Christmas Chez Dulcima

Well Christmas wasn’t actually held in Dulcima’s Kitchen, it was in Dulcima’s Mother’s Kitchen this year.  I’m still not wholly sure why as I do all the cooking, anyway and being a cookware snob ended up travelling down to my mother’s house on the south coast complete with my own knives, knife sharpener, electric scales, two roasting tins, cookbook and two shopping bags of ingredients.

The menu

Yes those really are Peppa Pig crackers - bit of a family joke

Roast goose Mary-Claire (Leith’s recipe) the stuffing took a fair amount of time to make, but oooh it was tasty (apricots, pistachios, apple, chicken breast)

Roasted potatoes, parsnips and onions, all done in the goose fat naturally

Pigs in blankets (think the lovely fiancé would call off the wedding if I had deprived him)

Mashed carrot and swede (with lots of lovely black pepper)

Spiced red cabbage with pomegranate seeds (having the pomegranate makes a nice fresh addition to a heavy meal)

I was in charge of the goose, cabbage and pigs, with my mother who was referred to as ‘sous’ for the day handling the rest. 

We had goose as my sister can’t stand turkey - the last few years have featured duck, beef, venison, lamb  -  this year was goose’s turn.  Or indeed Lucy Goosey as the bird was christened for reasons I don’t really understand (I wanted to call it Gregory).  I’m pretty sure Leith’s wouldn’t be best pleased with me if I published the recipe for the goose so go buy yourself a copy of the Leith’s Cookery Bible, no cook should be without it.

Red Cabbage

Red cabbage, done well is one of my favourite accompaniments to a roast.  The trick is to not have too much liquid but make sure it never gets dry.  I did one medium sized cabbage, finely shredded (without the core), a sliced red onion and a couple of grated apples with a good glug of red wine and red wine vinegar.  Cook over a low heat for an hour, stirring occasionally so it doesn’t catch on the pan then add dark brown sugar and spices (nutmeg, cloves) and cook for another half hour. Once cooked sprinkle over a handful of pomegranate seeds.

A week in food

Firstly, my apologies for being so utterly lousy at blogging for the last week or so. Been busy, busy busy: started a new job, boyfriend's birthday, chums' wedding, yes I know I'm making excuses. So there is a huge amount to catch up on what's been happening in Dulcima's Kitchen and indeed what I have been nibbling elsewhere. So here are a few of my culinary highlights of the last 10 days as I have been eating like a king!

Friday 10^th December – lunch at Wagamama's with a chum. She introduced me to the Chicken Katsu Curry (how it had passed me by until now I will never know considering half the restaurant seemed to be ordering it). Chum's explanation for why she liked it was that it's like curry sauce you buy in chippies oop north but classier (!), sorry Waga's but she makes a good point.

Saturday 11^th - six of us out for dinner at La Luna in Godalming, wonderful food. We had various starters between us including fantastic arancini made from rocket and pea risotto (arancini are balls of risotto fried, so so good). For main course I had pheasant breast, which came with the most beautiful red cabbage – I can get strangely excited about red cabbage. Dessert of coconut panna cotta with orange jelly and sables was utterly divine.

Monday 13^th – first day in new job, has subsidised restaurant on site, was strangely pleased with the breakfast, porridge can be so uninspiring but with cinnamon apples and sugar I was very content.

Thursday 16^th – out for drinkies and dinner with friend's ahead of their wedding on Saturday to meet some chums over from the US. Lovely dinner at the local Thai, very good quality food and oodles of wine. Then home to make rum truffles for the lovely fiancé to take to work the next day for his birthday, for the record cooking with booze when tipsy is risky business, they were very rummy rum truffles, damn nice though.

Friday 17^th – celebrating the wonderful young man's birthday, dinner at home of duck breast cooked with star anise served with glazed bok choi and sticky rice, yum yum yum. Followed by pear and chocolate tart.

