An 8 out of 10 Trifle

I can confirm that the trifle – homemade – is alive and kicking! Forget those dreadful synthetic things that are re-hydrated with some boiling water and then layered up over several weeks before serving. My mum would always serve these trifles and I hated them…awful soggy sponge, the out-of-place jelly and dream topping scattered with Hundreds and Thousands (ok, so the kitsch lover in me can forgive those).
The perverse thing is that these chemical trifles always, without absolute fail, were a massive hit at whatever celebration my mum was making them for: birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries – they were the gaudy centrepiece and the most eagerly anticipated dessert of all. Me, I would be stuck with a bowl of ice cream because “I’m not making two desserts just because you don’t like trifle, everyone else likes trifle.” It would suit me just fine to nurse a bowl of vanilla ice cream whilst everyone tucked into the mish-mash of jelly, sponge and synthetic cream.
I think what people love about trifle, whether it is a lovingly made homemade one, served in your grandmothers Victorian cut-glass dish or a packet mix served in a large plastic bowl (or vice versa), is that it encompasses every sweet ingredient that makes people salivate: a hint of vanilla, squidgy custard, smooth, cool whipped cream, jam or fruit, and sponge cake. One can imagine that the trifle was devised to satisfy every palate: the Italians have sophisticated Zuppa Inglese and Tiramisu, Mexicans have Ante de Yemas, and there is even an Indian Trifle (which Mrs Beeton noted in the mid-19th Century when Indian food was all the rage) that is scented with Cardomom and set with rice flour. And you can further rely on the Victorians to elevate the trifle from a simple layered dessert into a multi-strata piece of confectionary architecture standing several feet high on tables laden with dressed peacocks and stuffed pigs bladders.
But then came the nadir of the trifle as I knew it: Birds Trifle Mix. I knew, just knew, that I would show them all. One day.
And that day came, some 25 years after I first tasted and rejected a packet made trifle.
A trifle is a very British dish, like Blancmange and Spotted Dick. I thought it might be fun to make one for a buffet that my mother was preparing for the American side of our family. So, with several cookbooks clutched in my sweaty palms I set to work. I had blackberries in the freezer, picked in the summer when the hedgerows were laden with fruit, so I simmered the shiny purple berries with some sugar and meddlar jam. I used more of the meddlar jam (I had bought a jar of it from a local delicatessen some months ago and never even opened it) to sandwich together some Saviordi biscuits (aka Ladyfingers), which I layered in the bottom of the dish and then dyed and smothered with the glossy mauve jam.
This naturally fruity layer is then blanketed with a thick creamy swathe of vanilla infused custard (made with no less than 8 organic egg yolks, 75g vanilla sugar and 300ml each of Double Cream and Full Fat Milk. And the dried up and reused vanilla pod from my jar of sugar) and topped with a pure white alpine peak of whipped cream and Mascarpone cheese. The fruit layer of this ethereal confection was pointed with a crumbling of Amaretti biscuits and a good slug of Kirsch (used for the second time this week as my ‘secret ingredient’ – the first was in Cranberry Sauce) and the whole thing was decorated with more crushed biscuits and some toasted flaked almonds.
Suffice to say – unlike Christmas Cake – the blackberry trifle was devoured within minutes. And as a special early New Years treat, I allowed my mums dogs to share in the trifle-y goodness. Everyone was happy. My granddad - the ever critical sage - even gave it 8 out of 10.
BLACKBERRY TRIFLE – serves 9
Ingredients:
700g Blackberries (or the soft fruit of your choice, I just had blackberries in the freezer)
50g Sugar
50g Jam (I used Meddlar for reasons noted above. Any complimentary jam could be used), plus extra for the sponge fingers
16 Saviordy biscuits
8 Amaretti biscuits crushed
Kirsch (optional)
8 Egg yolks
75g caster sugar or vanilla infused caster sugar
600ml Double cream 300ml reserved for topping
300ml Full fat milk
1 Vanilla pod
100g Mascapone cheese
20g icing sugar
1tsp Vanilla extract
METHOD:
Sandwich together the Saviordi Biscuits with the jam, in pairs. Layer in the bottom of the trifle dish.
Make the jam: in a large saucepan, simmer the fruit with the jam and sugar until softened and syrupy. Taste for sweetness and add more sugar if required. It shouldn’t as the jam will be very sweet anyway. Leave to cool slightly and pour over the sponge fingers. Sprinkle with half the crumbled Amaretti Biscuits and sprinkle with some Kirsch, to your own personal taste. Refrigerate until cold.
Make the custard: Heat the cream and milk in a large saucepan with a vanilla pod. Whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. Pour over the heated milk and cream and whisk well. Pour back into the pan (which has been rinsed) and heat gently over a low heat until thickened. As a safety net, fill the sink with cold water. If the mixture starts to resemble scrambled eggs, quickly stand the pan in the water and whisk like the fury. It should come back to smoothness again. The custard should take around 10-15 minutes to thicken. It will not thicken to the degree that packet custards do, that congealing mouth coating thickness but more of a evaporated milk thickness. As the old saying goes, it will coat the back of a wooden spoon. Leave to cool slightly then, before a skin forms, pour over the cooled purple layer.
Cover with clingfilm and chill overnight if possible but at least for 12 hours.
Finally, whip the double cream until softly peaking, stir in the Mascapone Cheese, icing sugar and vanilla extract. Combine well.
Because the custard will not be really firm, you will need to spoon the creamy topping on and then spread gently with a pallet knife. Sprinkle with the remaining Amaretti Biscuits and toasted flaked almonds and serve!

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Pie and Mash - A Restaurant Review

Restaurant reviews are not really my scene. I find that it is not my place to judge other peoples food, and besides, food critiquing is very personal. What is one mans Chateaubriand is another’s Big Mac.

Furthermore, my husband and I eat out rarely. This is due to several reasons:

1. Financial limitations. Pub meals are usually overpriced which I suppose correlates with the food often being overcooked.

2. There are not many good eateries nearby. If you enjoy pub meals ALL THE TIME, then you’re good to go, but as far as local restaurants go, No Can Do, as Hall and Oates once caterwauled (unless you count a greasy spoon as a restaurant).

3. We prefer home cooking.

However, there are some establishments that need to be visited, if only once in a lifetime. Yesterday I had the great pleasure of visiting the oldest Pie and Mash shop in the country, Manze, in Tower Bridge Road.

From the unassuming green exterior to the evocative interior with its rickety wooden benches and 1950s ambience, Manze is an all encompassing eating experience. As you tuck into your Pie and Mash, stained green by the parsley scented liquor, you feel as if you have been transported to a time less complicated. Outside there are double decker buses pulling up every few minutes, homeless people begging for change and McDonalds wrappers littering the streets.

The food of Manze is old-fashioned. It hasn’t changed in nearly 100 years. The recipe for the rich meat filling, the crisp pastry and the simple brothy gravy that floods the plate, so different to shop bought pies, remains unaltered. The mash is made daily with real potatoes, not a wallpaper paste substitute and the parsley liquors secret ingredient is still closely guarded. The menu isn’t filled with deep fried Mars Bars or Burgers and this is why the simplistic food is always great. They concentrate on what they do best and the line for their famous pies often overspills onto the busy street. You can easily imagine the shop being filled with mods, lining their bellies before an amphetamine fuelled ride out to Brighton or East-End gangsters matter-of-factly discussing their next heist or assassination of a rival gang member. Then of course there are the regulars. They remember the fact that during World War II, Manze had a not inconsiderable empire of 14 shops. All but the London Bridge Road shop have now closed down due to changing appetites and fashions. However, in the late 90s, in no small part because of the resurgence of London as the hip place to be, Manze opened two more shops. I was told by one of the proud waitresses that Manze had appeared in US food tome, Gourmet, just last year and in an episode of Bourdain, he is charmingly enamoured with the restaurant.

It is a testament to our fondness of food from our childhood that whilst some foods are temporarily discarded, they are never forgotten. Lets hope that Manze remains part of British food heritage; Pie, Mash and Jellied Eels being as quintessentially English as Oliver Cromwell or the Kinks.

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The Necessary Christmas Update

After the surfeit of food that accompanies Christmas, indeed represents Christmas it would seem, I am completely fooded out.

My husband’s family are visiting from Wisconsin tomorrow so posting will be sporadic as we carry out the necessary sightseeing and entertaining expected of the hosts. It will give us a good opportunity to wave goodbye to the heavy seasonal food for another 12 months. It would seem that the Miso Soup diet is on the cards. Again.

