Pork en Croute

Christmas has crept up without me noticing this year. It feels like only a moment ago it was October, and now all of a sudden its only a couple of weeks until Christmas Day. This means that I'm now into the busy evenings and weekends of Christmas concerts, Christmas meals, and the last few running events of the year. Because of this, my intention to cook the Daring Cooks December challenge recipes of Char Sui Pork, followed by steamed pork buns using some of the left-overs, fell off the timetable due to time pressure. A great shame as both dishes sounded delicious. I'll have to make an attempt at them when I have a little more spare time.
Instead, I used the pork tenderloin I had bought for those dishes to make two improvised Pork en Croute. I have to say, they were delicious, so I didn't miss the Char Sui too badly! Here's what I did:

Pork en Croute No. 1:

120g pork tenderloin
70g puff pastry (I used shop bought, ready rolled - I'm lazy!)
2 slices serrano ham
Some thin slices of courgette
Finely sliced rosemary and garlic
salt, white and black pepper
Fennel seeds

Unroll your puff pastry and lay the 2 slices of ham on it. Place the pork tenderloin on top of the ham and season. Sprinkle the garlic and rosemary on top before covering with slices of courgette, wrapping the ham over to encase the pork and courgette, then wrapping the puff pastry over and sealing the edges.
Brush with a little melted butter, beaten egg, milk, or olive oil, sprinkle with fennel seeds, and cook as below.

Pork en Croute No. 2:
140g pork tenderloin,
camembert slices
3 slices serrano ham
120g puff pastry
button mushrooms, sliced small
butter, olive oil
Finely sliced rosemary and garlic
salt, white and black pepper
Fennel seeds

Fry the mushrooms, garlic and rosemary in a mixture of butter and olive oil on a low heat. Once cooked remove from the heat and allow to cool a  little.
Unroll the pastry, lay out the ham on the pastry and place the prok tenderloin on top. Season with salt and the peppers, then spoon the mushrooms onto the meat. Top with a few slices of camembert, fold the ham over to encase the meat and cheese, then fold the pastry over and seal the edges.
Brush with a little melted butter, beaten egg, milk, or olive oil, sprinkle with fennel seeds, and cook.

Place on a greased baking tray and bake for 15 minutes at 200C, then 10 minutes at 180-190C.

Serve with gravy, apple sauce, new potatoes, and runner beans for a hearty and warming winter dinner.

10 on 10

10 photos on the 10th December; one an hour through the day for 10 consecutive hours.

Check out the other project participants here:

Jamie Oliver Great Britain

This is the time of year when TV executives seem to think we should all watch back-to-back cookery programmes; Professional Master Chef, Jamie's Great Britain, River Cottage Veg have all been on the box recently.

Well, what can I say? After a spring and summer of watching virtually no TV I've been a complete sucker and have been hunkering down every night to watch other people cook. I suppose its hibernation instinct - its December: give me a darkened room and too much food please!

And after all that watching, it seemed only fair to try and cook something from one of the series. I was taken by the idea of potato scones from Jamie Oliver's Great Britain. He made the scones in Scotland and served them with smoked salmon and scrambled eggs as a brunch dish. Dan and I both liked the look of them - they made our mouths water! - so I decided to make them for dinner on thursday night. I served the potato scones with cabbage, a poached egg and a piece of lightly smoked salmon fillet.

This was a very useful recipe. On Thursday nights I meet a friend for a run, so I get home late and hungry. I was able to make the scones the night before so that all that needed doing when I got in was lightly frying them for 10 minutes while the fish and cabbage cooked. Poach an egg, and hey presto! - a quick and tasty dinner with enough stodge to replenish my tired leg muscles. I went a bit wrong somehow as the scones didn't hold together very well, but the flavours were lovely. Definitely a 'do again' recipe.

Sadly, mine didn't look like this, but they give you the right idea!

Find recipes for this as well as ones from the rest of the Jamie O series here.

Fabric love

Recently I've been browsing fabric a lot, and I've fallen in love.

Look at these amazingly beautiful prints by the Swiss company Jacob Schlaepfer. Of course, the fabrics are bound to be WAY out of my price league, but a girl can dream.

A mobile for Lily

In August a dear friend of mine had a baby girl, and in September she asked me to be a non-God Godmother. I felt honoured to be asked, and hope to be able to have a wonderful relationship with baby Lily as she grows up.