Saturday 18^th – the big wedding and five inches of snow covering all of Surrey! By some miracle we managed to get to the church, beautiful ceremony but sadly many couldn't make it due to the weather. Winter Pimms and cake (made by the stunning and very talented bride) in the church. Reception venue cancelled as roads impassable so we all trekked a few miles in the snow to the groom's parents house for a thrown together spread, very impressive and resourceful cooks indeed! Amazing day.

Sunday 19^th – Now I am hungover and am planning a corned beef hash and fried egg as my cure.

BBC GoodFood iPad launch

An evening at GoodFood HQ

I have a mild hangover and am presently hugging my third cup of tea and feeling very sorry for myself. I tell you this so you will not hate me quite so much when I gloat that I spent last night quaffing free bubbly and nibbling free nibbles at the launch event for BBC GoodFood iPad magazine. Please don't hate me. Even when I tell you that I also left with a goodie bag. I met some fascinating people, including fellow food blogger Nick Coffer of mydaddycooks.com who was very charming. I also got to have a poke around in the GoodFood kitchens (which though I expected to be a magical world somewhat like Santa’s workshop with eager little elves scuttling around, turned out to be very much like a normal kitchen!).

I suppose I should be a good blogger and actually talk about the product (and indeed stop gloating), thankfully it was actually very impressive and even my technology phobic fingers could successfully work it I won't have to tell any fibs. In some respects it is what you would expect – a iPad version of the printed magazine. However the team have definitely put a lot of thought into making it as user friendly as possible. For example select a recipe and it turns into a clearly laid out recipe card format, click on the instructions and they increase in size for ease of reading while you cook. The photography looks incredible on the screen.

For me the best bit was the instructional videos. I strongly believe the best cooks know the basics; better to be able to do something simple very well than fail at something complicated. So I was very pleased that techniques are demonstrated through video, I am very aware how hard it is to describe cookery techniques through text and a few photos so it definitely gets the thumbs up from me.

So back to the food! We had a knife skills demo from Barney Desmazery the Food editor, I felt very smug that while interesting to watch I do all my knife prep the same way. And to soak up the booze which I very happily had a few glasses of we had: prawn and chorizo skewers, stuffed prunes and figs wrapped in ham, mini sausages with utterly amazing ketchup and roasted mini potatoes in their skins with yummy garlicky mayo. For dessert rocky road/ tiffin call it what you will and mincemeat slices. I was cheeky enough to take an extra few rocky roads home to the lovely fiancé (thus allowing me to gloat at him a little bit too!).

Some techy info for you:

• The first 'issue' will be the February 2011 issue, which is available for download from the App store from late Decemeber
• It will be priced at an introductory rate of £1.79 rising to £2.99 after a trial period (therefore being cheaper than the printed version)

Bread and Butter pudding

Bread and Butter Pudding

I have recently been doing some research into Comfort Foods for a column I wrote for BBC Good Food (shameless self-promotion there – but check out the blog at: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/blog/503-comfortfood/ 

Ready for the oven

Anyway my ‘research’ of quizzing various friends and family on their preferred comfort foods revealed bread (and all things carbs) to be very popular. I felt inspired to make some tasty delights out of dear bread, specifically a ‘taste off’ between bread and butter pudding, and its oft-forgotten cousin bread pudding. Very quickly the difference for those not in the know: bread and butter pudding is buttered bread with vanilla custard poured oven and cooked in the oven in a bain marie, bread pudding is stale bread, dried fruit and spices all mashed up together into a sticky mess which is then cooked off in the oven (one of my mother’s favourite comfort foods – though I admit I haven’t made it sound very appetising).

So yesterday the battle commenced with the making of the b&b pudding. I decided to go for brioche as the basis of my pud, I don’t particularly like brioche ordinarily but it is fabulous in this recipe. I spread each slice with butter and my homemade peach jam and then topped with freshly made vanilla custard. Good god it was yummy. Indeed I can confess lovely fiancé and I just had the leftovers for our breakfast.

