes)
2 tbsp caster sugar for topping

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F/180 degrees C. Oil, flour and base-line a 9″x5″ loaf pan.

Pour the boiling water on the cocoa powder and stir. Cover with clingfilm and leave to cool to room temperature.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon. Set aside.

Mix eggs, oil, sugar and marmalade together in a large mixing bowl on medium speed.

Add the grated courgette, salt and cocoa/water mix (don’t be tempted to taste the cocoa as L and M insisted on doing this afternoon. It really doesn’t taste good. I told them so, but what do I know?). Beat. Scrape sides of bowl.

Add flour mix. Beat until just incorporated.

Add nuts (at your peril).

Scrape into the loaf pan, smooth the top with an offset spatula (well, that’s what Melinda said, anyway 😉 ). Sprinkle on the sugar (or, if you’re like M, dump it all in one spot).

Bake for 60 to 70 mins in the centre of the oven until the tester comes out clean. Cool for 20 mins before turning out on a wire rack.

7 Comments

by amerrierworld on March 7, 2009 • Permalink

Posted in cakes

Posted by amerrierworld on March 7, 2009

https://amerrierworld.com/2009/03/07/chocolate-orange-and-courgette-cake/