For now though, be bedazzled by the following shots of our Christmas delicacies: the pudding, the cake and the Buche de Noel, all of which were met with great approval. In fact, everything culinary was executed without a hitch – the ribs of beef were perfectly tender, the sprouts didn’t turn to mush. Almost a perfect meal - quite a rarity when you consider all the trimmings that have to be prepared too.

Actually, my mum was in charge of the kitchen on Christmas Day. I have to cook a second meal, this time a Turkey, which I’m going to brine first and, because I’m cooking for exclusively Americans (myself excluded), I can eschew all the usual British trimmings in favour of a more simple meal. More on that later.

But back to the Christmas puds. I have spent so long waiting for them to be eaten that it seems churlish not to give them the heads up they deserve.

Firstly, the Buche de Noel, effectively a rubbery chocolate sponge made purely with eggs, cocoa and sugar, filled with a rich chestnut cream and iced with a fudgy butter icing. I had heard terrible things about making the Buche de Noel: the cake would crack and be a dreadful disaster. As the cake cooled in its Swiss Roll tin it resembled a flat, chocolate coloured piece of mattress padding. Texture wise it was very much the same: this isn’t a cake you would want to eat without its luxurious mantle of chocolate and chestnut creams.

The rolling process turned out to be very easy. Because the sponge has no flour in it, it doesn’t have the heavy, open texture that a regular sponge cake does. Being gentle but confident, it rolled like a dream, the rich chestnut puree holding it together. No cracks even. I was so pleased with myself that I kept rubbing my hands together with glee. I whisked up a butter icing, richly flavoured with some more chestnut puree, which lends a sumptuous fudge-like texture and cocoa powder. A final dusting of icing sugar on the big day (I made the log on Christmas Eve) and it looked as Christmassy as you could hope for.

The pudding, which started its second steaming at 11.30am, was greeted by my family with more oohs and aahs than usual, thanks to a flaming blue veil of vodka. It only burnt for about 30 seconds but they were 30 auspicious seconds. According to those who tasted it (I am not a fan of the great Xmas pud), it was less sweet than supermarket brands, the figs and other dried fruits were prominent and, if they hadn’t eaten lunch first, they would have had seconds. No more can be asked for.

Finally the cake. After pudding and Buche de Noel, no one could manage a slice. However, thanks to my mums artistic nature (which I, sadly, haven’t inherited) it looked beautiful so who cares what it tasted like?

So, I have guests to attend to. The turkey is now brining. You could say that it’s going to be wined, dined and brined. I’m a big fan of brining poultry: it tenderises the meat and makes it taste as it should, which is great if your budget can’t stretch to organic meat. A whole turkey is the biggest critter that I’ve brined so far though. Watch this space….

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Happy Christmax!

Being a wriggly Jack Russell, we couldn't get the little boy to sit still wearing a costume so a little help was required in the form of Paint. The dogs are both looking forward to their Christmas treat of raw chicken wings and a squeaky toy each.
Posting will be back to normalcy in a day or two when I will be back with more Unusual Ingredients of the Week than ever!

Happy Holidays to Everyone!

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A Polarizing Tart...and some Squid

Apparently there's something big happening in a day or two. I've been reading the odd article about it, watched the occassional advert on TV and have even allowed myself - just a little - to get a bit carried away with it. As you may have guessed, I'm talking about Christmas.
I think that most cooks look forward to this time of year because special occasions allow for self-indulgent cooking marathons, that you can pretend are for 'the family'. Of course, if you hate cooking, you will simply eschew the kitchen in favour of the supermarket. If you're not a cook then the added stress of cooking is understandably allayed by prepacked food.
Because I love all the Christmas preparations, I am completely up-to-date. Tomorrow night I'll be making the Buche de Noel, which I have never made before. I'm planning on stuffing the yule log with chestnut puree and the Marron Glace that I made a week or so ago (just to prove that there is a use for them!).
For now, then, I have temporarily forgotten about the big day, and baked a tart and rustled up a spicy seafood snack for Paul and myself to share in front of the TV.
The tart is part of a swap that I am doing with Shaun from Winter Skies, Kitchen Aglow. We are both Tamasin Day-Lewis fans and as she is a big champion of the tart, we have decided to have a Tamasin Tart Bake-off comprising of just the two of us. This isn't because we are social outcasts, rather we don't actually know any other Tamasin fans. Nigella fans are ten a penny, as are Martha and Delia fans. I'm hoping we didn't choose the same tart. That wouldn't make for the most exciting reading.
So, my tart is from the Art of the Tart and is a stunning combination featuring Spinach and Anchovies.
Now you come to understand the polarising part of the title. Like Marmite, Jessica Simpson and horror movies, you either love Anchovies or despise them. I love them as a flavour although I balk a little at eating them straight from the jar. However, if you use anchovies as an ingredient, most people would find it hard to identify just what it is that gives the dish its delicious savoury element. Combined with spinach, which has a wonderful affinity with fish anyway, the tart is satisfyingly robust. I would consider prinking the pastry with a sprinkling of Parmesan but I fear this might be a salty note too many - Anchovies are thirst inducingly saline.
As you can see, it is a psychedelic shade of green. I think it would look great served alongside a tomato salad, with some raw spinach leaves to add some extra iron.
Also, it would provide an interesting foil against turkey if you should get fed up with leftovers...

And if the anchovies weren't one divisive marine animal too many, here's a zippy squid recipe, guaranteed to sooth the cravings of the most spicy tongued gourmandizer. I hadn't planned on making squid but there was a small, lonely bag of prepared squid reduced on the fish counter, and for 69p how could I resist? Squid is something I have been meaning to prepare for some while but have never had the opportunity. Normally you can only buy squid here, frozen, tubes only. I find this to not be entirely respectful of this intelligent, gentle encephalopod and I wanted to do it justice.

HOT AND SOUR SQUID, this is a rough approximation of a Jeff Smith recipe
Ingredients (serves 2 as a snack)
About 10 Tubes of Squid, prepared, with the tentacles if possible
1 Teaspoon Harissa Paste made up with a couple of teaspoons of Olive Oil and a clove of Garlic
2 Spring Onions cut into rings
2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
Half Teaspoon Cornflour mixed with a tablespoon cold water
2 Tablespoons Dry Sherry or Rice Wine (I used Rioja, which sounds horribly extravagant but that's all I had)
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1 Teaspoon Sesame Oil
2 Tablespoons Peanut Oil
1 Small Nub of Ginger, grated
METHOD:
In a wok (although I had to use a saute pan), heat the peanut oil until really hot. Add the ginger. It will fizzle and spit and brown. Add the spring onions, soy sauce and squid rings. Cook over this high heat for no more than a minute. The tentacles will curl and start to bloom like tiny flowers. The Soy will virtually evaporate.
Add the sesame oil, wine and harissa paste, making sure to keep stirring all the time. Finally, stir in the cornflour mixed with the water. The sauce will thicken and become glossy.
Serve at once. This recipe is easily doubled. You can also add some fresh chilli if you desire more heat.

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Cajun Christmas Part 1: Gumbo

It may seem inappropriate to some, but to me Cajun food will always represent the holidays. It started back in 1986 when I was staying with a friend during Thanksgiving. His family had some Cajun friends who were hosting the festivities that year. What I experienced was the quintessential holiday experience. The food was really sublime and the mood was uniquely festive. I have rarely encountered such genuine and generous people in the years since and I will always remember how great that Thanksgiving was.

I have always had a weakness for hot food especially if it was somewhat esoteric. This was probably the result of growing up in a family that celebrated cultural diversity. As a child my parents always had a room to spare for an exchange student and I longed every year for the International Banquet held at the university where my parents were employed. I wish there were still opportunities like that at my disposal!

Although Cajun food never had representation at any of these banquets, it wouldn’t have been misplaced. Cajun and Creole dishes were about as foreign to the Midwestern palate as Hashem’s rice with raw egg yolk. The cuisine of this region was formed by an amalgamation of food from North America, Europe, and Africa. Although the word Cajun is a corruption of Acadian (The name for the area of Nova Scotia settled by the French), few people outside Louisiana realise that Cajun heritage is derived from German, Spanish, Native American, African, and French culture.

Despite the fact that the migration of the French from Acadia occurred in the mid 18th century, the cuisine of this region didn’t become part of the mainstream vernacular until the 1990’s. It then flirted with acceptance for a year or two and quickly fell out of favour. I think the acceptance of this food and the subsequent rejection can both be attributed to the same thing: health. The initial intrigue was very likely a reaction to the bland and boring health consciousness of the 1980’s. The rapid fall from grace for Cajun food was probably the result of the next wave of health food fascism that swept the country again in the 1990’s.