So next I shall be making the bread pudding and concluding which pud wins in a battle of the comfort foods.

Bread and butter pudding, serves 4 (or indeed two for dinner and then the same two for breakfast!)

8 slices of brioche

Enough unsalted butter to spread over the brioche and greasing the dish

Peach or apricot jam, again enough to spread over the brioche

Tasty good

A handful of sultanas or other dried fruit

For the vanilla custard:

3 large egg yolks

1 vanilla pod

½ pint milk

1 tbsp caster sugar

Pre-heat the oven to 180 C.

Put the milk in a pan, then scrap in the vanilla seeds and drop in the pod as well. Bring to the boil and then leave to cool for about 5 minutes. Whisk together the egg yolk and sugar then remove the pod from the milk and slowly whisk in the milk.

In a clean saucepan heat the custard and keep whisking, at a low heat (too hot and it will curdle) until you reach the desired consistency.

Butter your oven dish and then butter and jam the brioche slices, cut across the diagonal so that you have 16 triangles. Layer the brioche slices overlapping butter side up, then pour over the custard.

Put the dish in a larger roasting tin and fill half way up the sides with cold water. Bake in the oven for 45 minutes or until the custard is set and the pudding is golden.

Dinner for twenty

Feeding the masses

One seriously huge shepherds pie

A few weeks back I hosted a bonfire night dinner for friends which was a great success and needing to cook for twelve I made a huge amount of cassoulet to keep the hordes happy (see Sausage Cassoulet). Well at the weekend my in-laws hosted a party for twenty, and found themselves in the same predicament of thinking up a crowd pleaser that didn’t mean too much time stuck in the kitchen so they could entertain their guests. They decided to ‘do a Jeffrey Archer’ and have a shepherds pie and champagne evening, if I were to be a pedant I would point out that it was in fact cottage pie and sparkling white, but nobody likes a pedant.

Being known as the family 'foodie' I was tasked with chopping enough carrots and swede to feed the masses. I set to work, diligently chopping up the mountain of veggies, very neatly indeed I might add, only to have father-in-law point out ‘well, you’re hardly as fast as Jamie Oliver are you?’. I don’t know, do a man a favour! - and I got a rather sore blister on my index finger from all that chopping.

Tiramisu

My other task (apart from making sure everyone’s glasses were kept topped up) was to make a tiramisu for dessert. A nice simple recipe of sponge fingers dipped in coffee and Kahlua (which I couldn’t resist adding a splash of to my morning coffee) layered with a creamy mascarponey layer of decadence.

Genius coffee cooling!

Seeing how I had originally only come downstairs in the hunt for coffee and breakfast I wanted to make the dessert quickly, however the scalding hot coffee had other ideas. It simply refused to cool down, but lovely fiancé then proved most useful by running off with my bowl of coffee to return with it surrounded by snow from the garden. Silly though it looked, it most certainly worked!

November Column - Booze

November's column, in which I ramble on about booze, is now up on the 'Columns' page.

Pizza

I love making pizza, there is something so therapeutic about kneading the dough and it is the perfect meal for when you have lots of odd and sods that need using up. Indeed this evening I find myself with a glut of peppers, a few mushrooms and half a can of sweetcorn (has to be green giant, nothing else is welcome in my house, and not the no added sugar and salt stuff oh no no, proper original stuff). Anyway so chuck in a few extras from the supermarket and we have the makings of a really yummy dinner. For some reason it is a meal that lovely fiancé and I always make together which makes it all the more fun.

Home-made pizza (makes enough for 4 people person sized pizzas or two large pizzas)

To make the dough:

500g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting

½ tsp salt

1 7g sachet dried fast action yeast

1 tbsp olive oil

300ml warm water

For the topping:

Passata

mozzarella

A selection of the following or whatever you like: onions, mushrooms, peppers, ham, chorizo, cooked sausage chunks, olives, tomatoes, spinach, ricotta … use your imagination

Oregano and/ or basil

To finish

Basil oil or chilli oil if you like (see Flavoured oil entry)

Preheat your oven to its highest setting and pop in a baking tray to heat.

