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.

Daring Cooks April Challenge

The Daring Cooks April Challenge has been a goody. It has really made me think, puzzle and try to be inventive. Sadly, I'm not sure that I've succeeded on the invention test - I found it difficult to come up with anything non-obvious - but at least it tickled my brain cells!

So here we are: The april challenge was to make a "savoury edible container and fill it with something appropriate".

My immediate thought was to use a pumpkin and stuff it with interesting goodies before roasting it, but I rejected the idea as obvious, and also Dan doesn't very much like pupmkin so it would have been a little antisocial.
Then I thought I could make Pain Bagnat, which I have been meaning to try out for some time. This I rejected beacause the bread in pain bagnat isn't EXACTLY an edible container since the bread and filling are all squashed up together.

An interesting suggestion was made by Dan. He's recently been to Poland for work and had a traditional soup called Zur which he really enjoyed. It was served in a hollowed out round loaf of bread. I loved this idea, but due to time constraints I had to reject it for this challenge as I only had one free weekend to cook before the challenge results had to be posted. Given that I was going to be looking after 3 children that weekend making both bread and a complex soup didn't seem very practical, so I'm keeping this idea for a future occasion.

What to do, what to do......?

Chilled soup in an ice bowl was the front-runner until I saw someone else had already done a salad in an ice bowl. But then, in a dull day at work, I finally came up with the idea to make a savoury sorbet in a savoury cone. The idea pleased me because ice cream in a cone is so familiar, but the taste will be surprising. (Incidentally the savoury icecream research has brought up a few other to try at a later date.)

So, here we go....a gazpacho soup sorbet in a spiced tortilla cone.

Step one: I found a gazpacho recipe which sounded ideal in the Riverford Farm Cook Book. A lovely sounding combination of tomato, cucumber, chilli, herbs and red pepper, which looked beautiful and spring-fresh once all chopped up together:



Step 2: blend everything up and then push it through a fine sieve. I fully expected it not to look at all pretty at this stage!

Step 3: Add olive oil and chill for a few hours. Churn in an icecream maker the afternoon before you want to serve it for dinner, then freeze for at least half an hour.

Step 4: dampen a tortilla wrap (or a portion of one if that's the right size for you - I used about 1/2 of a tortilla for each cone) with a mixture of water and a little olive oil.

Step 5: roll it into a cone shape and secure with a cocktail stick. Sprinkle with a little salt and smoked paprika. Scrunch up some foil into a small ball and place inside the cone so that it doesn't collapse in the oven.

Step 6: place in a preheated oven at 220C for about 8 minutes until the cone is crispy and slightly golden.



Step 7: Allow the cone to cool then scoop your sorbet into it.

Step 8: finely chop some fresh mint leaves and mix with a couple of teaspoons of yoghurt (you can't have icecream with out toppings!), put a blob on top of the sorbet, and enjoy!



I have to admit that I wasn't sure how this would turn out - whether I would actually even be able to eat it, if it would delicious or totally disgusting! In fact, it made a really lovely, quirky, bite sized starter.

We enjoyed it before our sunday dinner on an unseasonably warm spring day, and it was brilliantly refreshing. My tastebuds enjoyed the confusion of having something that was a little bit spicey hot from the chilli at such a cold temperature.



The whole idea has proved a bit of a talking point in my office - opinion is divided on people believing this to have been delicious or inedible!

Blog-checking lines: Renata of Testado, Provado & Aprovado! was our Daring Cooks’ April 2011 hostess. Renata challenged us to think “outside the plate” and create our own edible containers! Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 17th to May 16th here at The Daring Kitchen!

Presents!

I do like presents. Particularly unexpected ones. I did well this week: Dan brought me home the River Cottage Fish cook book. Just my kind of thing. Good gift. Then through the post arrived a jams and preserves book - a 'just because' present from my sister. Aaaahhh.

My Christmas bread bowl is yet to materialise, so I also got a consolation gift of an icecream maker. Totally unnecessary kitchen equipment really, but I have been lusting after one for quite a while.