Recently however, Cajun cuisine has experienced a resurgence in popularity, and not just in America. British chefs are preparing these dishes with increasing frequency as well! This can be linked to an increasing appreciation of French country cooking and the campaigning of chefs like Keith Floyd in the UK and Emeril Lagasse in the US. And hopefully the public is finally ready to wake up to the fact that the secret to a healthy diet is moderation, natural ingredients, and balance. Maybe studies such as the recent analysis of the French Paradox have something to do with that.

I owe my love of Cajun food to two things. A cold Thanksgiving with a nice family and one of the greatest television chefs ever, Justin Wilson! My gumbo recipe is adapted from the versions I watched him make on PBS when I was younger. Gumbo comes in many varieties and has a very fascinating history and etymology, but I am not going to disgrace this fantastic cuisine by purporting to be an expert. There is a lot of information available online.

I’m sure that genuine Cajuns wouldn’t be happy with my version of the grand pappy of their cuisine, but in the final analysis I think the simplicity and heartiness would meet with their approval.


PAUL’S SO-CALLED GUMBO
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons plain flour
1 tablespoon oil (olive or peanut)
3 cups diced onion
3 bell peppers (red, yellow, orange, or green)
3 cups diced celery
3 cups chopped okra
2-3 jalapeno peppers julienne or 1-2 scotch bonnet cut in half , depending on taste
2 chicken breasts cubed
1-2 smoked sausages sliced (Kielbasa, Kabanos, or Cajun Boudin if you’re lucky enough to find it.)
2 cups tiger prawns
8 cups liquid (this can be any mixture of water, chicken stock, and white wine)
¼ cup Tabasco
1 tablespoon salt
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 bay leaves
1 cup easy cook long grain rice

METHOD
1. Making the Roux
A. Mix the flour and oil in a heavy bottomed stockpot and stir constantly over medium heat. You will know it is ready when the flour turns the colour of peanut butter and smells like popcorn. Don’t let it burn!
B. Alternatively, I have used a method Freya read about. Brown a large quantity of dry flour in a pan. Take off the heat and empty from pan immediately. Can be stored in jars and kept for months. When needed, add some flour to oil for an instant roux. (I prefer method A)
2. Add the trinity of vegetables (onion, peppers, celery), stir until they are covered in the roux. Allow to sweat down a bit. Add some water if the vegetables start to stick.
3. Add chicken and chillies. Allow to cook for about 2 minutes. Add all remaining ingredients EXCEPT rice and prawns.
4. Simmer over low heat for at least one hour.
5. Add prawns and rice (if you’re Freya), or cook rice on the side. Cook for a further 20 minutes.
6. Serve over rice with Gumbo Filé on top.

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A Couple of Cross Cultural Desserts

Or how I succumbed - yet again - to my terminally sweet tooth.
I love to make sweets and biscuits and cakes above all else, the sweeter the better. This is not a new development.
The first foods I ever made were Melting Moments, little buttery biscuits coated in oatmeal and Coffee Cakes, rich with Camp Coffee and Buttercream Icing. My favourite way to eat toast was spread with butter and sprinkled with white granulated sugar. Failing that, it would be golden syrup dripped from a dessertspoon (not a teaspoon) straight from the green tin, skipping the toast, and straight into my mouth
As I have gotten older, my tastes have refined slightly: from Cadburys Chocolate to Lindt 75% Dark Chocolate (although give me a bar of Dairy Milk and I’m happy), Sara Lee Triple Layer Gateaux to Lemon Tortes, from Chocolate Coated Marshmallows to Fruit Scones.
These changes aren’t necessarily for the best. My husband says he sometimes feels a bit jaded when he talks food to people because his own standards are so high now. I wouldn’t necessarily say that eating meatballs from a can represents a high standard but...
As for me, I am always prowling around for the next sugar high. I thought it was chocolate but I was wrong. I have found something so delectably sweet, so tooth-achingly saccharin that one small square will satisfy the world’s most prolific craver of sugar – Halwa.
I know what you’re thinking – “Isn’t this something you get from a Natural Health Store? How can that be so great?” Well, doubters and naysayers, have I got news for you. The word Halwa comes from a derivation of ‘Sweet’ in Arabic. Any confection that contains six whole tablespoons of pure white, completely refined sugar has got to live up to its namesake. Halwa does that with aplomb.
Indian sweets are not as popular in the UK as their savoury counterparts, curry being one of the most popular dishes in the country, but if anyone has tried one of these scrumptious squares (or balls) of joy, then you will be hooked for life.
There are many varieties, some containing honey, some containing ground Pistachios or Almonds, some made with Coconut. They can be scented with Rosewater or coloured with Turmeric. Some are made with honey-rich, batters, emerging like golden, shiny spirals. They all have one thing in common: eye-blinding amounts of sugar.
Because there are so many different types, and because the process of making some is quite complex, I chose a relatively simple dessert that seems like it might offer some nutritional benefits, Carrot Halwa.
There are several different ways to make Halwa (or Halva). The solid varieties are cooked with either Semolina or Tahini Paste, depending on whether you come from Northern or Southern India and are cut into squares, much like Turkish Delight.
Carrot Halwa is cooked with milk (or traditionally Condensed milk, to make it even sweeter!) and is a much softer confection, to be served as a dessert rather than a candy.
It is simple to make and would make a delicious and unusual finish to a meal. Despite its sweetness, the carrot gives it slight palate cleansing properties too. I eat it straight from the fridge, where I have a pallet knife ensconsed on top of it, so I can slice chunks off at any given sugar-craving moment. It hits the spot every time. I think it could be the new chocolate.
If you are particularly averse to Rosewater (and it can have a ‘bath-time at the nursing-home’ flavour if you’re heavy-handed), then just omit it.
CARROT HALWA
Ingredients:
450g Carrots, grated
1 Teaspoon Crushed Cardamom Pods (remove the husks, they are horrible to chew on)
1 Pint Milk
2 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter or Ghee
6 Tablespoons Sugar
1 Teaspoon of Rosewater (optional)
Couple Tablespoons Raisins or Sultanas
Couple Tablespoons each of Toasted (hot oven, 5 minutes, 200c) Pistachios, Cashews, Almonds, toasted and crushed into chunks
Milk
METHOD:
Heat the milk, grated carrot, raisins and Cardomom Pods in a large frying pan. The frying pan is important because you need maximum surface space for the carrot/milk mixture to thicken.
Once most of the milk has evaporated, maybe 10 minutes, add the butter, nuts and Rosewater if using. Stir well to amalgamate and pour into a shallow dish. I used my Brownie Tin which is approximately 8” square. Chill until you are ready to serve, but at least 3 or 4 hours. Sprinkle with some more toasted nuts if you are serving as a dessert. Obviously no such frivolities are required if you are eating it straight from the fridge.

And from one traditional sweetmeat to another: the Eccles Cake.
Under orders from one of my husbands work colleagues (well, he did help us move some furniture and I suppose I owe him for terminally damaging his ego after beating him at Poker), I made him a batch of his favourite cakes, Eccles.
I had never eaten an Eccles Cake in my life. I hate currants, little black, chewy burnt tasting things that get stuck in your teeth. I won’t have them in the house. So, I have rid the Eccles Cake of its most traditional ingredient, the one that gave it the nickname ‘Squashed Fly’ cakes and replaced it with raisins. Sorry to all purists.
I spent a while online researching the Eccles Cake and came across various different recipes, some using puff pastry, some shortcrust and some flaky. Whilst I didn’t have the time to make the first and the last, I settled for Shortcrust, which, if well made, is very flaky and light anyway.
I eschewed all online fripperies such as dried blueberries, orange juice and golden caster sugar and used the ever reliable Jane Grigson’s recipe from English Food. Apparently these flat, unassuming little cakes gain their name via the town they were first invented, from the Greek word, ecclesia, meaning assembly. They have an interesting history too: when the Puritans came to power in the mid-1600s, the production and consumption of Eccles Cakes was temporarily banned because they were considered much too luxurious. I wonder what the Puritans would have thought of some of todays confections?
These spicy little cakes get their distinctive aroma from Allspice and fresh Nutmeg and the tart addition of candied peel. I think that this version, without the ‘squashed flies’ is perfect for non-currant eaters but if you are one of those people, just add them back into the mix.
ECCLES CAKES, makes about 6
Ingredients:
Shortcrust Pastry
125g Raisins (or currants, or a combination)
25g Candied Peel, finely chopped
25g Sugar
1 Tablespoon Butter
Half Teaspoon Nutmeg
Half Teaspoon Allspice
METHOD:
Preheat Oven to 220c.
Make Shortcrust Pastry in the usual way, leaving to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.
Melt the sugar and butter in a saucepan over a low heat. Stir in the all the other ingredients and gently warm through until the sugar has dissolved.
Leave to cool completely.
Roll out the pastry to about 3mm thickness. Cut out 3" dia. Circles. Place a teaspoon of filling into the centre of half of the circles. Moisten the edge of the circles and place an unfilled circle on top. Using your fingertips, gently seal the two circles together. Flip them over and roll gently with a rolling pin. If any pieces of fruit poke through, carefully use a small scrap of pastry to cover it up.
Brush with some beaten egg, sprinkle with sugar and cut two small slits in the top.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Leave to cool, if you can!

