TV dinner

We were idly watching Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers programme the other evening when all of a sudden I pricked up my ears. Why was this? Because he was demonstrating a duck recipe.

Now I really do like duck. And my hunt for the perfect duck recipe has been tracked on this blog. We've tried duck accompanied by mango, cherry, and plum sauces, but tonight it was Nigel Slater's Duck with honey and figs on the menu.

The recipe is very citrusy, with orange zest and juice and lemon zest included, as well as ginger. It certainly sounded like it would be a good pick-me-up for a cold snowy night. And it did prove to be a good dinner - the citrus was refreshing but not overwhelming, the figs went lovely and soft, and with the addition of rice steamed with star anise and pak choi it was filling and warming.



Find the recipe on the BBC food website here.

So all in all, Nigel did not let us down, but the favourite Duck accompaniment remains as cherries. Will anything ever knock that off the top spot I wonder?

PS One day I will start taking beautifully lit, perfectly poised, photos of the food I make. For the time-being you will have to continue to suffer my "snap and eat" approach to food photography! Sorry about that!

Taste of your Life

A couple of years ago Nigel Slater presented a programme on the BBC called A Taste of My Life. I didn't watch many of the episodes, but the basic premise interests me: What are the foods that are significant in your life, and why do they matter to you?

My list:

Honey sandwiches
I was a terribly fussy eater as a child. At one point honey sandwiches were about the only thing I'd eat for lunch. One holiday in Wales it got so extreme that the chant was coined "Ham, ham, honey and ham, tuna fish rolls". At least it was just a phase.

Super-fresh Bread
The crust. With nothing but butter.
We used to fight over it every saturday lunchtime after music school. Dad would make bread every saturday morning and it would ready when we got home. We'd have to share, but the crunchy crust, soft centre, and bread just warm enough for the butter to soften but not completely disappear...oh surely that must be one the most satisfying things to eat. Simple pleasures.

Blackberries from the hedgerow
We used to catch the bus to secondary school from the bottom of our road. As I grew up in the country that road was lined with a hedge on one side. The hedge was perfect blackberrying territory. For several weeks at the beginning of the autumn term we would meander back home from the bus stop eating our fill of blackberries all the way. Of course, that would often get us into trouble for spoiling our appetite for dinner, and it was impossible to hide those tell-tale purple stained fingertips and lips!


Chocolate birthday cake
We have a family tradition of chocolate cake for birthdays. Not fancy chocolate cake with 70% cocoa solids chocolate, but a basic chocolate sponge made with cadbury's drinking chocolate and topped with chocolate glace icing. Its not a fudgy heavy version, but its synonymous with birthdays for me. The recipe book's falling apart now, but is still hauled out for every birthday, without fail.

Porridge with demerera sugar
On cold school day mornings my Dad would make this for us to have before we walked to the bus. The demerera sugar would slightly dissolve and end up pooling round the edges of the bowl with just a few crunchy grains left on top. Porridge is my comfort food.

Chocolate Duff with Birds Custard
The ultimate childhood treat. Puddings were rare. This was the most exciting.
Funnily enough I'm not that excited by chocolate puddings these days, but I still love it when this one's on the menu. Has to be Birds Custard though, none of your fancy vanilla seed, homemade stuff. And we used to fight over the skin that formed on the top of the custard. Wierd.


So how about actual meals?

Lamb Stew
This I can't bear, but I also can't deny its place in my life! A regular dinner-time feature throughout my childhood, I suppose because its cheap, easy and filling (and us 3 did cost rather a lot in music bills). My heart sinks when I think of it, but I'm also rather fond of it in a peverse and contradictory way.

Lasagne with peas
My Mum's version is far from an authentic Italian lasagne. It is slightly sloppy, with a hint of nutmeg in the bechemal sauce. There's no cheese (hurrah!). I can eat it by the bucket full. I do recall being deeply suspicious and unwilling to try it the first time it was dished up (I must have been 8 or 9), so quite a turn-around!