Lily's first Christmas is coming up and I wanted to make something for her rather than buying something - I felt that I wanted to put time and effort into the gift. I decided that a mobile to hang over her cot would be a nice first Christmas gift, so I got out my felt, embroidery thread, glue, and ribbons and started crafting. It took a little while to complete, but I'm pleased with the results:

I figured that unless Lily is precociously advanced it was safe to post this - its unlikely to ruin her surprise!

I took the templates for the felt items from my marvellous craft book Everything Alice.

An update: It seems Lily likes her present!

an origami-esque jacket

I have a guilt box at home. Its my box of started but unfinished sewing projects.

Some items have been in there for literally years, which is shameful.

Now that I finally have my sewing machine out regularly again, and have started on yet more new items, I have resolved to work my way through some of the pile of incomplete items.

The first to be ticked off was the polka dot shift dress I posted about a few weeks ago. This time it was the turn of a kimono-style jacket. The pattern for this was a web download - it had been back-engineered from a McQueen jacket. The instructions weren't super-clear, and some of the markings on the pattern didn't appear to be needed, but it was an intriguing project.

I'm pretty pleased with myself for finishing this and ending up with something that can be worn. I know I've gone wrong in a few places, and I'm not keen on the way that the folding of the fabric makes the jacket quite thick in places, but I do love the origami pleating all over the back.

I might try this pattern again once I'm a more confident seamstress. It would be interesting to approach it again with a more expert eye and see if I can resolve the areas I found confusing this time.

If you fancy having a go you can find the download here.

Baking

Today we had a bake sale at work. Its Children in Need, and although I do tend to feel a bit 'bah humbug' about charity events which feel compulsory, I like my work colleagues so I wanted to be helpful and muck in.

I made a batch of Caraway Shortbread biscuits from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's River Cottage Every Day book. I really liked them - they were fragrant from the seeds, crips and buttery. Sweet enough to be a treat, but not so much they're sickly. Yummy.

Sadly (for charitable fundraising) it would appear that most people don't want to risk something new, so I had to take some home again at the end of the day.

This wasn't so sad for me and Dan though - biscuits for the weekend. Marvellous!


PS Kris - I haven't forgotten your baked goods, but these wouldn't survive a trip to New York.

Alexander McQueen

I have a bit of an obsession with McQueen. The clothes are just amazing.

Here are two videos which give you a real sense of the creativity, imagination and awesome skill which goes into producing such amazing couture:

An interview with Sarah Burton can be watched here.

Backstage at the SS12 show:


Enjoy!

Daring Cooks November Challenge

First things first - an apology and excuses for lack of posting recently. Two reasons - I just ran a half marathon, so the last few weeks of training didn't leave much energy for cooking anything fancy, and also I've been sewing a lot. Nothing's finished and worth a post yet, but expect lots of sewing posts coming up.

Anyway, onto the Daring Cooks Challenge. This month's challenge was an intriguing one: cooking with tea.

I chose to make Chinese Tea Eggs - a recipe I have often flicked past in my Asian recipe book but never made. They turn out quite pretty with their marbeled whites.



The method was simple but it was quite a long process (although most of the time it doesn't really need any attention). The taste was interesting and less subtle than I had expected, but as you can see from the snap above one egg did split and that was the one I ate - so it may have been a little stronger flavoured than a perfect one would have been. Lightly flavoured with soy, tea, and star anise this was a novelty, and it was pretty good with the crab cakes and peas I paired it with. I'm not sure I'll be repeating this recipe to be honest - its an awfully long process for a hard boiled egg!

Here's the method if you fancy having a try:

Chinese Tea Eggs

2 or more eggs
30ml dark soy sauce
1/2 star anise
2 tea bags
1/2 teaspoon salt

Place the eggs in cold water, bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Drain, rinse in cold water and leave in cold water until cold. Roll the eggs so that the shells crack but don't break.
Add the soy, salt, tea bags, and star anise to the water. Replace the eggs and bring to the boil again, cover the pan and turn the heat down. Simmer for 1 1/2 - 2 hours then remove from the heat and allow to cool in the cooking liquid.

Shell immediately before eating, which its best to do within 24 hours.


Sarah from Simply Cooked was our November Daring Cooks’ hostess and she challenged us to create something truly unique in both taste and technique! We learned how to cook using tea with recipes from Tea Cookbook by Tonia George and The New Tea Book by Sara Perry.

Bakewell

Dan's a Yorkshire boy, and as such one of his favourite puddings is Bakewell Tart. Yet despite it being on the list for quite some time I had never made one.