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Skyscraper Pancakes

I enjoy those days when you have everything planned in your head. You know what you’re going to put on in the morning to wear for work, what filling you’ll put in your sandwich, how many teaspoons of sugar you feel like putting in your tea and what insults to throw at your boss/annoying work colleague/rude workmen. Most importantly, you have dinner all sorted out. You return home, like a super-efficient human turbine, spinning around the kitchen gathering ingredients up as competently as a squirrel and dinner is served without your breaking into a sweat.
Did I say I enjoy those days? What I mean is, I dream of having a day like that. Just one.
Unfortunately, particularly at Christmas, common sense and logic seem to go out the window as our thoughts are replaced with giant turkeys, glittery baubles, sky high piles of presents and where on earth will we seat all of our family members.
Sometimes it’s nice to suddenly just be inspired, part way through the day, by a dish that looks perfect for supper. You don’t have to go to the supermarket, it’s all relatively easy to assemble and most importantly of all, you know that it will taste good.
Whilst idly flipping through a cookbook, a recipe for a pancake lasagne caught my eye (and tastebuds). I had also been inspired by a post I read on Pumpkin Pancakes at The Perfect Pancake.
My husband and I love Lasagne (in fact, I know of not one person who doesn’t like Lasagne), but with the three hour long ragu, it can be a bit time consuming.
Pancake Lasagne comprises of three simple elements: plain pancakes (to American readers, you’ll know these as crepes, not your fluffy, pillow-like pancakes that you pour syrup over....), a meat-free tomato sauce, white sauce. Any or all of these can be made well in advance.
I refer to a traditional Lasagne as a store cupboard meal because most of the ingredients you will have in the house at any given time: a pack of minced beef, lasagne sheets, tinned tomatoes, flour and milk for the Bechemel, cheese for the topping....this Pancake Lasagne could be called the ‘End Of Month and I’m Really Scraping The Bottom of the Barrel for Ingredients Now’ dish.
When I first decided to make this dish, I was toying with the idea of having a spinach and anchovy layer but I quickly eschewed that in favour of the Béchamel with Spinach stirred into it so it wilts.
However, cheapness aside, you will not notice that the dish is meat free because it is so tasty. Even leftovers taste good reheated. If you wanted to gussy it up, you could add some meat to the tomato sauce, or add a layer of some chopped Proscuitto Ham, some sautéed Courgettes. It is very filling so just serve with a green salad. Whatever takes your fancy.
PANCAKE LASAGNE, serves 4 generously.
Ingredients:
For the Pancakes:
120g Plain Flour
2 Whole Eggs
300ml Milk
Salt
For the Tomato Sauce:
2 Cans Tomatoes
1 Onion, finely chopped
2 Cloves Garlic, finely chopped
1 Stick Celery, finely chopped
Teaspoon Tomato Puree
Teaspoon Sugar
Seasoning
Parsley, optional.
For the Béchamel Sauce:
300ml Milk (preferably full fat but I often use skimmed)
3 Tablespoons Plain Flour
3 Tablespoons Butter
Seasoning and Fresh Nutmeg

One Ball of Mozzarella Cheese, diced finely
1 Tablespoon Grated Parmesan

METHOD:
Make the pancakes: whisk together all the ingredients and leave to stand for at least half an hour. The batter can be made in the morning and left to stand in the fridge until you need to use it.
Make to tomato sauce: Sauté the onion in a little olive oil until softly translucent. Add the garlic and celery and cook for about five minutes, again until softened.
Add the canned tomatoes, puree, sugar and season. Bring to the boil and then turn down to a brisk simmer.
Cook for at least half an hour, until the sauce has reduced and thickened. It will have a rich, sweet tomato flavour. At this point you can add some fresh Parsley if you wish. This can be made a couple of days in advance. Tomato sauces always improve with time.
Make the Béchamel Sauce, heat the flour and butter together until amalgamated into a buttery ball. Add the milk (you are supposed to use warmed milk to ensure you don't have any lumps but I don't bother) and whisk over high heat until all the lumps have been vanquished! Turn the heat down to a low simmer, season with salt, pepper and a rasp or two of fresh Nutmeg. Cook until it no longer tastes floury. You can make this in advance but it generally doesn't keep too well. If you do, add a little more milk to the sauce as you reheat it to thin it down.
Stir through some baby Spinach Leaves if required. This is purely optional. We just had some going bad in the fridge.
Cook the pancakes. Heat a little butter in a frying pan until smoking hot. Ladle in some of the mixture, swill around the pan until you have a (very) rough 8” dia. circle. If, like mine, it has little raggedy edges, don’t worry. These can be trimmed off when you start assembly. After a minute or two you will be able to move the pancake around the pan with ease. You can now demonstrate your skill (or abject lack thereof) with tossing pancakes. Cook for about 30 seconds on the other side and transfer to a plate. Continue until you have about 8 pancakes.
To Assemble the Lasagne:
I used a round Pyrex dish which meant that I couldn’t unmould the dish, stylishly or otherwise. Whatever kind of dish you use, make sure you butter it well.
Lay one pancake in the bottom of your greased dish. Smear with a layer of the Tomato Sauce, a layer of the Béchamel and sprinkle with some Mozzarella. Continue with the layering until you have either used up your sauce or pancakes but do ensure that you finish with a layer of either the Béchamel or Tomato Sauce. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan and bake, covered with tin foil, for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for a further 10 minutes until golden and bubbling. Remove from oven and leave to stand for about 5 minutes. This will help it set up a little, making it easier to cut and serve.
Enjoy!
Oh and obviously the title, Skyscraper Pancakes is somewhat of an exaggeration. They are more like Bungalow Pancakes.

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My 100th Post - A Mediocre Dessert!

I recently fell in love with a Tamasin Day-Lewis recipe for a Chocolate, Coffee and Raspberry Bavarois Tart. I was enamoured by the Chocolate and Coffee element although, I admit, I was seriously dubious about the raspberrys.