Scampi and chips
Weymouth means scampi and chips in the Marlborough fish and chip shop. We'd go down every now and then to visit Aunty Glad (not really an Aunty but my Grandpa's favourite cousin), walk along Chesil Bank, visit Aunty Glad, check out the Sand Sculptor, then go for our fish and chips. Always the same. Always made us perfectly happy.


Writing this I realise that its not an illustrious list of culinary wonders is it?! But can anyone truthfully say that of their childhood favourites? I wouldn't make a very good subject for the series. Maybe everyone lies and makes stuff up for it to make themselves seem sophisticated.

In other weekend news...

Lemon curd



I spotted the recipe in Nigel Slater's Observer column and thought it looked worth a go. Very versatile, tangy and buttery. It was yummy with meringues, mixed berries and a small scoop of icecream as a pudding, and I'm looking forward to it on toast for breakfasts. Here it is.

Wild garlic pesto

My dad pointed out that we had wild garlic on the river bank at the bottom of our garden, so I picked some leaves to make a wild garlic, parsley and walnut pesto. It went really well on baked cod with some fresh vegetables and mashed potato. The walnuts gave it a earthyness that was appealing set against the lightness of cod and fresh vegetables.
A word of warning; please don't try this at home unless you're pretty confident on plant identification! I was lucky to have my Dad's expert eye to help out.

Walnut and Wild Garlic Pesto

25g wild garlic leaves
25g parsley
50g walnuts
1 tablespoon olive oil
A small squeeze of lemon juice
1 small garlic clove
Scrunch of salt.

Whizz everything together in a food processor. Spoon onto fish or chicken, or stir into a bowl of pasta. Easy peasy.

Christmas catchup

Apologies for the rather long Christmas break between posts. I won't bore you with a super long post but here's a brief run down of my new recipes over the Christmas period:

1. Christmas cake!



I was really pleased with this. I made it from Nigel Slater's fruit cake recipe and it turned out with just the right amount of citrus and fruit. Lovely.

I'd made fruit cakes before but never one that was such a high proportion of fruit to flour. The recipe was quite free and easy with the fruits you should use which made it easy to tailor to your own tastes. I used my new favourite dried fruit - figs! I had dried figs for the first time this past spring when we went to Croatia. They were served with coffee and schnapps absolutely everywhere and I liked the sticky grainy texture of them. We bought a bag from the market - you can just about see them for sale in the picture, bagged up with bay leaves.



They appeared in Sainsburys just in time for my Christmas cake. Marvellous!

I also made the marzipan (a bit fiddly to get onto the cake) and the royal icing (took longer to set than I'd anticipated). I felt I had make both in order to keep in the spirit of the recipe challenge; shop bought would have seemed like cheating.





2. Mulled white wine

I think the recipe for this needs a little tweaking as it tasted more like mulled cider, and I would definitely have preferred a winey-er taste. I think next time I'll put a lot less apple juice and less sugar too (the quantity here is half the recipe quantity and it was still a bit sweet for my tastes). Don't get me wrong, the flavours were nice and it was a lovely warming drink, but it seemed a shame not to taste the wine much. Didn't stop us drinking it all of course!

Here's the recipe:

Apple & spice white wine

1 * 750ml bottle white wine (I used Riesling)
400ml apple juice
2 cinnamon sticks
2 star anise
50g demerera sugar
a few strips of orange rind

Put all the ingredients in a pan over a medium heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Heat gently for about 10 minutes to allow the flavours to infuse, but don't allow the mixture to boil or you will lose all the alcohol content.
Serve.
Easy peasy.

3. Pickled pears

I made these a couple of weeks ago after catching a bit of the Hairy Bikers Christmas cookery special. They need about 10 days pickling time before you can eat the pears, so we had our first taste of them shortly after Christmas with cold meats, oatcakes and cheese.

Yes, you read correctly - I did eat cheese. I bought some Manchego cheese to have when we had my younger sister and my Dad up for lunch, and I discovered I actually liked it. In very small quantities.

Anyway, I digress - the pears were tasty, although my sister thought it was distinctly wierd that I would pickle pears.
She may have a point.

4. To go with the Manchego cheese - hazlenut and black pepper cookies.

I came across the recipe for these on a blog called Chocolate and Zuccini. Its written by a French lady (in English although there is a French version). They sounded interesting and she mentions that they go well with figs. Since I had a few figs left over from the Christmas cake it seemed the ideal time to make these biscuits.

They turned out to be a semi-sweet biscuit, and did go well with the dried fruit. The black pepper added a pleasant zing but I think I would use cinnamon instead in future, just because I prefer the warmth of cinnamon.

5. Brussel sprouts

I know these are a love-them or hate-them vegetable, but I definitely fall into the love-them category. Which is just as well as we've had them in our vegetable box quite a lot recently.



A colleague at work suggested baking them in the oven in a parmesan cream sauce. I liked the general idea, but thought all that cream and cheese would probably disagree with my stomach. Instead I found a recipe that suggested baking the sprouts in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was a good way to do them. I would imagine that a scattering of grated parmesan and a sprinkle of pinenuts would be a tasty addition.

Here's the method:

Balsamic Brussels

Mix 1 dessertspoon of olive oil with 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. Peel and quater your sprouts then toss them in the oil mixture until well coated.
arrange in a single layer on a baking tray or roastig tin and cook for about 20 mins at 180-190C.

Christmas

There's something about the last week or so before Christmas which puts me in the mood for baking. I want the smell of cinnamon and ginger and citrus wafting through the house and snowy dustings of sugar and flour on the kitchen surfaces.



I made my Christmas cake a couple of weeks ago, to Nigel Slater's recipe, and this weekend I will need to put the marzipan on it in readiness for icing on Christmas eve. That will be my contribution to the family Christmas food as I know my parents never have time to make their own cake. I have to confess I've never made anything for the Christmas meal before - my job has always been to peel, stir, chop, and lay the table. This year I'm spending Christmas at Dan's parents' place, but I still wanted to do something helpful for the Greenaway family Christmas preparations. So the cake won't be there until Boxing Day, but who needs Christmas cake on Christmas Day anyway?! After all that other food the Christmas cake always ends up being a post-walk Boxing Day nibble.

I'm breaking with tradition and doing mulled white wine on Christmas Eve this year. I had it at the Christmas market in Lille last December and it was lovely, so I'm going to recreate it at home with a bottle of Riesling, apple juice, cinnamon sticks, orange peel and a sprinkle of other Christmas flavours. Yum scrum.


I like to make foodie Christmas presents where I can, although I do worry that despite the fact that plenty of thought and effort go into them alot of people might consider homemade items to be a 2nd class Christmas present. Nonetheless, I'm taking the risk and baking this weekend. Tubs of miniature shortbread biscuits for my new neighbours, dried pears and apricots dipped in milk and dark chocolate as semi-healthy festive nibbles, and a second attempt at fudge. Christmas is the only time of year when I fancy sweeties.


The fudge has disaster-potential written all over it. Last year I tried to make fudge and all I ended up with was a very burnt saucepan which took 2 days to clean. Its taken me a year, but I'm now good and ready to do battle wth the sugar syrup again. Lets hope I can succeed on the 2nd go, as I don't think I would have the determination to go for 3rd time lucky!
Wish me luck.....

UPDATE
The fudge worked! My neighbours said they finished it in one sitting because they liked it so much. They might just be flattering me, but its still nice of them to say so.

Making bread

My Mum's birthday provided the family with the perfect excuse to get together for dinner at my older sister's place. To lighten the cooking work I promised to make the starter. Dips and flatbread seemed to fit the bill, so I made houmous again (never in 30 years then twice in a week!), a cannellini bean and mint dip, and Nigel Slater's flatbread.

