Halloween cookery

Surely, it has to be Pumpkin for dinner on Halloween night? Once we had waved goodbye to the last trick-or-treater we sat down to a dinner of duck with a plum and chilli sauce (very tasty - find the recipe here) followed by pumpkin pie.



The pie was lightly spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. It was a good mix, and a comforting wintery pudding. I served it still warm from the oven with some cream.



Halloween duty done.



I have to confess that fruity pies are still my favourite, but I did enjoy this. It would definitely be a better portable pie for a picnic, whereas fruit pies go soggy and don't travel at all well.

Portuguese

I have never cooked Portuguese food before, but I came across a recipe for clams with pork the other week which sounded intriguing.

One of its main appeals was how speedy it sounded. Simply marinate the pork in a tablespoon of chilli sauce, some crushed garlic and a little salt. Stirfry it, add a squeeze of lemon, then a couple of handfuls of clams and cook (with a lid on) over a high heat for a few minutes until the clams have opened.

This was a Two Fat Ladies recipe. Well it was until I figured they were Fat ladies for a reason and cut the butter, oil, and lard down to just a little bit of oil.

We had this with noodles and a bit of kale. Tasty, zingy, quick.

Shame Dan had gorged himself on sausages (6 of them at 4pm - how greedy?!And what's wrong with eating lunch at lunchtime?) only a couple of hours before and hardly ate anything. That kinda pisses me off!

Mr McGregor

I am possibly not quite as bad as Mr McGregor since I didn't actually try to catch and eat Peter Rabbit, however we did have Rabbit Stew this week.



I spotted rabbit at the butcher's and bought some on impulse. The butcher said stew was the way to go with this particular specimen.

I'd never eaten rabbit before, and Dan had never had wild rabbit. Although he did tell me a charming anecdote about killing his pet rabbit when he was a kid and getting his mum to cook it for dinner. What a lovely boy I've ended up with.

Anyway, rabbit stew; it was quite tasty done to Jamie Oliver's stew recipe, although the meat was very lean so might be better in a creamy or yoghurt-y sauce in future. That would just keep it a bit moister I think.

The butcher did offer me a pigs trotter to go in the stew to up the fat content, but I felt that rabbit was enough new-ness for one meal. Couldn't quite bring myself to use a pig's foot!

Daring Cooks Challenge #3

Dolma/Cold Stuffed Grape Leaves

Our October 2010 hostess, Lori of Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness, has challenged The Daring Cooks to stuff grape leaves. Lori chose a recipe from Aromas of Aleppo and a recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

This was the October challenge from the Daring Cooks website. I was pretty excited to have a go since I love stuffed vine leaves.

First things first though; an expedition was required to find somewhere that sold preserved vine leaves. None in Sainsburys, or Marks&Sparks, or Tesco, or the Greek deli in Oxford. Hmmmm. Where next?

Fortunately I had a monday evening trip to London last week, and even more fortunately some elementary googling told me that there was a Greek Grocery on Moscow Road. The Athenian Grocery turned out to be a veritable treasure trove of yummy treats. I'll be back. But in the meantime, a packet of vine leaves in brine were procurred, carried across London, taken to a concert, and traipsed back to the Cotswolds via Oxford. I hope they enjoyed their evening out.

It was easy to make the filling for these, and they were easy to cook. The fiddly bit was separating the vine leaves ready to roll up without ripping them. I knew all those years of striving to unwrap my Cadburys creme eggs without tearing the wrapper would come in handy one day! Excellent training for separating preserved vine leaves. I did rip a few, but they were mostly OK, and there were more than I needed in the pack anyway. A few did spilt during the cooking or when taking them out of the pan, but they were mostly fine. The taste was good.



Given how much I like eating stuffed vine leaves I'll definitely make these again. I won't put quite so much filling in each one next time (must remember that rice expands with cooking!) and hopefully that will solve some of the issues of them splitting.
Now then...when am I next going to be passing Moscow Road in London?