This weekend I finally put that right. The boy was heading off for a week away for work, so a proper send-off dinner seemed appropriate. And you can't have a proper dinner without a proper pudding.



I took my Bakewell Tart reipe from Tamasin Day-Lewis's Cookery Bible, and it was delicious still warm from the oven, and also lovely cold with a cup of tea when visitors dropped round the next morning.



Here's the recipe:

Bakewell Tart - enough for 6-8 slices

For the filling:
110g Rasberry Jam (preferably homemade)
70g butter
70g ground almonds
70g caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon almond essence
10g flaked almonds

For the pastry:
100g plain flour
50g butter
pinch salt

First make your pastry. Runb the cold butter into the flour and salt until it resembles the consistency of breadcrumbs. Mix to a stiff dough with a spoonful of cold water. Wrap in cligfilm and allow it to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.
Grease a pie tin (approx 16-18cm diameter), roll out the pastry on a floured board and lay it in the tin, letting it slightly overhang the edges.
Return the tin to the fridge for half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 200C. Spread a generous layer of rasberry jam over the pastry base. In a bowl mix together the ground almonds, sugar, vanilla essence and almond essence. Beat in the eggs, mixing well. Then melt the butter over a low heat until it smells slightly nutty and add it to the cakey mixture. Mix well before spooning it into the pastry case on top of the jam.
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes then sprinkle the flakes almonds on top and return it to the oven for a further 5 minutes - until the almonds are toasted and the cakey mixture is lightly browned and just set.

Allow to cool for 20 minutes, and serve warm with cream or icecream.

Sugar and Spice and all things nice

Autumn is a brilliant season in so many ways. Sure, its sad to see the end to the summer, but isn't that bitter pill easier to swallow with the abundance of tasty morsels in the hedgerows and woodlands?

This week I received a gift of hazelnuts from our neighbour and picked up a load of sweet chestnuts in the woods round my parents's place.



So, what to do with them all?



Why not combine my two favourite things - cooking and crafts? I found a yummy-sounding recipe in my Alice in Wonderland craft book. It was described as Sugar and Spice Comfits; a combination of nuts, seeds, spices, and dried fruit. I used roasted sweet chestnuts and hazelnuts, pecans, pistachios, blanched almonds, toasted caraway, fennel, and coriander seeds, some crystallised ginger, dried cranberries, sultanas, sunflower seeds, pinenuts and sesame seeds. Go mad - throw in whatever you have to hand (you'll want about 100g nuts, 50g dried fruit, 1 tablespoon spice seeds, 25g other seeds)!



Once I'd chosen my ingredients I made a small amount of sugar syrup by heating 50g caster sugar in a heavy pan over a gentle heat until it melted and turned into a syrup. I then removed the pan from the heat, mixed in the fruit and nuts, then spread it out on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and left it to cool.



These are meant to be brilliant on icecream, or you you can just snack on them as they are (which is what I've been doing). Yummy.



And for my next trick I collected up a load of sloes from the hedgerow, bought a bottle of gin and mixed up some sloe gin (700 ml gin, 450g sloes, 150g sugar, 1/4 teaspoon almond essence).



It won't be ready to drink until the end of January so I'll have to report back then. Between now and deepest-darkest winter I'll be shaking the kilner jar regularly, at least until the sugar dissolves. It'll be ready with perfect timing to see us through the harshness of coming back from a warm holiday to the cold British winter!

Daring Cooks October Challenge

A really yummy one from the Daring Cooks this month: Moo Shu, which is stirfry pork with Hoisin Sauce and Pancakes.

I'd never even heard of Moo Shu before this challenge was set, let alone cooked it, but I do generally love Chinese food so I was definitely up for trying it out. The brilliant thing about this recipe is that almost all of it can be made ahead. I made my hoisin sauce in the morning, chopped my vegetables ahead of time, and even made my pancakes earlier in the day. I knew that we'd be cooking late and in a hurry that night, so being able to have everything ready to go was great.

I made my pancakes several hours early and kept them under a damp cloth, just reheating them in the microwave for a few seconds when we were ready to eat. The pancakes weren't as soft as I would have liked. Maybe this is because I made them ahead, or maybe I rolled them too thin? I'm not sure of the reason, but they tasted good anyway.



For my stirfry I chose a mixture of thin sliced Sweetheart Cabbage, baby corn, mangetout, bamboo shoots and spring onions, with about 200g pork and 2 medium sized eggs for the 2 of us. I added a shake of Chinese 5 Spice powder to the recipe given by Daring Cooks but otherwise didn't meddle with it.