To make the dough mix the yeast and oil with the water, sieve the flour into a bowl and make a well in the centre, pour in the water mixture. Give it all a good stir then sprinkle in the salt and knead everything together. Have a bit of fun kneading the dough and pretending you are one of those show-off pizza chefs tossing it around all over the place. Then roll it out to the desired size or if you are only wanting enough for one or two servings then the rest can be frozen in a freezer bag at this stage.

I like to give the base a couple of minutes in the oven without a topping to make sure it doesn't go soggy. Then you can get to work on assembling your pizza. Start with a thin layer of passata, then chuck on your desired ingredients before finishing with herbs and mozzarella. Pop him back in the oven and cook until golden at the edges and the cheese is melted, depending on how hot your oven goes this should take between six and ten minutes.

I like to serve with a sprinkling of basil or chilli oil.

Sausage Cassoulet

Bonfire night Cassoulet

I'm hosting bonfire night festivities this year. There is always a big bonfire and fireworks in a field in town so I am hosting for drinkies beforehand and then dinner afterwards. So my mission – something warming and yummy to feed a crowd (circa 12) that doesn't need much attention, not too expensive and in-keeping with the following allergies – diary, wheat, soya, celery, red meat, raisins (I need less fussy friends!).

Well presuming people would like it to feature some sort of meat and red meat is out that leaves poultry, pork (one person doesn't eat pork but does eat sausages). Anyway, I have concluded that a nice cassoulet is the answer, not least as it is in-keeping with my current obsession with French cuisine. That way I can serve everyone a nice steaming bowlful and it is a meal in itself especially with some nice bread to mop up the sauce.

Cassoulet is one of those dishes that has dozens of variations dependent on region or family tradition. I don't tend to stick religiously to any recipe as long as the sausages, red wine and stock are good quality and it features beans, chorizo and veggies then I am happy.

I'm being awfully sexist and guessing that women would have two sausages and men three, roughly anyway, so for six couples that's 30 sausages. But I'll give you the recipe for 2 people and then you and can multiply it as necessary.

Sausage Cassoulet for 2

5 or 6 Sausages (please, please, please good quality if you want to use cheap bangers then use someone else's recipe!)

1 medium onion, finely diced

1 carrot, peeled and diced

1 small red or yellow pepper, remove the seeds and dice to the same size as the carrot

a good chunk of chorizo, diced to match the pepper and carrot

2 tbsp Olive oil (better yet rosemary oil if you have it)

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 small glass red wine

1 small glass chicken stock

1 small glass chopped tomatoes

70g dried haricot beans, soaked in cold water overnight and drained

fresh sprig of rosemary and thyme

optional – handful of breadcrumbs

Heat the oven to 200C and whack in an oven-proof dish with one tablespoon of oil in it. When hot toss in your sausages and cook for about 20 mins (no lid). When cooked reduce to 180C.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil in a heavy bottomed frying pan over a gentle heat, then chuck in your onion, carrot, pepper and garlic and cook stirring regularly until softened but not coloured. Now chuck in your chorizo, beans, red wine, stock, tomatoes, herbs and seasoning and bring to the boil and reduce until you have a sauce of your desired consistency.

Pour this mixture over your sausages, pop a lid on it and give it at least two hours in the oven. If you'd like twenty minutes from the end sprinkle on a handful of breadcrumbs and remove the lid for a textured crunchy topping.

Serve with crusty bread for mopping up the sauce and a green salad, if you like.