To my retro-drenched imagination, the word Bavarois conjured up images all sorts of expensive French Restaurants from the 1950s and a teeteringly tall, unmoulded, gelatine rich dessert, studded with Angelica and Cocktail Cherries. In fact, Bavarois (also known as Bavarian cream, from where it originates in Germany) is simply a chilled egg custard, unified with gelatine, served simply or other times more exotically as part of a glamorous Charlotte Russe or similar culinary construction.
Of course, my undying love of kitsch didn’t fail me and on Friday night I decided to make it, in between doing a greyhound home check. This was possibly where my first mistake happened.
In my eagerness to a) make the dessert and b) celebrate Friday night with some Kentucky Bourbon, I thought I could split the dessert preparations into two: the pastry and then the filling. All well and good I thought. I mixed up the ingredients for the chocolate rich pastry (this is actually the first time I’ve made the supposedly tricky chocolate pastry), and chilled the sticky ball in the fridge for half an hour.
Whilst waiting for the pastry dough to cohere in its inhospitable environment, I infused the milk with coffee granules (Carte Noire, my husbands favourite British coffee - just don't get him started on British coffee!!) for the custard and read the back of the gelatine packet, which I have never used before.
Gelatine sheets are great! Once soaked in cold water, they become like a prop from Alien or the goo that drove the Lutz Family crazy in the Amityville Horror. Oh, and they help to set desserts too....
So, half an hour passes. We have about 15 minutes before our home check so I decide to line my pastry tin with the rich, short chocolate pastry. A tip, from Tamasin to me to you: dust your rolling pin and surface with cocoa powder when rolling out chocolate pastry. Another tip, from me: do not use your expensive Green and Blacks for this, it’s a waste of expensive cocoa powder. Save it for the pastry.
When you roll the pastry out, it is like the texture of human skin, soft but pliable. You need to keep dusting your hands to work the dough into the ridges of the pie tin but it does fit eventually.
Ok, an hour or so later. Home check done, Kentucky Bourbon purchased, Takeaway Kebabs ordered. I set to work on completing the dessert.
I baked the chilled pie crust, blind (both the pastry case and the cook). Oops number two occurs here. Whilst baking the crust, I set to work on making the custard. It was whilst doing this, and leaning, somewhat agitatedly against the cooker, stirring, stirring, stirring, that I must have knocked the oven temperature switch to maximum, as opposed to the more gentle 180c. Eeeek!! The pastry comes out resembling the blackest of all black nights. It doesn’t smell burnt so I tell myself “don’t panic Freya, it’s just the cocoa powder that’s making it look really black, it will be just fine. Here, have another Bourbon.” Sometimes I think I do speak common sense.
The third error occurs around this point. The takeaway arrives and I am hungry. The custard is not thickening like it should but it is coating the back of the spoon. Greed overtakes artistic integrity at this point and I hurriedly stir in the wibbly wobbly gelatine sheets and hope for the best. It cools as I eat. For the record, the food was great.
After dinner, I whip the cream, fold that into the cooled coffee custard and gelatine mixture (which is still quite liquefied). I add the raspberries, which I am still really iffy about, pour it into the blackened pastry and put it into the fridge, hoping for the best.
After one more Bourbon, my mothering instincts kick in and I am checking the baby that is my Bavarois every 10 minutes, gently nudging the pie tin to see if it has set up. Paul tells me it will be just fine and to leave it overnight. Quite harshly too.
The next morning, after a fitful night spent dreaming about unset, collapsed Bavarois (so reminiscent of my disastrous Grasshopper Pie), I tentatively peer into the fridge. It looks like a set cheesecake. I jiggle the tin. No discernible wobble. I poke it with a cocktail stick. It comes out clean. I am jubilant! The gelatine worked! The custard was thick enough after all!
Of course, the final test - the taste test - is the one that matters. And it wasn’t an overwhelming success. As I had thought, the tart raspberries tasted unpleasant against the bitter coffee. The pastry bottom was overworked and leather-like (although not burnt!). A simple sweet shortcrust would have been far better. The coffee custard filling was delicious though, very much like coffee ice cream (which I love).
Some tweaking of the recipe, switching the pastrys, removing the fruit element, perhaps making individual tarts instead, would all make this a much better dish.
But at least the Kebab was good.

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A Follow Up - Salt Glaces and Marron Beef

So, I felt that a follow up report on my Salt Beef and Marron Glaces was probably long overdue.
On the tenth day (my true love gave to me…..some boiled beef and cabbage) I eagerly drained and rinsed the beef. I tentatively sniffed it. There has been a strange smell being emitted from the fridge for some time now and I just can’t locate it. I suspect it might be a wayward turkey leg but I can’t be sure.
The raw but preserved piece of silverside smelt only of its spices, not unpleasant at all. Obviously some further investigation of the fridge is required.
I plunged the beef into cold water, threw in a couple of peeled onions, some carrots and celery. This was for two reasons: a) to make a nice photo shoot (which I didn’t actually exploit in the end) and b) because I don’t like the smell of meat boiling.
Lots of brownish scum came to surface, which I allude to both the proteins in the beef being discharged and the salt preservative kissing goodbye to its beefy bed of the last 10 days. I skimmed that off, put a lid on the pan and let it simmer in its juices for the next two hours (as per the recipe).
I was intrigued and impressed to see that the beef retained its raw, crimson colour throughout the duration of the cooking time – a sure sign that the curing salt (and saltpetre) had worked.
After two hours, I lifted the meat and its boiled vegetables out of the cooking liquor (which had a curious salty/sweet flavour) and, with the patience of the last ten days finally leaving me, cut straight into it. I was greeted with a bright pink, shredded looking middle – kind of like an interior from a Shag painting. The flavour was vaguely reminiscent of the greasy slabs that we get in tins over here, known as Corned Beef, but considerably more flavourful (and not greasy). It was best in sandwiches, with soft, thick cut bread, smeared with mustard. I can certainly imagine why this was considered a great treat at Christmas time. The whole anticipatory process of salting the beef, all ten days of it, produces the most perfect (and not really that labour intensive) cold meat.


And to the Marron Glaces. Even less labour
intensive than the Salted Beef, the success of these preserved, candied chestnuts relies almost entirely on the quality and age of your chestnuts. Mine were a little bit older, they had shrivelled ever so slightly in their shells and would have been useless for anything else. Once glaced, they tasted pretty much like those expensive ones you buy at posh delicatessens, but visually they were slightly weedier looking. I imagine mine would have been the rejects that the workers at the Factoire du Marron Glace would have been allowed to take home at the end of the week. Nonetheless, scrawny nuts aside, they will be wonderful chopped up and used in all sorts of luxurious desserts and biscuits and cakes. And it saved me ten quid for not much effort at all.
To conclude, things that might initially seem daunting or complicated can actually be very simple. Whilst I don’t have the patience to knead bread dough for 15 minutes (unlike my baking powerhouse of a husband), I can just about muster up the strength of character to turn a piece of meat in salt cure once a day or bring a pan of chestnuts in sugar syrup up to the boil once a day for three days. What’s next? Jerky? Growing my own Cacao Beans to produce my own chocolate? You’ll be the first to know…

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Pig in a Trough

As the months drift by, I find myself pushed out of the kitchen more and more. Freya has been cooking like crazy and I can only make quick recipes and even those are generally made late at night. There was a time when I was the only one in the kitchen, but now I'm more often than not, relegated to the couch (boring now that Sky doesn't show King of the Hill) or alone in the basement ("Don't you have some wiring to do?"). I really miss the days when I could roll out some masa and boiled pork on a corn husk and steam tamales or meticulously prepare a very hearty chili (Mmmmm, chili!). And the funniest thing about it is that Freya used to love my cooking, especially my gumbo!

If and when I get to cook now, it's never a big affair. I get hassled even when I make something quick. Take the subject of this article for instance. I have mentioned Pig in a Trough at least twice in this blog, so she must have known that I'd need a slot of time in the kitchen! The bread was already made which meant the hard part was out of the way. And yet when I went into the kitchen and put a pan on the stove the response was, "What are you doing? I need that pan to make custard!"

Pig in a Trough is a very simple spinach and dill dip. It has gone under many names in our house, but when I first made it for Freya's family it was called Pig's Delight. Freya's grandma either genuinely can't remember a thing you say to her or she thinks it's funny to pretend she can't. Over time the name of this dip went through several permutations: Pig in the Ghetto, Pig in a Hellhole, Pig's Soup, "that dip in bread you make." For some reason Pig in a Trough stuck, possibly as it was an apt description of the grandma with her face in the breadbowl (Please don't read this Betty!)

The first thing you'll need is a decent round loaf of bread. If you're trying to keep it simple feel free to buy a nice loaf from the bakery or grocery store, but if you really want to impress you could make your own. The rice bread I made on Wednesday was used for todays Pig. The rest of the recipe is simply a matter of measuring and mixing a few ingredients. In spite of this, I have never had leftovers and everybody who's had it has requested the recipe.

PIG IN A TROUGH
Ingredients
Large round loaf of bread with the top cut off and insides scooped out and reserved.
Spinach-Either 300g/6oz. fresh spinach leaves or a small bag of frozen chopped spinach.
1 Tablespoon dill (we used dry out of necessity, but fresh would be better)
1-2 Teaspoons celery salt, depending on taste.
400g/8oz. Mayonnaise
400g/8oz. Sour cream

METHOD
1. For fresh spinach: Chop the raw spinach leaves and drop into boiling water for a minute until wilted (or, if you aren't allowed to use a pan!!! place in a bowl and cover with boiling water from a kettle and leave for about five minutes while you stand in the corner.). Drain and squeeze out all excess water.
For frozen spinach: Thaw completely and squeeze out all excess water
2. Thoroughly mix spinach and all remaining ingredients in a bowl.
3. Transfer dip into bread bowl, cover with bread lid or tin foil and refrigerate for at least one hour, preferably overnight.
4. Serve with cut up bits of reserved bread, raw vegetables, or crackers.

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Book(s) of the Season

If you're feeling like you need Delia's guiding hand this Christmas, or you want Nigella to ennervate your Christmas celebrations, check out my latest article on the Well-Fed Network, conveniently on Christmas Cookbooks.....

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Another Day in the Lab

Baking is a bit intimidating for a lot of people. I’ve known people who can cook a really good bit of fish or season a steak to perfection, but ask them to make some rolls to have on the side and they become instantly sullen. I think the reason that baking evokes so much fear in so many would-be chefs is the methodology of baking.