With a couple of spoonfuls of hoisin sauce on top of the stirfry, and everything folded into the slightly sesame flavoured pancakes, the flavours blended beautifully.



This is a very messy dinner to eat - even worse than fajitas - but really tasty. For nights when there isn't time for making pancakes I think the stirfry would go well with rice instead: And with that version you wouldn't end up with hoisin sauce dribbling down your arms!

We were having a very oriental week this week - ealier in the week we'd had spicy cured swordfish with noodle broth from the Wagamama cook book - a recipe which I highly recommend.



So the message of the week? Go forth and explore the Orient!

The October Daring Cooks' Challenge was hosted by Shelley of C Mom Cook and her sister Ruth of The Crafts of Mommyhood. They challenged us to bring a taste of the East into our home kitchens by making our own Moo Shu, including thin pancakes, stir fry and sauce.

Dressmaking

I have a guilty secret - A box full of part-made dress patterns. Begun then abandoned to a more interesting/more urgent job. Recently I have resolved to finally complete a few of these, and in the last few days I actually ticked one off the list: A shift dress from a very elegant 1950s pattern I found when rifling through the shelves at a junk shop in Bath.



There are things I would do differently next time (my zip insertion didn't go all that well!), but I love the style of this dress. Very elegant and understated (until you make it in giant red polka dots of course!).

An eventful week

Last week I consider that I was very brave with my food choices. I am proud of this, so I felt it was worth sharing.

I ate mushrooms in a risotto.
Mushrooms are my nemesis in the food world, but I'm trying to be more grown -up about them and not gag at the very thought.

I ate beetroot gratin, and beetroot in a cake.
Yes my wee turned pink which was disturbing, but the food was tasty enough.

I ate lamb's liver in a stirfry.
I have never eaten offal of any kind before. It just seemed un-necessary, but in eating our way through the whole lamb we were given you do eventually have to approach the grizzly bits. It wasn't too bad.

Two ways with beetroot

Leafing through my Riverford Farm cookbook the other day it struck me that I don't think I've ever eaten a beetroot. The strong smell and psychadelic colour of the pickled variety have always put me off, and I'd never really considered it as a stand-alone vegetable. Still, I'm all for trying to challenge my taste buds these days, so I resolved to cook beetroot next time I found it for sale. Funny how as soon as I decided that, I spotted it in the farmshop.

The recipe I chose was a beetroot gratin, from the Riverford cookbook. I wasn't sure I was ready for cooking the beetroot and eating it whole and unadulterated, so a slight dilution with cream, garlic and summer savoury from the garden seemed a good beginners beetroot choice. I did also cheat a little by using 350g beetroot and 200g potato rather than all beetroot.

I have to say, I was worried. The thought of dinner potentially being disgusting when you are really hungry is not funny. I should have trusted in Riverford though. Afterall, they haven't let me down before.

Despite the dish coming out of the oven looking distinctly alarming:


And staining both the smoked haddock and cabbage which I served with it a vibrant shade of pink:


It was actually a really lovely dish. Subtle flavoured, creamy, and a lighter and less stodgy version of a dauphinoise. If I feel like staining the kitchen and my fingers bright pink again I'll make this for dinner. Very tasty.

As the beetroot was sold by the bunch I was left with a couple of beetroot globes to use up. I keep reading how good beetroot is in cake - like carrots it helps fruit or chocolate cakes stay wonderfully moist. Further on in the Riverford book I discovered a recipe for a carrot/beetroot cake. Dan had requested cake for work as he's leaving for a new job, so I figured I had to live up to my reputation for providing unusual foodstuffs. No standard Victoria sponge for the office then: they were going to get a beetroot and carrot cake. And if they decided it was too wierd to eat then all the more for me!

The batter was a truly alarming bright pink colour, but I'm pleased to say that once it was baked it had only a subtle pink tinge, which was much more appealing!



Apparently some people did turn their noses up at the cake. Wierd how the thought of beetroot in a cake is repulsive to some people, but eating food stuffed full of chemicals is just fine with them! Those that did try the cake did like it, and Dan even had a request for the recipe.

My assessment of the recipe is that it either needs the addition of some spices, like nutmeg or cinnamon, or it needs a cream cheese icing. So, some tweaking required, but a fairly decent cake.

The recipe can be found here.