Scrummy no flour chocolate torte

When we recently had the neighbours over for dinner I was in a bit of a pickle as to what to serve for dessert as Mrs Neighbour can't eat wheat. Over the years I have stumbled across quite a few chocolate cake recipes that use almonds instead of flour but when I looked into it further I really struggled to find a decent one. So I did a bit of experimenting and here is my version. Not only is the rum a yummy addition but it is also rather apt as these are the same neighbours with whom I once got incredibly drunk on rum a few months back! Mmmm rum, enjoy!

Ultimate flour-less chocolate cake

200g good quality dark chocolate

2 tbsp rum

150g caster sugar

150g butter

100g ground almonds

5 eggs, separated

Icing sugar for dusting

Melt the chocolate, rum, sugar and butter in a bowl sitting on top of a pan of barely simmering water (see Random Tip 1: Melting chocolate). Remove from the heat and stir until well mixed.

Add the ground almonds and mix well. Beat in the egg yolks, one by one.

In a separate bowl beat the egg whites until stiff and peaky, and then gently fold in the chocolate mixture.

Turn into a buttered and floured 20cm (8in) round cake tin and bake at 180C for about 45 minutes and firm to the touch.

Leave to cool before removing gently from the tin, and dust with icing sugar to serve.

What to feed a pregnant friend??

Hmm... maybe not

On Saturday night we were all having a few drinks down the pub and one of my very dear friends announced that she's pregnant (as she glared at our glasses of wine and pints).

I know nothing of babies or pregnancy, I have never been pregnant myself and this is the first of my friends to be 'in the family way' (really, what a ghastly expression). The two words that sprang to mind were 'Folic acid' and 'spinach' okay that's three words, stop being so pedantic. I couldn't tell you what foods contain Folic acid and I imagine spinach is something to do with iron? (and I don't suppose I should be offering her a Guinness...).

It seems I am going to have to do some research then aren't I? I have just gone online and bought a book about pregnancy cooking. Call me a cynic but even just scanning through the available books online I already have a strong feeling that all the books are likely to be rather preachy and uninspiring but if recipes need some tweaking to make them more fun and interesting then bring it on.

Oh and just to make things more complicated she's dairy intolerant, so any advice on tasty things to feed my friend would be very welcome and I'll be posting all the recipes I come up with.  

Boulangère potatoes

Boulangère potatoes

I forgot to take a photo of the
finished dish... sorry!

Usually if I was to make some sort of gratin with potatoes it would always be gratin dauphinoise as the mixture of cream, potatoes and garlic is truly one of the greatest dishes. However recently we had the neighbours round and I was serving a roast chicken with rich garlicky sauce to be followed by a very decadent chocolatey dessert, so I thought we should have something less artery clogging. It was incredibly yummy to the point that Mr Neighbour and lovely fiancé were fighting over the last scrapings of the dish.

The name comes from boulangerie, (french bakery) as it is meant to be like a baguette with its very crispy top revealing an incredibly soft underneath.

Boulangère potatoes

Serves 4

75g butter

1kg floury potatoes, such as maris piper

1 medium onion

400ml Stock (preferably chicken, but vegetable would also work)

Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 170ºC.

Butter an oven-proof dish with half the butter. Peel the potatoes and onions and slice as finely as you can, I would recommend using a mandolin for this. Make a layer of potatoes over the bottom of the dish with the discs overlapping, follow by a layer of onion and a good grinding of fresh pepper and salt. Repeat layering potato, onion, seasoning, ending on a layer of potatoes.

Press it all down firmly. Pour on the stock slowly, you may not need all of it, you want all the potatoes to be submerged but only just. Dot with the remaining butter then bake in the oven for about 2 hours until all the stock has been absorbed by the potatoes, the top is crispy and potatoes are tender.

Random Tip 1: Perfect melted chocolate

Perfect melted chocolate

Firstly, always use the best chocolate you can.

Chocolatey goodness

The trick to cooking chocolate without it seizing is to make sure everything your using is perfectly clean and does not come into contact with any water or steam. Put a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, making sure the bowl does not touch the water and that no steam can escape round the edges. Don't use a wooden spoon as they can hold water, a metal spoon is good or my preference is a rubber spatula. If your chocolate should seize, your best of starting again but if you have no more chocolate then you may be able to save your chocolate by adding liquid, depending on what you are making butter or cream may be a good idea, or maybe some rum, chocolate loves booze.  

