Breads and Bakes: Best Kept Secrets of the Women's Institute (Best Kept Secrets of the Women's Institute S.) - Tapa blanda

The calendar and resulting film ?Calendar Girls? managed to do more to dispel the Women?s Institute?s frumpy image than anything else in their history. From grey-haired, floral-aproned matrons to smart, worldlywise, elegant women, out to enjoy life to the full, Women?s Institute members are enjoying an enviable renaissance. So too are the infamous recipes. Whilst jams, Victoria sandwiches and fruit cakes still proliferate, new recipes are emerging from village halls across the country reflecting today?s modern trends. Quicker to make and often tastier too, they take on international flavours and innovative twists. These four new cookery books in the ?Beat Kept Secrets of the Women?s Institute? series are attractively presented and helpfully written by members with many personal hints and tips. ?Bread and Bakes? covers traditional white and brown loaves alongside sweet naans, feta cheese and sage cottage loaf and to-die-for muffins and brownies; ?Home Cooking? focuses on family feasts such as the traditional shepherd?s pie and beef olives to the more adventurous salmon with Drambuie and mango sauce, chicken korma and crunchy vegetable satay stir-fry; ?Chocolate? covers what it says in all its forms ? white, milk, plain, all included in scrumptious cocoa concoctions such as death by chocolate, triple chocolate muffins and the incredibly simple, overwhelmingly irresistible Snickers mousse?.. The last title, apt to cause sniggers, is ?Tarts?, covering both sweet and savoury in a glorious celebration of pastry with offerings such as chicken filo tartlets, red onion and goat?s cheese pizza tart and, on the sweet side, baked nectarine and blueberry tart, lemon and lime ginger crunch pie and the classic French apple flan. It just goes to show that not all the Women?s Institutes?s best kept secrets were revealed on screen ? there are many more waiting in the wings and at lest these ones taste superb and will please every member of the family!

The Women's Institute has a reputation for traditional home cooking that is second to none in the UK. The Best Kept Secrets is a series of cookbooks written by women who know all about cooking, homes and families from personal experience. They learnt to cook from their mothers and grandmothers, from family friends and from each other. They don't have to re-discover the British tradition of cooking because they never lost touch with it in the first place. Making bread is one of the most satisfying arts of the home cook. Commercial bread-making may have improved out of all recognition in recent years, but still nothing can beat the taste of home-made bread. The smell of baking bread alone can work wonders to lift the spirits. But many home cooks still fight shy of bread-making, thinking there must be some special mystery to it. Not so. As Carrie O'Regan shows in Breads and Bakes all you need are a few simple techniques and you can make a huge range of delicious breads and rolls, both sweet and savoury. As well as the traditional loaves there are some surprising flavours and ingredients in this book: the addition of mashed potatoes gives a beautiful, moist texture to Potato Bread, while Feta Cheese and Sage Cottage Loaf is deliciously savoury. There are some wonderful sweet breads such as chocolate, coconut and lime and even a fruit pizza.