Also, this Sunday I finally made Dan one of his very first recipe requests; Beef Wellington. I served it up with Dauphinois potatoes, which made him one very happy man. He ate too much though. In fact, he was so greedy that he had to lie on the sofa after to let his stomach recover. Although now I think about it, that was probably an elaborate ruse so get out of doing the washing-up.

Clams and jams

I had a weekend off! Hurrah!

That meant I had time to do some slightly more interesting cooking.

First up: clams. So much prettier than mussels and so much easier to prep (no scrapping off nasty beards and barnacles).
I steamed them with a combination of chilli, garlic and coconut milk and served them with noodles.

We'll gloss over the fact that I nearly gave Dan a heart attack because the (one) chilli was so hot. I'll be cooking these again next time I see them in the fishmonger. I'll try not to make my boyfriend cry next time (wuss!).



Then since I was a lady with far too much time on my hands this weekend, I made jam. Pear jam with dark chocolate sprinkles. Oh yes. I am a culinary genius. It was gorgeous!

Actually, I am not a culinary genius at all... this lady is.



I'm inspired to have more lazy weekends, and each one will start with fancy french bread and home made jams for breakfast.

When's the weekend? Is it here yet?

Argentina

My Dad tells an interesting story about being on a ship that docked in Buenos Aires. They were carrying coal, but the next cargo was to be grain. After unloading the coal in Buenos Aires they had about 48 hours to the next port in which to completely clean the hold of any trace of coal dust.
However, red wine was super cheap in Argentina, and the sailors got so drunk on it that they gave themselves alcohol poisoning and were completely incapacitated. Dad and the other officer cadets worked round the clock to clean the ship, staying up working for the full 48 hours straight. He was 17 at the time and had only been in the navy for a year. He swears that it was the hard physical work like that experience, as well as the poor food once you'd been at sea for more than a week, which meant that he stopped growing almost as soon as he joined the merchant navy.

But anyway, I digress. This week I made an Argentinian dish - Empanadas. Hence the musing on my Dad's tales of his travels. They're the South American version of Cornish Pasties! The filling was a combination of chicken, onion, leek, paprika, cumin, stock, pear, and peach. My fear was that the pear and peach chunks would make these wierdly sweet for a dinner dish, but the stock and spices balanced out the sweetness of the fruit remarkably well. I cheated and bought ready-rolled puff pastry for the outside; the ultimate in convenience! I baked the empanadas in the oven and served them with green vegetables and a few new potatoes, but if you made smaller portions they would work well with a salad for lunch.

My other recipe this week was to take advantage of the last of the wild blackberries which I had picked at the weekend; Blackberry and apple souffle.
I actually made blackberry, apple and pear souffle as I already had some stewed apple and pear in the freezer so it seemed sensible to use that rather than starting from scratch!

Here's the recipe (enough for 2 souffles):
Blackberry and Apple Souffle


(Sorry for the horrible picture - souffles sink fast once they're out of the oven so you have to 'snap' and serve!)

120g blackberries
1/2 apple
squeeze of lemon juice
10g sugar

1 egg white
30g caster sugar

butter for greasing the souffle dishes

Grease the souffle dishes with a small amount of butter.
Preheat the oven to 200C and place a baking tray in the oven to warm.
Peel, core and dice the apple. Place in a saucepan with a squeeze of lemon, 10g sugar, a splash of water and the blackberries. Heat gently until the apples break down to a pulp, then take off the heat and allow to cool a little. Press the fruit mixture through a sieve to make a fine puree.
Put a tablespoon of fruit puree in the bottom of each souffle dish and put the rest to one side.
Whisk the egg white until stiff, then add the sugar and whisk again until it is a glossy meringue-like mix. Gently fold in the remaining fruit puree with a metal spoon, then spoon it into the souffle dishes.
Put the souffle dishes onto the preheated baking tray and bake for 10-15 minutes until golden brown on top.
I suggest serving this with vanilla icecream.

For a man who claims not to have sweet tooth Dan does seem to have a definite enthusiasm for fruit puddings. This one was declared to be a keeper. He almost licked the plate!