Blackberry and apple season

Its harvest time of year, and around our village there is plenty of evidence of an abundant year for apples. Lots of houses have big boxes of bramleys and assorted eating apples outside with 'please help yourself' signs. And if they're offering...well, it would be rude to turn them down!

I've noticed blackberries have been less successful this year. I've managed a couple of tubs full, but not the quantities that are normally easily found at this time of year. Still, for this week's recipe apples were the key ingredient, blackberries just the finishing flourish. A classic combination, and one I never get tired of, but this time I used them in a different way (normally the pudding at this time of year is Blackberry and apple crumble). There was finally space in the freezer, so I decided to try making Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's recipe for Bramley yoghurt Ice with Blackberry sauce swirl.

I stewed the apples with sugar, purreed them, added a little honey (things seem less sweet when frozen so a little extra sweetness seemed appropriate - Hugh suggests icing sugar but I prefered the idea of honey) and left them to cool while I went out blackberry picking.



Fresh blackberries acquired I set about making a blackberry sauce by stewing them with a little sugar and cinnamon, then sieving them to leave just a thick blackberry juice.



While this cooled I mixed the apple puree with a little yoghurt and churned it in the icecream maker:



When it had finished I drizzled the blackberry sauce over the top and transfered it to the freezer for a few hours.


(sorry - not focused, but this was the only snap I took!)

Mine actually ended up sitting in the freezer for a few days before we got round to eating some of it, so it needed to sit at room temperature for 10 minutes to soften a little before eating. I loved this. Its one of my favourite flavour combinations anyway, and a healthy, creamy, frozen pudding is a beautiful thing.

Steamed pudding

There are a number of items that have been sitting on my 'to do' list for quite some time. One of these was steamed syrup sponge - a childhood favourite of Dan's. I tried it once last year, but my recipe turned out more like sticky toffee pudding. Nice, but not what I was after.

Given that Dan had spent 2 weekends and every evening last week under my car trying to get it roadworthy I felt that he definitely deserved a treat, so on saturday I made a second attempt at the pudding.



This time is was declared a winner: better than his mum's version! So all credit to Delia Smith, who's recipe I used. It gained me major brownie points and a boyfriend who was no longer in a stinking bad mood.

We were super-indulgent and served the recipe with double cream, although I think that custard is the more traditional choice. I did adapt the recipe slightly and cut down the quantities, so here's the method I ended up with:

Steamed Syrup Sponge
Serves 5-6

20g black treacle
50g golden syrup
115g self-raising flour
2/3 teaspoon baking powder
115g butter (softened)
2 eggs
115g soft light brown sugar

Grease an 800ml capacity pudding basin. Spoon the golden syrup into the bottom of the basin.
Sift the flour and baking powder. Add all the other ingredients and beat well for several minutes.
Spoon the batter into the pudding basin and level the top.
Place a sheet of foil over a sheet of greaseproof paper, make a pleat in the centre, and place this foil-side uppermost on top of the pudding basin. Pull it down the sides and tie round the basin with string. Make a string handle for lifting the basin.
Steam for 1 1/2 hours, checking the water level half way through to ensure it doesn't boil dry.
To serve, loosen the pudding all round using a palette knife, invert it on to a plate. Delia suggests spooning more golden syrup over the top at this stage, but I didn't do that and it was plenty sticky and sweet anough as it was.
Serve warm with cream, custard, creme fraiche, or vanilla icecream.

Do expect to have to go on a diet after eating just a single helping, but it will be completely worth it!

Crafting

My corsetry course back in August seems to have had the desired effect, in that it has inspired me to do more sewing. No, the corset isn't finished yet, but that's largely because I've had several other projects on the go at the same time. (Its not far off though, so I hope an update will be forthcoming soon!)

The first sewing project to actually get finished was completed this morning:



A toy rabbit for Dan's niece's 1st birthday.

I was really quite pleased with how he turned out, and Dan seems amused and charmed by the dandily dressed and dapper little toy. I'm not sure if it really shows up in this picture, but I sewed his niece's name onto the bottom of the jacket to make it a bit more customised and personal.



The instructions came from a wonderful book full of craft projects which I bought recently called Everything Alice. You can find out more information about the book here.

I think a lot of people I know will be getting hand-crafted Christmas presents from the book this year - hope they don't mind!

10 on 10

10 photos on the 10th September; one an hour through the day for 10 consecutive hours. Check out the other project participants here:























And a few of the out-takes: