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.

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!

Jelly

I seem to have been cooking with fruit a lot recently.

This time I added wine too.

Red wine and rhubarb jellies:



Very alcoholic tasting, a little bit fruity and a little bit citrusy. Grown up jellies for jelly and icecream. Or rhubarb and custard. Or just on their own...perhaps add just a little drizzle of cream? These turn out with a very strong and rich flavour - a love it or hate it dish I expect. I loved them, but they weren't Dan's thing AT ALL (all the more for me!).

If you have a bottle of red wine, some rhubarb, sugar, ginger, some gelatine (or agar-agar flakes) an orange and a lemon then do give it a try. Its elderflower season now, and a few elderflower heads added to the mix gives a nice floral fragrance to the jelly. You may love it, you may hate it, but its definitely worth a go!

Go on.

Please.

They're easy - I made mine while simulateously chatting to my boyfriend's mother, making her a coffee, and cooking pasta for our dinner.

See? Must be easy.

Rhubarb and Red Wine Jelly

250g rhubarb - chopped into chunks
450ml Red Wine
50g sugar (you could risk a little more if you like your desserts sweet)
2.5cm chunk root ginger - peeled & sliced
3 elderflower heads (optional)
40ml lemon juice
Juice of 1 orange (or about 100ml)
4-5 sheets of gelatine

Put all the ingredients except the gelatine in a pan and bring to a simmer over a low heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Allow to simmer for about 15 minutes until the rhubarb is soft.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly then strain the liquid, pressing as much of the fruit as possible through the sieve. Discard any remaining fruity puree.
Cut the gelatine sheets into small pieces and soak in cold water for 10 minutes. Then scoop the softened gelatine out of the water and mix it into the (still warm) red wine liquid. Stir until the gelatine dissolves then pour the liquid into jelly moulds.
Allow to cool to room temperature then refridgerate overnight to set.

Being foolish

This week I meandered out to the Pick Your Own farm again during my lunch break. This time I picked enough strawberries to have some to gobble straight away and a load to make jam. I made strawberry and mint jam using leaves from the chocolate mint in my garden. (I'd never heard of choclate mint, but came across it on a plant stall at a craft show: It has a richer flavour than normal garden mint - much more pudding-y.)

Gooseberries were also ready for picking at the farm.



When I was a child we had a gooseberry bush in the garden. They were my mum's favourite, but I never liked them. It could have been a reaction to getting prickled fingers when picking them I suppose but ever since I have assumed that I don't like gooseberries. Since they were ripe for picking I thought I would challenge myself to try one.

Revelatory moment: they're really nice!

I made Dan eat one when I got home: He was very dubious about the idea as he swore they were the kind of sharp fruit that could only be eaten stewed with lots of sugar. The look on his face when he realised how nice these ones were was priceless.

So, preconceptions squashed...what to do with 350g of gooseberries?

Last week I made a Rhubarb, Strawberry and Orange Flower Water Fool based on the recipe in Silvana Franco's Hi-Lo Cook Book. Dan and I both enjoyed it as a light, refreshing pudding, so I decided to try something similar with my gooseberries. I decided to go for a classic flavour combination of gooseberries and elderflowers, so I stewed 200g of gooseberries in 2 tablespoons of the elderflower cordial I made a couple of weeks ago, and used this to make a Gooseberry Fool.

The following recipe is mainly based on the Silvano Franco Rhubarb Fool recipe, but also takes elements from various other recipes that I found in the Riverford Cook Book, on BBC Good Food, and in Tamasin Day Lewis's Kitchen Bible.


Gooseberry and Elderflower Fool (for 2)

200g gooseberries
2 tablespoons elderflower cordial

60g double cream
60g thick yoghurt

Icing sugar to taste

Top and tail the gooseberries and place them in a pan with the elderflower cordial. Heat over a low-medium heat until the gooseberries soften (probably about 10-15 minutes in total). Set aside to cool.
Mix together the double cream and yoghurt with a whisk. Spoon alternate layers of yogurt-cream mixture and stewed gooseberries into a tall glass (sprinkle the gooseberry layers with a little icing sugar if you prefer your desserts on the sweet-side). Put in the fridge to chill over night.



Such an easy dessert, and not that bad for you really. It feels creamy and indulgent enough to be a treat whilst not being a heart-attack in a glass! It could handle a little more elderflower flavour if you like the taste of elderflowers, as the gooseberries are very dominant in the proportions above.

PS Its entirely irrelevant, but gooseberries really remind me of Chinese lanterns. I love that.

Apple tart

A while back I blogged my love of the Riverford Farm Cook book. In fact I love it so much that I have been evangelising, and I gave a copy to a friend for her birthday a few months ago. When I went to her place for lunch she obligingly served up a dish from the book - the apple and amaretti tart. It was light, crunchy and yummy, and even better I'd never made it myself. So good to be introduced to a recipe you had under your nose the whole time but hadn't made!

This weekend I had a group of lovely ladies over for a meal, so the time had come to make an attempt at the tart. It was super-simple to make, and handily could be made in advance and served at room temperature - the perfect pudding for when you don't want to be spending your time in the kitchen instead of with your guests. The base is not dissimilar to a cheese cake base, so you end up with something like tart tatin but with a crunchier base. I really liked it, especially with a small scoop of creme fraiche on the side.


Not my tart in this picture I'm afraid, but mine did look a lot like it!

I shall now go forth and experiment with different flavour combinations along the same lines - maybe pear with almonds in the base, or rhubarb with ginger biscuits, or perhaps subsitiute the apples for peaches in the amaretti version. Oh the possibilities....

The recipe can be found here. I didn't use quite as much apple as directed as about 200g of apple slices filled my tart tin nicely. I notice that the apples here are a lot more overlapping than mine though, so presumably that's why I didn't need quite so much fruit.

In praise of spontaneity

A couple of weeks ago Dan came back from town bringing treats in brown paper bags: One small blueberry amandine tart, one strawberry tart, and one bakewell tart. They were much appreciated in my cold-filled state. We very democratically divided each into thirds, sharing them out for lunch with our guest.

That blueberry tart really stuck in my mind, so when blueberries were on special offer this week I stocked up and hunted high and low to find a recipe for the Amandine tart. Eventually achieved (it was surprisingly tricky to track one down), I made mini tarts so that the leftovers would be more portable for lunches.



The tart is a wonderful combination of crisp, flakey pastry, filled with sweet, juicy blueberries and a custardy sponge, all topped off with the crunch of flaked almonds. YUM. A new favourite. Keeps well in the fridge too; it may be the perfect pudding.



A different kind of serendipity lead me to the other subject of this post; griddled vegetables and halloumi. I'd never eaten or cooked halloumi before, but the cheese man at the farmer's market had made some Halloumi-esque cheese and so it seemed like the perfect time to try it. I griddled a load of aubergine, courgette and red onion slices, topped it with the griddled cheese, and hey presto, lunch was served. It certainly helped me get over my long hilly run! It will have to become a regular feature, if only so that I get more use out of the griddle pan which is sadly underused.

An on-going love affair

I do love rhubarb.

I find it particularly appealling at this time of year when its the forced variety available. It comes out a beautiful shade of pink when its stewed. Sadly, I think there's probably only a very short amount time left in the forced rhubarb season, so I've been eek out every last morsel of enjoyment I can from it! (Although it does feel wierd to buy rhubarb after years of having it in the garden - I must plant some for next year.)

So far my rhubarb experiments haven't got much further than crumble, stewed with strawberries, or cheesecake. All fantastic. However, browsing the internet I stumbled across Rhubarb Custard cake, and that sounded like it just had to be tried.



And indeed it was delicious. Lovely and crunchy on the top, with the moist texture of drizzle cake on the inside. Perfect served warm for pudding, but also a big hit with my work colleagues the next day.

The recipe can be found here on the Lazy Giraffe blog. She makes pretty jewellery too.

Warmth and spice

A cold snap always makes me want to up my cinnamon consumption considerably, so the combination of our recent cold spell and my horrible virus bug has had me reaching for the spice rack this week.

So, first up on the menu were Jamie Oliver's South American Fishcakes - fennel seeds and chilli from the spice rack. I tweaked the method very slightly by baking the cakes instead of deep-frying (deep-frying seemed a bit too fatty, indulgent and messy for a week-night supper) and by using a combination of plain flour and polenta to coat them. I thought the slight crunch of polenta might be a tasty addition to the mix.



I couldn't imagine what to serve these with, and although the wilted pak choi was good, in future I would make a tomato salsa and more vegetables, but lose the tortilla chips. Perhaps some garlic flatbreads or brazilian cheese breads on the side. The flavours of the fishcakes were good - punchy chilli and fennel seeds made a good combination, but I might try a slightly stronger fish than cod in future or mix in some crab meat. A good start, but this one needs some tinkering!


Then, baked apples stuffed with blackberries and dusted with cinnamon sugar. I've had the blackberries in the freezer since the autumn, but they're now nearly all used up. So sad...we shall be blackberry-less until september. Please don't tell me I can buy them inthe supermarket - the ones on sale are a pale imitation of the real, wild, sharply flavoured variety!
The apples were good - crunchy on the outside from the cinnamon sugar but softly baked and juicy from the blackberries. Very nice.

Sunday? Cinnamon toast for breakfast. Tasty. I was finally feeling better from my cold by then, so the spice overload clearly worked!

Sweet or sour?

Over the last week I have made it my mission to discover if I do actually like Sweet 'n' Sour. For the last 31 years I have always thought I didn't, but I'd only ever had it out of a jar or from a dodgy takeaway. It seemed like time to discover if the real thing was more palatable.

I started out with a Thai sweet and sour recipe. It was subtle - basically just pineapple added to a prawn stirfry - and a good introduction to the concept for someone like me (ie someone who doesn't like gloopy sauces or pineapple very much!).
It was manageable, didn't put me off, but I wouldn't bother to make it again. It was just a little unexciting.

So, next up I thought I'd best go for the real deal - a Chinese version, complete with more pineapple (still not that keen), ketchup (don't like it), sugar and vinegar. It wasn't boding well, but I couldn't give up now! The trusty BBC came up with a recipe I thought I could handle; Simon Rimmer's Sweet and Sour Chicken Balls (find the recipe here).

The verdict? Definitely edible, but just not really my bag. I really liked the chicken meatballs, so I'll make those again, but sweet and sour sauce is not going to become a fixture in my life.

So there you have it. I tried it, and my Mum always said as long as I tried something I didn't have to eat it again if I really didn't like it.

And thinking of childhood things, I also made proper, baked in the oven Rice Pudding at the weekend. Such a childhood favourite for me - served with a spoon of homemade rasberry jam of course! Dan had never had the real deal. His rice pudding had always come out of a tin, which is frankly a horrible travesty of the concept!

Daring Cooks November Challenge

So... here we go with another Daring Cooks Challenge.
Dave and Linda from Monkeyshines in the Kitchen chose Soufflés as our November 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge! Dave and Linda provided two of their own delicious recipes plus a sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe found at the BBC Good Food website.

However, I'm not really a chocolate puddings person, and the challenge did say that any sweet souffle was OK as long as it was a true souffle and you hadn't made it before. So instead I made rasberry souffles.

I followed this method (enough for 2 people):

Take 130g rasberries and heat over a gentle heat. Once they start to release their juices add a splash of water and 10g caster sugar. Cook, stirring occasionally for about 10 or 15 minutes until the sugar is dissolved and the rasberries have disintegrated. Set the pan to one side to cool.

Once the rasberries have cooled slightly push them through a sieve, discarding the seeds and pips. Allow the rasberry puree to cool.

Grease 2 ramekins with a little butter and then place about a tablespoonful of rasberry puree in the bottom of each.



When you're nearly ready for pudding preheat the oven to 200C.

Whisk one egg white until it holds soft peaks:



Then add 40g of caster sugar and whisk again until the mixture is glossy.

Next gently fold in the remaining rasberry puree using a metal spoon:



Spoon the egg white mix into the ramekins. Some people like to smooth the tops flat, but personally I like them a bit imperfect and blobby on the top:



Put them on a hot baking tray in the centre of the oven to cook for 10 minutes. Serve straight away.

Mine got scorched a bit on the top, but that didn't seem to adversely affect the taste.



Yum.



Souffles are a marvellous Recipe-of-the-Week discovery. They are pretty easy to make, quick to cook, delicious, and (depending on the kind you make) surprisingly low-fat.

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.

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!

Lobster - at last!

Week 52 of this project seemed to call for something extraordinary. Who'd have thought it would last a year?
And so, given that Lobster Thermidor was the first recipe onto the list it was time to finally cross it off.

Lobster is not a meal that you can just throw together easily - it required planning and skiving off work early to make it to the fishmonger before they closed. (I didn't think my colleagues would appreciate live lobsters crawling round the communal fridge all afternoon if I bought them at lunch time!)

So lobsters procured, I headed home to start the preparation.
Fortunately Dan had been away for a few days, so he wasn't there while I was preparing the lobsters. Which saved me from enduring him laughing himself silly when I jumped about 6 foot from shock when one of the lobsters wriggled as I picked it up. I'd put them in the freezer for an hour and expected them to be alot more lethargic than they were!

I decided to go with the Hugh F-W version of Lobster Thermidor, which uses bechemal sauce instead of double cream. I made a good thick sauce, then fried some shallots in a little butter until they were softened and added a glass of white wine. Once the wine had mostly reduced I added the bechemal and some tarragon, stirred everything together and allowed it to bubble for a minute or so. After that I seasoned it, added a pinch of cayenne pepper, and a small handful of grated gruyere. This can be set aside until needed.

So to the lobster.....I plunged it straight into a pot of rapidly boiling, heavily salted water, slammed the lid on and felt like a murderer.



It died fairly fast though, so I wasn't too badly traumatised. I don't imagine the lobster appreciated it much though. 12 -15 minutes later...voila...cooked lobster.



Then I had to dismember it - twist off the claws, crack them, and haul out the meat; cut the lobster in half, fish out the inedible bits; Mix the edible parts (including the claw meat) with the sauce made earlier, then pile it back into the lobster shells. Grate a little more gruyere over the top then whack it under a hot grill for 5 minutes.

I served it with crunchy bread and salad.



The occasion seemed to demand a fire in the room and a glass of champagne...




And then a treat for pudding. I have to confess that I didn't make it, but it was all the better for that. Passionfruit mousse cake from Patisserie Blanc.



Yum.

Summer berry madness

I love the time of year when summer berries come in season. I could happily gorge myself on strawberries and blueberries for breakfast, lunch, and tea when they're juicy, sweet and super-fresh. And here we are at last....proper summer time, with sunshine for days and days (hope I'm not jinxing it!) and berries everywhere.

So what's a girl to do when she's got over excited and bought too many rasberries in the market? Make jam of course!

I'm no jam-making virgin, but rasberry jam is one I've never made. I just prefer strawberry so I tend to make that. However, Dan's a rasberry man, and he's been resorting to stealing rasberry jam from his parents everytime he goes to visit. It was time to make him a stash of his own.



Its very simple to make, just as most jams are. The only tricky bit is gauging the right point to take it off the heat. I highly recommend a jam thermometer for this. It makes it a lot easier, and you will probably find that you use it more than you initially expect to. (Mine has been useful for making fudge and cheese too.)

Rasberry Jam
Use equal weight of rasberries and granulated sugar
Make sure you use a large saucepan as once the jam is boiling it will rise up alot.

Warm the rasberries through slightly until the juices start to bleed out.
Add the sugar and stir through. Turn the heat up and clamp your thermometer on the side of the pan.
Bring the jam to the boil, stirring occasionally to ensure bits don't stick to the bottom and burn.
Keep it on a fairly high heat until the jam setting point temperature is reached (it should be marked on the thermometer).
Remove pan from heat and pour into sterilised jars.
Allow to cool without the lids on for about an hour, then loosely screw on the lids and leave the jam to cool and set completely before tightening the tops.



But that still left some yellow rasberries and blueberries (I told you I got over-enthusiastic with my berry purchases!).

I bought a copy of Red Magazine to read on the train the other day. (Should I admit to that? Its hardly the most cutting-edge reading material!) Anyway, quite apart from whiling away my journey to and from London quite satisfactorarily, it also had a section on berry recipes. Whilst most were cream and sugar filled, of which I am not a fan (I like to keep my berries fruity), there was a suggestion for Wine Jelly with berries. I haven't done the taste test yet, but they were easy to make and seem to have set quickly.
I reduced the recipe sugar amount slightly and upped the fruit quantity.



Berry Jellies (for 2)
160ml white or rose wine
5g fine leaf gelatine
60ml water
50g sugar
150g mixed berries

Divide the berries between 2 glasses or teacups.
Put the gelatine to soak in a bowl of cold water & leave for 5 mins.
Meanwhile gently heat the wine water and sugar together, stirring to help the sugar dissolve. The liquid should get not hotter than hand warm.
Take the softened gelatin out of its water. Squeeze any excess water out of it and add to the wine mixture. Stir until the gelatine has dissolved.
Pour the wine mixture over the berries and put in the frisge to set overnight.



Serve with more berries on the side, or cream of you are a berries+cream person.

Hope you're enjoying summer!

cherries two ways

On friday I had a strange craving for cherries. Who knows why, but something reminded me of some amazing cherries I bought last summer, and that was it. I HAD to have some.

Sainsbury's didn't have any. Nor did Tesco or the Co-op. I was getting desperate....Some people crave chocolate, some alcohol or crack. Apparently my drug of choice is fruit.

I finally found some in the garden centre (not as odd as it sounds - they have freezers of frozen fruit too). Hurrah! Not the ripe and ready to eat cherries I had originally wanted, but frankly by this stage I would take anything, so frozen cherries were an acceptable substitute.

I drove home dreaming of yummy desserts and consequently clafoutis found itself leap-frogged to the top of my 'to do' list.

I don't think I'd ever eaten clafoutis before, let alone made it, but it's the classic cherry recipe is it not?
Now, I realise that the picture below looks like a disaster, but they were just very dark cherries - not burnt. I promise.



I completely destroyed the pudding taking it out of the tin (time for a new non-stick pie dish - mine is antique), but it tasted lovely. So much so that Dan literally licked his plate clean.

Clearly I will be making this again.

Almost as successful was sunday's cherry recipe; a savoury one this time. Simon Rimmer's recipe for Duck with Cherry sauce. Find it here. I added a little thyme to the sauce, but that was the only change I made to the recipe.

I have to admit to feeling dubious about how likely this was to be edible, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I rolled up my sleeves and gave it a go.

I should have had faith. (Both in Mr Rimmer and also in the fact that duck and fruit go together wonderfully.) The dinner was good. Actually, very good.



So that's that. Cherry-craving satisfied.

Party food

I love parties.

In the context of my cookery project they're a lovely excuse to try out all those recipes for nibbles that you would never make for just 2 people.

Also, its great to have a house and garden full of friends. Makes me feel all warm and fizzy.

Bank holiday monday was Dan's birthday, so we thought we'd throw a little garden/house birthday and (belated) housewarming party in the afternoon. Being horrifyingly grown-up these days, it didn't degenerate into a drunken mess, but stayed really very civilised right to the end. Lots of children and dogs running around begging for food, free flowing local beer (the Hook Norton Brewery is less than a mile from us), a lovely mixture of new and old friends, party nibbles. What's not to like?!

Also, the perfect excuse to make popcorn which I have never done before. Not just any old popcorn though...peanut caramel popcorn. Definitely the grown-up version. Yummy.



I noted the recipe down from another blog months ago, and have been on the look-out for an excuse to make it ever since. Its a perfect party popper.

Here it is (and here's the Seattle-based blog I found it on):

Peanut Caramel popcorn

100g unpopped popcorn
2 tablespoons vegetable/sunflower oil
225g soft light brown sugar
50g golden syrup
85g melted butter
pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract
100g lightly salted roasted peanuts
*You will also need a sugar/jam thermometer for this recipe*

Preheat the oven to 130C.
Lightly oil a roasting tin with vegetable oil.
In a large saucepan heat a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil until very hot. Add the popcorn, slam on the saucepan lid and shake the pan back and forth over the heat until all of the corn has popped.
Transfer the popcorn to the roasting tin.
In a medium sized, heavy based saucepan whisk together the sugar, syrup, melted butter, salt and 2 tablespoons of water. Bring to a simmer over a medium heat, and continue to allow it to simmer, whisking frequently until the heat reaches 130C.
Immediately remove the pan from the heat when it reaches this temperature, whisk in the bicarbonate of soda and vanilla, then quickly pour it over the popcorn and fold it in.
Stir in the peanuts.
Bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour, stirring every 20 minutes.
Remove from oven and allow to cool. This will keep in an airtight tub for about 5 days.

As a complete side note, I also had my parents up for a couple of days over the weekend and made a rhubarb and strawberry crumble for pudding on sunday night. Not a fruit combo I had eaten before, but one I would highly recommend; you don't need quite so much sugar on the rhubarb as the strawberries add an element of sweetness too.

OK, enough of my random ramblings! Hope you had a lovely long weekend.

PS The cheesecakes I made for the party a couple of weeks ago were a great success. Rhubarb and ginger cheesecake - its the future of cookery!

2nd time lucky

I made custard.

And it worked this time.

Hurrah!

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe from River Cottage Everday worked beautifully - it thickened up to a lovely yellow gloop without going lumpy or curdled.

Excellent - that's one more cookery-standard off the 'find a decent recipe' list.

I cheated though - we had it with shop-bought bread pudding. It was home-baked from the organic deli, but nonetheless a bit of a cop-out!

Rhubarb and custard

Well actually, that's not true. It was rhubarb and cheese, but somehow that doesn't have the same ring to it!

I spotted the 1st rhubarb of the season in the farm shop this weekend. It was a bright, deep pink and looked utterly gorgeous. I bought a handful on impulse without any idea what I was going to do with it.



When I got home I stewed it with a couple of tablespoons of sugar, and it came out an almost purple colour. I still wasn't sure what to do with it, until I realised I had a whole bottle of full-fat goats milk in the fridge and no plans for it (the slight tang of the goats curd rhubarb cheesecake that we had for pudding at The Plough in Kingham worked really nicely). I was then reminded that rhubarb and ginger is a sublime combination as I flicked past a rhubarb and ginger sponge recipe in one of my books.



So, a packet of ginger biscuits were procured from the village shop. 100g worth were bashed until they were crumbs (very theraputic - I recommend it!), mixed with melted butter (20g) and pressed into ramekins before being shoved into the fridge.

Then I made goats cheese (see here) and mixed it with 25g of icing sugar. That was piled on top of the biscuit base and smoothed out. I spooned a layer of stewed rhubarb over the top and shoved it all back in the fridge overnight. Et voila; an approximation of rhubarb cheesecake.

Well, mini rhubarb cheesecake pots at any rate.



And the taste test? Well, it wasn't lobster! But it was a pretty tasty pudd and very moreish. Yummy. A good alternative to crumble in rhubarb season.



To recap:
Mini Rhubarb and GoatsCheesecake pots
Serves 4

100g Ginger biscuits
20g butter

Approx 200g rhubarb
1 Dessertspoon caster sugar
175g Soft goats cheese or cream cheese
25g icing sugar

Slice rhubarb into chunks and put into a heavy pan with the caster sugar and a splash of water. Stew over a gentle heat until the rhubarb disintegrates (about 1/2 hour). Put aside to cool.
Put the biscuits inside a sandwich bag and bash with a rolling pin until they break up. You could process them in a food processor, but don't over whizz it as a bit of texture is good.
Melt the butter and mix with the biscuit crumbs. Divide between 4 smallish ramekins and press down. Refridgerate for at least an hour.
Mix the cheese and icing sugar. Spoon it on top of the biscuit base and spread it gently out.
Drain the rhubarb of any excess water then spoon the rhubarb mix on top of the cheese.
Refridgerate overnight.

Gobble.

PANCAKE DAY!

It may be my favourite day of the year!

And no, I'd never made pancakes before last night. At least I don't think so. I knew the basic principle because I have made Gallettes a few times, which are just a different kind of pancake; made with water and buckwheat flour.

Anyway, I made my batter in the morning and left it in the fridge to rest while I went to work.

300ml milk
1 egg
4oz (115g) plain flour
Whisk it all together

Then, I whisked it all up again and got myself prepared:


BUT, the pan was useless! The non-stick coating clearly isn't very non-stick any more so the pancakes stuck.
Scrape, scrape, bin. And repeat.

After 2 failed attempts I switched pans:


And hoorah, they worked! That's steam, not smoke, I promise!

Dan was pleased, as he got to use the lemon that his mate brought back from his place in Cyprus for the lemon and sugar topping (nice to have friends with homes in useful places):



And I was pleased because I discovered that I am pancake-flipper extraordinaire: I didn't miss a single catch. How marvellous.

Oysters and rhubarb

At the end of the summer Dan and I moved house, and we've been slowly getting to know our new area. Last night we decided to treat ourselves to dinner out instead of cooking. And to up the ante a little we chose The Plough at Kingham as our venue of choice.

I've been keen to go there for a few months. Its run by a lady who trained with Heston Blumenthal, and although she doesn't go in for some of the extremes of oddness that he likes to create I figured that the cooking would be good and the menu imaginative. I also really liked the fact that they don't publish a menu online as the menu depends on what ingredients look good on any given day.

So, a table was booked, we got out of our DIY outfits, dammit I even wore perfume! I was possibly looking forward to it a little TOO much!

Now, usually when you build somewhere up like that it disappoints. The Plough didn't.



It was oyster night. Have you ever eaten oysters? Neither of us had. They do seem to get rather bad press, and I’d consigned them to that category of “not worth paying the premium price to try something that will probably be nasty.”

However, last night curiosity got the better of us and so we asked if we could try an oyster each. (It seemed like the kind of place that wouldn’t be snooty about that sort of request.) They arrived on a bed of salt with a little shallot vinegar and the barman-proprietor suggested a little dab of the vinegar then just suck the oyster down, a couple of chews if you fancy it, and gulp to swallow (sounds a bit obscene doesn’t it?!). I went first….Dan looked a little apprehensive.

But actually, it was lovely.

When people say oysters taste of the sea I’d always thought that sounded disgusting. I mean, the taste of sea water is revolting – it burns your throat and makes you feel nauseous. But now I understand. Oysters are mildly salty, but with a light seafoody freshness. They taste like summer holidays at the seaside - Cornwall, not Blackpool!

I followed my oyster revelation with halibut. A very nice piece of fish served with a crab bisque and some kind of leafy green veg that I didn’t try very hard to identify. But the thing that made this dish memorable was the fennel bread that accompanied it. The slight aniseed flavour was a surprising but inspired compliment to the fish.

And then the pudding.

I find desserts are often a bit of a let-down in restaurants. All too often its just the same old choices of something chocolatey (which I always find too rich for the end of a meal), icecream (too cold for winter), crème brulee, maybe sticky toffee pudding. What I want at the end of a meal is something fruity.

The Plough came up trumps with Rhubarb cheesecake with rhubarb icecream. This turned out to be beautiful slices of rhubarb in a light syrup arranged on a crispy biscuit, with a cheesecake-textured goats curd mousse on the side (I know that doesn’t sound all that appetising, but trust me, it was), a scoop of homemade rhubarb icecream, and a little rhubarb jam to finish it off. Light, tangy, interesting but not alarming.

I was seriously tempted by some of the icecream flavours on offer – all homemade. Dark chocolate, elderflower and raspberry sounded intriguing, as did banana and stem ginger. Obviously, we’ll have to go back to sample some of the other delights on offer. I think we made need to save up a little first though. Its not overpriced, particularly given the quality of ingredients, the excellent service, and the well trained, imaginative chefs, but I can’t afford to pay £70 for dinner for 2 every week!

Here's the pub website.