Once I got started on the bread I have to confess to feeling a bit fraudulent for counting it as a recipe-of-the-week: it was fundamentally the same as normal bread, except for the addition of olive oil and that it only needs one rising period. Oh, and its shaped differently.

A brief explanation here:
My Dad has been making bread every saturday morning for my whole life. As little kids we "helped" - a tradition which my nephew and nieces continue. Even as surly teenagers the smell of fresh bread would have us fighting with enthusiasm over the crusty end of the warm loaf at saturday lunchtime.
A couple of years ago, growing frustrated by the lack of quality bread available in the shops, I though 'How hard can it be?!' and took up the family habit of making my own.


The following is my preferred method, reached after a few months of experimentation. Any kind of bread flour will do - I have successfully used just white flour, half-and half wholemeal and white, spelt flour etc etc. My favourite is about 1/2 wholemeal or spelt - 1/2 white flour.

Bread
550g bread flour
15g fresh yeast (or about a teaspoon dried yeast)
330ml water at blood temperature
1 teaspoon salt

Roll up your sleeves and wash your hands - they're going to get stuck in!
Dissolve the yeast in a little of the warm water.
In a separate bowl mix together the flour and salt, then pour in the dissolved yeast and mix it together with your hands. Gradually add the rest of the water mixing it in until the mixture forms a soft dough. It shouldn't be too sticky - if it is sprinkle it with a little more flour. Don't rush this and be aware that sometimes you will need a little more water, sometimes a little less. The absorbency (hmm is that a word?) of the flour will vary depending on weather etc. It takes a little while for flour to fully absorb the liquid, so if you rush and add all the water at once you could end up with an overly sticky dough.
Turn your dough out onto a floured surface and kneed for about 10 minutes until it is smooth and silky.
Put it into a clean bowl (I usually just wipe out the bowl I mixed it up in), cover with a teatowel or put inside a clean plastic bag (I usually just put it inside a Sainsbury's bag) making sure there's space above the dough for it to rise without sticking to the cover. Leave in a warm place for an hour, or a little longer if your yeast is a bit old or the room not very warm.
after an hour or so, punch the dough back to knock the air out of it (quite theraputic!) and kneed on your floured surface again for a few minutes. Then shape the dough into a roll and put into a bread tin. I use an 800g size silicon tin. This has the distinct advantage of being naturally non-stick so I don't have to grease the tin. If you have a metal bread tin (I think purists probably would prefer you did) then grease it well before you put your bread in.
Leave your dough in the tin in the warm place for a further 1/2 hour until it has risen to the top of the tin again. Preheat the oven while it rises - as hot as your oven will go; typically 220-230C.
Bake the bread for 15 minutes at this temperature, then turn the oven down to 205C for 10 minutes. After that take the loaf out of the tin and bake for a further 5-7 minutes at about 190C. You can try putting a tray of hot water in the bottom of the oven while cooking to make it slightly steamy if you want - it is meant to help the bread form a better crust, although the jury's out.
If the bread sounds hollow when you tap the base it is cooked.

Sorry the picture is a bit rubbish! This loaf was made with about 200g malted bread flour, 300g wholemeal. It didn't rise as much as a loaf mixed with some white flour would, also it was pretty cold which inhibits the rising a bit. It was tasty this morning for breakfast with some nice strawberry jam.



This isn't the method my Dad uses. He is far more thorough than me, using a starter rather than just mixing the yeast in straight away. He ends up with a bread with a more open texture, but this is a quicker method which can be cooked in the evening after work (as long as I get home on time!). If I start the process at about 6:30pm then the bread comes out of the oven before 10pm. Lovely fresh bread for breakfast!
I think people are daunted by making bread as it seems time-consuming, but actually most of that time is just waiting for it to rise. You don't have to watch it! Go and watch TV, cook the dinner, have a bath - whatever you would normally do in the evening. The other good thing about bread making is that its very forgiving. If the dough ends up rising for a bit longer you will still end up with a good loaf.