Baking is a science. If you’ve ever spent time in a chemistry lab you’ll know that you must be sure of quantities and reaction times or risk blowing up the entire Science Department. While there’s little fear of blowing up your kitchen with biscuit dough, it is important to understand the chemical process of baking to yield good results.

Making a decent loaf of bread is the result of a variety of factors. People tend to think of bread in terms of components. Yeast, flour, and water are indeed useful, but the single most important ingredient in bread is carbon dioxide. The device whereby every loaf of bread, every roll, and every muffin you make rises is the distribution of CO2 throughout the dough.

There are certain rules of thumb I tend to follow when I bake bread:

Rule #1: Activate your yeast.
I tend to bake with potato water (reserve water from boiling potatoes) for a softer loaf of bread with a bit more longevity. If you use this water (warm, but not hot (yeast dies at 140°F)), mixed with a teaspoon of sugar, to activate your yeast, you’ll have a really good foundation to build on. I allow my mixture to stand for at least ten minutes until it gets very frothy.

Rule #2: Sift your flour. Sifted flour has more air in it. Don’t make your yeast work harder than it has to.

Rule #3: Knead your dough until it’s done, not until you’re bored.

Rule #4: Allow your dough to rise for as long as possible. This, of course, is not always easy, but do it anyway. Most bread dough requires an initial rising and a secondary rising. The first rising in a bowl in a warm place. The second in the pan it will be baked in. In most cases, you can let the dough rise in the fridge overnight, but make sure it’s up to room temperature again before you punch it down.

Rule #5: Score your bread with a razor. If you imagine your dough as a plastic sack tightly packed with sponges. When you slice through the bag the sponges are free to pop out. The outside of a ball of dough develops a surface tension from kneading which traps air inside. If you make a clean cut through that skin your bread will rise much higher as carbon dioxide escapes through the cuts. A knife is not sharp enough for this procedure though, so I keep a razor blade on hand for this procedure.
Rule #6: Turn your oven up as high as it will go for the initial cooking, even if this is only for five minutes. Bread dough rises more in the first few minutes of baking than at any other time. Bakers refer to this as “Oven Spring” as the bread can increase in size by 1/3 in just 2-3 minutes.

Rule #7: Humidify your oven. Keeping a bottle with an atomizer around is very important. This isn’t to lower the temperature of the oven; it serves to keep the outside of your dough moist. This prevents a crust from forming too rapidly. Subsequently, your bread has longer to rise. I generally spray my oven thoroughly before my dough goes in and then every ten minutes or so until the bread is finished.

Rule #8: (Taken from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.) Don’t Panic!

This week I have made rice bread. The recipe is slightly unusual in that it makes use of cooked rice and rice water, but it is also very simple to make. I have made two variants.

The first was last Saturday at my mother-in-law’s house. For that version I slightly undercooked the rice (easy cook long grain) leaving a bit of bite in the middle. I left the grains of rice whole and mixed them into my flour. The rice was distributed throughout the bread and some was on the outside of the loaf. It was similar in texture to a seeded loaf, but without exacerbating my Freya’s intolerance to seeds and grains. My mother-in-law ate an entire loaf and didn’t complain despite her problems with white bread. Freya and I polished our loaf off in about two hours some of it going to make massive grilled cheese sandwiches!

The second loaf, made tonight, was prepared a bit differently. I cooked the rice (Basmati) until it went mushy. I drained the water into a bowl and then forced all the rice through the sieve with a pestle. I would give you more information about the taste and texture that this method yields, but we’re saving the bread for Pig in a Trough tomorrow night. I’ll have to give you that recipe and tell you about the bread later.

RICE BREAD
Ingredients
6cups plain white flour sifted
¼ cup rice, any white variety
2 cups water
7g dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt

METHOD
1. Boil rice in water for twenty minutes until tender or longer until mushy. Drain water through a sieve into a bowl. Reserve rice for later or push through the sieve with a pestle.
2. Allow water to cool briefly (Temperature should be about 100°F). Add yeast and sugar, mix thoroughly, and allow ten minutes to activate.
3. Mix flour, salt, and any remaining rice in a bowl. Add yeast and water and mix until all ingredients are amalgamated.
4. Turn out onto a floured work surface and knead for 15 minutes adding more flour if dough is too sticky or more water if dough is too dry (I boil a kettle and let the water cool a bit before I start making my dough. Then if I need some tepid water while I’m mixing I can take it from the kettle.).
5. Put dough in a clean bowl, cover with a damp cloth and allow to rise for 2 hours. Punch down the dough and knead for about a minute. Reshape the dough and put in bread pan or onto a pizza stone. Make a few slashes in the bread with a razor and allow to rise for 30 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 450°F/230°C. When the oven is up to temperature, humidify. Put the bread in the oven. After 15 minutes, turn the oven down to 400°F/200°C, misting with water again. Cook for an additional 15 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

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Unusual Ingredient of the Week - Kulfi

So, a dish more than an ingredient I concur, but still fairly unusual nonetheless.

Kulfi is an Indian Ice Cream, quite unlike European or American Ice Creams in that it doesn’t resemble sorbet, it isn’t custard based and it doesn’t contain cream. It resembles the Italian Gelato, and the methods of preparation are similar, boiling milk to reduce it, adding sugar and then flavourings.

What this produces is an ice cream that is very dense because very little air is incorporated into it. The flavour is richly scented with Cardomom and either ground pistachios (which turns the ice cream a delicate pale green colour) or mango (which turns the ice cream a big, bold buttercup yellow shade).

Kulfi is usually frozen in Kulfi Moulds: long pyramid shapes that are turned out into a bowl when frozen, and allowed to defrost slightly.

I first encountered Kulfi when we ordered an Indian Takeaway. I adore Indian sweets, they’re intense, brain-numbing sweetness is highly seductive to me, so I thought I’d give the Ice Cream a try. I ordered Pistachio, I enjoy green ice cream. No other justification.

After we ate our main meal, we certainly couldn’t manage the ice cream so we left it in the freezer for a couple of days until I remembered it was there. I triumphantly pulled it out from the freezer and turned out the little green pyramids into bowls. I sprinkled them with some slithered almonds and allowed them to warm up ever so slightly. The first mouthful: a beautifully aromatic ice cream, it has a slightly grainy texture which I assume comes from the ground nuts and then that unusual pistachio flavour begins to tingle your tastebuds. The ice cream melts in your mouth like frozen milk. It is not heavy or overly creamy like English Ice Cream. It is simply heavenly.

This weekend I have bought – and this is the antithesis of everything that I usually stand for but pistachios are very expensive to buy – a packet mix of Kulfi (from Spices of India). Just add milk and freeze. I don’t have the proper moulds so I’m not sure what I’ll use yet: I do have an old fashioned copper jelly mould shaped like a fish that my grandmother donated to me. Perhaps I’ll use that....

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A Delicious (and easy!) Work Night Meal

And as some meals are completely disastrous, other meals just work in perfect symbiosis, without the cook even really trying.
When I left for work yesterday morning, I had not the foggiest notion of what to prepare for that evening’s supper. I knew that I had minced beef, frozen peas, bags of mystery produce and some fish, all crammed into my once-seemed-large-but-now-seems-tiny freezer.
Well, we haven’t had salmon in a while, I thought and I knew that I had some lovely red Wild Alaskan Salmon tucked away somewhere, underneath some frozen blackberries. Now, what to do with it?So, I got to work and started scrolling through pages of salmon recipes until I came across one that caught my eye (and tastebuds): Salmon En Croute! Of course! I love salmon, I love pastry! Perfetto!
The recipe used Filo Pastry, of which I had half a packet left over from the Chickpea Filo Pie that I made ages ago. The recipe also made a pea puree and a herby butter which you slathered the salmon with before encasing it in pastry.
Now, I didn’t have half the ingredients for all the additional fripperies (i.e. the posh peas and the fancy butter) so I utilised my previous knowledge of cooking similar things and came up with slightly-posher-than-nornal-but-not-that-posh mushy peas and shallot butter (which you will remember I smeared on toast topped with herring roe).
I served this with some Courgette Fritters which sound complicated but were so easy. I had a pack of 10 day old Courgettes going sad rapidly in the fridge so this was perfect. Courgettes can get a bitter taste when they become a bit old but grated with some red onion and prinked with a teaspoon of dried mint they become so much more than just bulk for Ratatouille.
The fritters were probably not the best accompaniment to the salmon, probably a salad or, in my case, some potatoes in any variant, would be preferable but those Courgettes were not getting any younger.
Anyway, the outcome of the dish was this: my husband raved about it, I raved about it, the dogs raved about the skin from the salmon that they got – everyone happy.