So, this weekend I just had to use at least 2 out of 3. Jam seemed like I needed a bit more planning so fish and icecream were on the menu.

Dan & I very democratically went through the Fish cook book and agreed on a recipe to make for Sunday dinner to Christen the book: Mussel, bacon and spinach gratin.
It is a time consuming dish, so only really appropriate for a day when you have plenty of time.

First up, clean and cook the mussels.



Remove them from the shells, cook bacon & garlic, make bechemal sauce, wilt & chop spinach. Mix together, sprinkle with breadcrumbs & parmesan, bake.



Totally worth the effort - very delicious indeed.

And for pudding.....Mexican Chocolate Icecream.

It was a bit of a gamble, but I couldn't find quite the recipe I wanted, so I took the basics from a couple of different recipes and adapted it to suit me. Maybe a bit silly for the first attempt, but it seems to have worked out OK.
So this is what I ended up with:

Mexican Chocolate Ice-Cream

150ml double cream
570ml goat's milk
125g caster sugar
100g dark chocolate
1 cinnamon stick
2 cloves
4 egg yolks
1 teaspoon corn flour
50g almonds - chopped

Put the double cream and milk in a pan with the cinnamon stick (broken in half), 25g sugar, cloves. Warm over a gentle heat until it comes to a simmer. Take off the heat, cover, and leave to infuse for 30 mins. Strain.
Beat the egg yolks and 100g sugar together until a pale lemony colour. Put the egg yolks in another saucepan, add a ladleful of the strained milk and stir to mix. Put over a very gentle heat & gradually add the remaining milk, stirring to amalgamate. Cook gently, stirring frequently until the mixture starts to thicken. Add a teaspoon of cornflour if needed to help thickening.
Strain again through a fine sieve.
Grate the dark chocolate and stir it into the milky custard. Stir until completely melted. Sieve again.
Place in a jug, cover with clingfilm (let the film touch the surface of the liquid to prevent it forming a skin), cool, then chill in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.
Churn in an icecream maker according to the machine instructions, adding the chopped almonds 5 minutes before the end of the churning time.



Transfer to a freezer container and freeze for a couple of hours
Et voila...spiced chocolate icecream with almond chips.



Dan and I both thought that this was yummy, but the addition of a note of citrus would elevate it to stupendous - so next time I will also add some mixed peel when I add the almonds.

brown is the new black

This week's theme is brown, which doesn't sound all that appetising I admit.

Over the May bank holiday weekend we went out for the morning to Kingham, where the Kingham Plough was holding a lovely mini-farmers' market. Homemade ice cream was one of the delights on offer, and as its the 2nd time I've seen it recently I had to try a scoop of brown bread ice cream.


(The first time I'd ever seen it was on a day trip to Lower Slaughter in the Cotswolds a few weeks back. Awful name, lovely place.)





Anyway, back to the icecream. It tasted as if the brown bread crumbs had been mixed with demerera sugar and toasted. They still tasted a bit crunchy and crumble-like in the icecream which gave it a nice texture. Tasty.

Also procurred at the farmers market was some fresh brown trout. A very pretty fish with a speckled skin and tender sweet meat.



I've not eaten brown trout before, so since I've had little or no opportunity for cooking this madly busy week I'm counting brown trout as my recipe of the week. I'm sort of cheating and sort of not! I haven't ever cooked brown trout before, and I served it with toasted hazlenuts as suggested in a recipe book, so I think I can bend the rules a little and count this as a recipe: At least its something new! We ate it with aspargus since we're making the most of the super-short period that its in-season.
Our trout was from here.

Also, I couldn't sign off without mentioning the slices of cheesecake we bought at the same event. It was from a stall by the Windrush Valley Goat Dairy, and was light, creamy and not over-sweet. I've bought milk from the same farm before but never the cheesecake. It had a lovely hint of ginger biscuits in the base and was great with some berries on the side.

I have to acknowledge that this was a rather glutinous bank holiday weekend, but I did run over 9 miles on sunday so I think I can justify the food!