I HAVE written before about moka pots, so I'm very pleased that my partner splashed out €7.80 (about £6.25) on this at Marsaxlokk Market during our holiday on Malta. It's elegant, it does a good job and it will travel with us again.

Peerless in Gozo

I THINK I'd like to live in the shop I stumbled on today in Victoria, Gozo's principal city. La Botega del Sole e della Luna is a floor-to-ceiling treasury of Gozitan and Italian delicacies, chosen with diligence and care by Ori. She is a mine of information about what she sells, and a great enthusiast for food and ingredients from the island and her native Italy. I plan to return next week, so watch this space...

White? Not quite!

This weekend have I mostly been... baking. Some digestive biscuits worked well, and so did this bread:

FLAVOUR: my bloomer

I've used Paul Hollywood's recipe to bake a bloomer before, and it's fine and dandy, but now I've modified it to suit my taste and to make it work in the combination microwave ovens I often use. Paul uses only white flour, but I prefer the extra flavour that comes from substituting wholemeal and rye for some of that. If you've seen Paul make bread on TV you'll know he uses cold water and longer proving times. And if you're using a conventional oven you should use his baking times: 20 minutes at 220°C followed by 10 minutes at 200°C.

Ingredients:

• 250g strong white bread flour
• 150g strong wholemeal flour
• 100g rye flour
• 10g salt
• 7g instant yeast (the sachets usually hold 7g, but check)
• 40ml olive oil
• 320ml cold water

Put the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl (with the salt on one side and the yeast on the other, so that the two don't meet straight away). Add the oil and 240ml (three-quarters) of the water, then get your hands in and mix until you have a wet, sticky ball of dough.

Put a little oil on your clean worktop, spread it out a little, pick up your dough and knead it for 5-10 minutes until it's smooth and elastic. Put it back in the bowl, cover with clingfilm and leave it at room temperature until it has trebled in size. The cold water means this will happen in hours and not minutes, but the resulting bread will be tastier.

Slashes

Punch the dough down, fold and flatten it until all the air is expelled, then roll or flatten it to make a rectangle. Fold each end to the middle, roll (like a Swiss roll) and lightly tuck the ends under before placing the dough on a lightly greased or parchment-lined tray, loosely covered in clingfilm. Leave for an hour or two to double in size.

Preheat the oven to 220ºC with a baking tray or dish of water in the bottom (to help develop the crust), and while you're waiting remove the clingfilm, lightly spray the dough with water and put three or four slashes in the top with a sharp knife or razor blade. Dust with flour.

Place the dough in the hot oven, leave for 20 minutes and then lower the temperature to 200ºC. Bake for another 15 minutes, remove and cool on a rack.

Made for dunking

If you like Peter Kay as much as I do you'll love his sketch about dunking biscuits.  He should try the dunking biscuits made in Llay, Wrexham, by Cleopatra's Foods. My partner's quite taken with them, and it was fun discussing them with the makers, Philippe and Helen Kalkwarf, at the Hamper Llangollen Food Festival.

Philippe's from South Africa and the biscuits are a version of the Afrikaner beskuit, a twice-cooked bread that is a little like a biscotto. You may have come across the popular SA brand Ouma Rusks.

The biscuits are chunky and robust, they come in a range of flavours and the record for pulling one intact from a hot drink stands at 59 seconds.

Llangollen lamb find

A big hit after a family trip to the Hamper Llangollen Food Festival was lamb faggots produced by Aran Lamb in Bala. Don't let the web site put you off, though it must be one of the worst sites I've seen or used. Behind the bad design there's some good food that deserves a place on your plate.

The faggot (ffagod) is very Welsh and is usually made of pork and pig offal. In this case the donor is a sheep, and it's a lovely result. They're big, there's a sweet richness in the flavour and texture, and the liver flavour is less pronounced than in many piggy versions though it still contributes. And they were £1 each. They're not advertised on the web site, so ask.

And stop giggling at the back there. While the Americans have developed a world of meaning for faggot, it gets in the way of debate about good food. A few years ago Facebook were banishing users for talking about them online... **sigh**

Visa victory

I like this: a Brazilian restaurant chain in the USA can bring in Brazilian cooks to cut its meats the way only they know how, the Supreme Court has decided. If you want a Green Card, keep practising those knife skills!

I've been out and about in St Helens, enjoying lunch at The Glass House:

CLASS: The Glass House