SALMON IN FILO PASTRY WITH TWO SAUCES Serves 2
Ingredients:
2 Salmon Fillets (I used Wild Alaskan but whatever you can get is fine). Remove the skin. Give to your dogs if you’re feeling kind.
About 16 Sheets Filo Pastry (that’s about half a pack, you can freeze the rest if you wrap it up well).
30g Butter, melted, for brushing the Filo Pastry with
For the Shallot Butter:
30g Butter, unsalted
2 Shallots, finely chopped
Salt and Pepper
Click Here for the Mushy Peas Recipe
METHOD:
Preheat Oven to 200c
Make the mushy peas as per the recipe.
To make the Shallot Butter, simply squidge together the butter with the shallots and season well.
On the baking tray that you intend to bake the fish parcels on, carefully lay two sheets of the parchment-like Filo. Brush it with the melted butter, lay another two sheets, brush with butter, and so on until you have used eight sheets up.
Put a smear of the mushy peas, roughly the size of the salmon, in the middle of your pastry layers. Lay one of the salmon fillets on top of the pea-green sauce, then smear half of the butter on top of the fish.
Bring up one side of the pastry over the salmon, brush with butter, then repeat with the opposite side, and finally the shorter sides. Your salmon should now be completely encased. Brush once more with butter and turn the parcel over so that the seams are facing downwards. Brush the top with butter.
Repeat with the second salmon fillet.
Bake in the over for 10-12 minutes, or until the filo has started to go golden and crisp. Any longer than this and you run the risk of the fish drying out.
When you cut the fish open, the delicately flavoured butter will ooze out onto your plate. Delicious!
This would also make a really simple dinner party dish because they can be made in advance (providing you keep them wrapped up and refrigerated otherwise the pastry will dry out) because they look quite flash really.

COURGETTE FRITTERS Makes about 16 fritters
Ingredients:
3 Courgettes grated. Squeeze out any excess liquid.
1 Medium Red Onion grated
1 Teaspoon Dried Mint
1 Egg
Salt and Pepper
75g Breadcrumbs (I used wholemeal bread but that’s all I had, white will be fine)
Some Flour for dredging
METHOD:
Mix together the onion and the courgette and the teaspoon of mint. The smell of Greek cooking really hits you at this point. Not that I have ever eaten in Greece but sometimes a smell can be evocative of the pictures you form in your head, whether misinformed or not.
Now, stir in the breadcrumbs and egg, combining thoroughly. Season well. Courgettes are quite bland and love being salted (not assaulted).
On a plate, pour out some flour.
Flour your hands and start to form the Fritters, about the size of walnuts. I had some that were much bigger than walnuts but all this achieves is harassment when flipping them in the pan. Now coat them in the flour. I found it easier to do about 6 at a time on the plate.
Heat 100ml Vegetable Oil in a deep frying pan (not a saucepan).
When it starts to look hazy, the oil is ready to work its magic on the pale green raw fritters.
Drop them carefully into the hot oil and fry on each side – about 2 minutes – until light brown and crisp.
Drain on kitchen paper and serve! These would be great with a Tsatsiki ype sauce or, as my husband, the eternal American suggests, Ranch Dressing.
Perfect for late night movie watching snacking!

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More Christmas Preparations...

And so the Christmas Preparations keep keeping on. Reaching the 11th of December and it now seems acceptable to make the first batch of Mince Pies using my homemade Mincemeat. I have also started to prepare some Marron Glaces, using the net of Chestnuts in my vegetable bowl that are starting to go a little wrinkled.
At the weekend I made two (yes, two!) Christmas Puddings and the Christmas Cake was made weeks ago.

If it seems like I’m being a girlie swot then you’d probably be right! However, if you’re thinking that my Christmas Presents are all bought and wrapped and that my cards are all written in, then you’d be wrong. My seasonal organisational skills stop and start in the kitchen (and in the supermarket).
I love all these preparations anyway. It is not too difficult for me to get motivated in the kitchen when I can use my star shaped cookie cutters and crack open jars of mincemeat that were made when the fields were still yellow and the sun was still warm. And between you and me, I don’t even like Christmas Puddings or Cake normally but because I’ve mostly had total control over the ingredients, I can ensure that none of those burnt tasting little currants enter into the festivities.
Furthermore, none of this stuff is actually difficult or particularly time-consuming to do. A pudding needs the fruit to marinade overnight then it’s mixed up, in one bowl, with everything else, just like a cake. The difficult part is covering the pudding basin for steaming. That’s when it helps to have either a) two pairs of hands or b) someone whose been awarded their Boy Scout Badge for knot tying.
Even Mince Pies don’t put up too much of a challenge. True, the sweet pastry is a little temperamental to work with, but how it is pressing circles of pastry into a Yorkshire pudding tin and pilling them up with mincemeat?
Finally, the Marron Glaces, the most expensive of all fruit confections, are terribly easy. All that is required here is patience and time to peel them. I am excited about giving them as gifts this year because they really do taste rather special and are wonderful chopped up in rich, decadent puddings. Plus, they last for ages and ages. At least until New Years...
Of course, what I’m failing to mention here is that I’m not cooking Christmas Lunch. That accolade goes to the maker of the best roast dinner: my mum. It is all very well being prepared but on the big day the elemental design of the Christmas Lunch needs to be a finely tuned operation. Vegetables need to warm when they reach the table. The meat needs to be cooked in rested for at least half an hour. Some people (i.e. me) also demand Cauliflower Cheese so a white sauce has to be made (I’ve been told that I’m making my own this year). Are the Yorkshire Puddings going to rise? Is the gravy going to be lumpy? The table has to look suitably festive, candles have to be lit, the best cutlery has to be dusted off and polished.
But once everyone is seated, with a celebratory glass of wine or sherry in front of them, plates visibly buckling under the weight of all the side dishes, the pudding simmering contentedly in the kitchen, we can all relax, pull crackers, wear silly hats and enjoy the rest of the day.

Because you only make Mince Pies once a year, I think it’s well worth making a decent sweet shortcrust to complement the fruity filling. This pastry is biscuit-like, crumbly but with a crunch and a lovely sweet taste.
THE BEST MINCE PIE RECIPE
Ingredients:
140g/5oz cold butter, diced225g/8oz plain flour50g/2oz ground almonds50g/2oz golden caster sugarpinch of salt1 egg yolk1-2 tsp cold water
280g/10oz good quality mincemeat (I used my own)1 egg, beatenicing sugar for dusting

METHOD:
Mix together the butter, flour and pinch of salt until a sandy texture is achieved. Lightly stir in the almonds and sugar, mix in the egg yolk until a soft dough is formed. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for at least an hour.
Preheat Oven to 200C
Lightly grease a Yorkshire Pudding Tin (12 hole).
Once the dough is chilled, roll out on a well floured surface to about 3mm thick.. Cut out circles using a cutter that is slightly large than the bottom of the holes in your tin. Press a circle lightly into each hole, gently working it up the sides.
Fill with a small spoonful of mincemeat.
Top with a pastry star (or any other shape), brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with some caster sugar.
Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.
Leave to cool and gently turn out using a small spatula to work them out.


MARRON GLACES:
Ingredients:
Fresh Chestnuts. I used a small net which yielded about 300g.
Vanilla (or regular) Caster Sugar 300g. Remember that whatever the weight of peeled chestnuts you have, match that in sugar.
300ml Water
Vanilla Pod or Extract
METHOD:
Peeling the Chestnuts. The easiest and quickest way to complete this unenviable task is to plunge the chestnuts into boiling water for a couple of minutes. The brown papery skin should come away with the outer shell.
Once you have peeled the chestnuts, place them in a large pan of cold water and bring up to the boil. Simmer for 15 minutes or until a skewer pierces them easily. Take care not to overboil them or they will disintegrate. If they do start to disintegrate, it isn’t the end of the world. Continue the process anyway using the broken pieces. You can now buy Marron Glaces pieces as well as whole Chestnuts, which is an indication of how tricky it is to glace whole nuts.
Gently using a slotted spoon, remove the chestnuts to a colander and drain.
Meanwhile, heat together the 300ml water and 300g Sugar until boiling and the sugar is dissolved.
Carefully add the Chestnuts, bring back to the boil, then immediately turn off.
Cover the pan with the syrup and chestnuts and leave to cool in a warm environment.
The next day, bring the pan of chestnuts and syrup up to the boil again, turning off as soon as it starts to boil. Cover and leave.
Repeat the next night, adding a few drops of vanilla extract if you didn’t use vanilla sugar. By this time, the Chestnuts should have absorbed all the syrup. It there is a lot left, repeat the process once more.
This process of gradually inundating the nuts with the sugar syrup preserves them but also helps to keep their shape. If they were boiled for longer at a time, they nuts (or fruit) would stand the risk of disintegration.
To complete the process, again using a slotted spoon, delicately remove the candied nuts and place them on a cooling rack that has been lined with greaseproof paper.
Preheat the oven to 70c and place the nuts in the oven to dry out. Leave the oven door open.
Once they have set up, you can place them daintily in little petits four cases if you're feeling in a giving and sharing mood, or just eat them straight down!

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The Well-Fed Network Food Blog Awards 2006!

Yes, it's that time of the year again...blog awards! The Well-Fed Network are graciously hosting the awards this time around so if anyone knows of a food blog that is deserving of an award (for example, Writing At The Kitchen Table...), follow this link and express your devotion to that blog!
http://www.wellfed.net/
I have a few ideas of my own for worthy blogs (that don't include my own) and I feel that it's good to support the smaller and newer sites too.
Happy Voting!

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Two Rustic Dishes

As the title says, two rustic meals: the Main Course from France, the Dessert English, both simple and outstanding.
You may recall that I bought some salt cure from the Sausage Making.org recently. Whilst my beef is still curing (three days left and counting!), the real reason I had bought the cure was for a recipe I fell madly in love with: Petit Sales Au Lentilles. I first saw this on Rick Stein’s French Odyssey (and I promise, no more Stein recipes for at least the duration of this year!). Actually, what Rick Stein achieved with his show was something that very few TV chefs have: a comprehensive and interesting culinary tour of France. It is currently the norm to do the Italian thing and the once uber-important French cuisine has been pushed by the wayside.
I think that the main reason us Brits at least have withdrawn from French food is because of its seeming complexity. I remember as a child reading Cordon Bleu cookbooks that my mother had been given as wedding presents and being amazed at the intricacy of the dishes. I was also a little bit awed and more than a little bit scared by the use of aspic and carrots cut into diamond shapes.
In fact, this kind of intimidating cuisine is rarely seen outside of expensive restaurants.
I enjoy food that is simple but tasty. I have mentioned on many occasions that I love Cabbage Stuffed in the Troo Style (a French way of cooking cabbage and sausage, using just those two ingredients and judicious seasoning), a basic dish that is not glamorous, it doesn’t scream ‘eat me!’ when you look at it yet it fulfils and simultaneously sooths the appetite in the same way that our mothers Shepherds Pie used to.
These simple rustic dishes utilise the most basic of flavours to make them key players in the final dish: carrots, baby onions, the omnipresent bouquet garni, celery, sea salt. All of these ingredients are quintessential to a great rustic dish. Add a cheap cut of meat, in the instance of Petit Sale au Lentilles, Belly Pork, and the recipe virtually cooks itself.
I had reservations about the success of the dish: would it be too watery, too bland? Was the meat going to be tough? Should I cook some potatoes as ‘filler’, just in case? In fact, everything was perfect.
Let me elaborate. The belly pork has to be salted for no more than four hours, hence the name Petit Sale, small salt or lightly salted. I awoke late so I only had two and a half hours of salty marinating allowed for my humble piece of belly pork.
Once the petit sales process is over, the pork is rinsed, simmered in plain old water for about forty five minutes, then Puy Lentils, Carrots, Baby Onions, Celery and Herbs are added. Once cooked, it is enriched with a knob of butter and some freshly chopped parsley. The lentils ensure that the broth is thick, the vegetables and herbs give the dish its flavour, along with the slightly salty pork (I didn’t salt the dish at any point during or after cooking), the meat was tender and the potatoes were too much!
Dished up, it looks beautiful, like a Van Gogh painting, all bold and chunky. I served it with some simple boiled Savoy Cabbage, and Sautee Potatoes (which were more than a slight case of culinary overkill) and everybody commented on the flavour of the pork. The brief curing procedure had not produced a salty meat but a richly flavoured meat. My husband noted that this was the type of dish he would like to be served at a restaurant but knows he would never see it on a menu because of it's unassuming demeanour.

As a side note, I cannot recommend the usage of brining or curing too highly (on special occasions). Fish will be my next experiment.
For dessert, I wanted something light and cleansing. I was thinking of the acidity of lemons. I remembered seeing a recipe for a Lemon Posset and being curious. After all, how exciting can a dessert comprising of double cream and sugar be? Ahh, well in fact it can be just as exciting as a chocolate mousse or a chestnut gateaux, for surprise of surprises, the two ingredients cooked together form a dense cream, thicker and richer than Clotted Cream, that is a perfect base for all manner of flavourings.
A Posset is a mediaeval dessert. Well, it had to be. The name alone evokes phantasmagorical images of maidens in tall pointy hats, wearing low brocade dresses strolling through orange gardens, playing mournful songs on a mandolin, flanked by five long legged Salukis.
So, perhaps my imagination is overly vivid, but the dessert is truly what fantasies are made of.

In fact, a Posset is a Middle Age concoction, whereby hot milk was curdled by adding wine. It was then drank as a curative rather than for pleasure. The Posset was so popular that Posset Tea Sets were commonplace in the homes of the upper-class, a Posset being taken before bed to aid sleep (much the same as a hot drink before bed today). As time went on, the posset became far more palatable: mulled wine, nutmeg, cinnamon and mace were added as flavourings, with eggs and sugar used as thickeners, the most famous of which, The Sack Posset, is noted by Samuel Pepys in his diaries.
PETIT SALES AU LENTILLES (taken from Rick Stein’s French Odyssey) Serves 3
Ingredients:
1kg Piece Belly Pork, preferably not rolled but if like mine it is, gently flatten it out, so it resembles a rack of ribs. Rind still on.
200g Sea Salt mixed with 1 gram of Salt Cure (other brands may require more or less per weight of meat so check the instructions carefully). Traditional French Rustic Dish aside, I was rather loath to use all my Maldon Salt and then throw it away, so I used 75g Sea Salt and made the rest up with regular granulated table salt.
6 Small Carrots, halved
15 Baby Onions, or as many as you like/have the strength of eyes to peel
3 Sticks Celery, peeled with a vegetable peeler and cut into 3cm chunks
300g Puy Lentils
Bouquet Garni comprising two bay leaves, some sprigs parsley, thyme and rosemary
15g Unsalted Butter
More Parsley, this time chopped
METHOD:
Four hours before you intend to cook the dish (so, about 6 hours before you intend to serve it), salt the pork. Place it in a non-metallic shallow baking dish. Pour over half the salt mix, rub well into the pork. Turn the meat over and massage in the remaining salt. Cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for four hours.
After the four hours, rinse the salt from the pork. Place in a deep saucepan (I used a sauté pan) or heatproof casserole dish (which looks nice when you carry it to the table) and cover with about 1 litre of water. Bring to the boil removing any scum that rises to the surface. This is just the protein and any remaining salt discharging itself from its porky dwelling.
Turn down to a simmer, cover and cook for about 30-45 minutes.
Now gently stir in the greenish/black, pebble-like tiny puy lentils. Add the Bouquet Garni.
Leave to simmer for 15 minutes whilst you prepare the vegetables.
Now add the vegetables and cook until tender. Depending on the size of the carrots, this could be anything between 20 minutes to another 40.
Gently remove the pork and cut, lengthwise, into thick, generous slabs.
Add the butter and parsley to the lentils and vegetables and stir through. Pour into deep, wide bowls or onto plates, top with the pork pieces. Serve with some plainly cooked cabbage.
n.b. The original recipe called for smoked sausage to be added to the dish. I was unable to get hold of any in time but please feel free to add some, cut into chunks, with the vegetables.

LEMON POSSET: Serves 3
Ingredients:
284ml Double Cream
100g Vanilla Caster Sugar (if you don’t have vanilla caster sugar, add half a teaspoon of vanilla extract when you remove from the heat)
Juice of 1 Lemon
METHOD:
Heat the cream and sugar in a large saucepan. Boil for three minutes.
Remove from the heat and quickly stir in the lemon juice and vanilla extract (if using). The cream will thicken as you add the lemon.
Strain into a jug (to remove any skin that the hot cream might have produced) and pour into ramekins. Chill for at least six hours. I chilled them overnight.
They will set to an incredibly firm but creamy texture and taste perfectly tangy. Serve with some butter biscuits or fresh raspberries. Dust with icing sugar if you’re feeling particularly high-falutin’.
Close your eyes and enjoy...

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