Some people choose to melt their chocolate in a microwave, but I hate microwaves so don't expect any tips on that!

Breton Flan

The Flan* Mission

*That's 'flan' to be pronounced with an outrageous french accent to get it right: 'flohn'.

When I was younger my family had a small cottage in the depths of the countryside of Brittany, northern France where I spent almost every holiday. I am sure my love of fantastic food and beautiful countyside originates in all those weeks away.

Anyway that's the context for you, the point is one of my favourite memories when I drift off into nostalgia is the beautiful Breton custard pastry 'flan'. Made with dried apricots, prunes or my preference being for the plain; it is a simple but incredibly yummy treat.

I have set myself a mission to find the perfect recipe for flan, one that will satisfy all my memories of time spent in France.

Joanne Harris' version.
Yummy but not right.

My hunt began rumaging through my own bookshelf. The only book to have anything close was The French Kitchen by Joanne Harris and Fran Warde, the recipe did not have the thin pastry that I am after but I tried it anyway to see if the custard was right. I did it with prunes and ohh it was yummy (and lovely fiance's first taste of this french treat I have gushed about so often). But it wasn't right, tasted very buttery (quite a lot of melted butter went into it) and the top was sprinkled with sugar which is just plain wrong. Flan as I know it should have an almost leathery 'skin' on the top (not making it sound appetising there) none of this sugar business. So it was a fail in terms of nostalgia but still a yummy dessert.

Then a few days ago I was in St. Pancras train station getting a train to see the in-laws and saw that Paul (the french bakery store, not a random chap) was selling flan, naturally I could not resist. Oooh it was tasty but oooh no it wasn't right. This time there was pastry holding it together, making it something you can eat on the move (as it should be) but the pastry was too crumbly and cake-y. The custard was certainly closer than the Joanne Harris but had too much wibble about it (maybe not the technical word there...).

So dear readers, the hunt continues and I will keep you informed. But please do send me any recipes you may have for it and I will put them to the taste test!

Take one... bacon collar joint

Take one... bacon collar joint

I love meals that leave you with tasty leftovers, I don't mean 'heat them up in the microwave' leftovers (for the record I hate microwaves but more of that another day), exciting leftovers that naturally lead on to other meal ideas. Tonight I will be cooking up a bacon collar joint, cooking it in cider with veggies; the weather is cold and miserable outside and it sounds most suitable.  Then tomorrow night that lovely meat will be cooked up with some mushrooms in a tasty sauce and wrapped up in pancakes with cheese on top (one of lovely fiance's favourite meals).  There should still be enough left that the day after we'll go for something a bit less decadent and have a tasty soup from it.  So there you have it, three days of tasty, autumnal food. Other options you could try for the leftovers would be in a risotto with peas, a tasty addition to macaroni cheese - good macaroni cheese is one of life's great pleasures so do it properly.

Bacon collar joint cooked in cider

A cooking joint does not an interesting picture
 make- so here's a pig instead

serves 2 with lots for lovely leftovers

1 bacon collar joint about 1.5 Kg

1 carrot peeled and chopped

1 leek chopped into chunks

1 small eating apple, cored and chopped into 8 (no need to peel)

Good quality cider to cover

1/2 tbsp black peppercorns

1 bay leaf

Sprig of thyme

For the sauce-

Knob of butter, unsalted (the meat is very salty so you will not need to put in any extra salt)

1 tbsp plain flour

Reserved cooking liquid

Put your bacon joint in a pan with water to cold water to cover, bring to the boil and then simmer for 15 minutes.  Then strain off the water.  Clean out the pan and then put the joint back in along with all carrots, leek and apple.  You can either put the spices in loose or it would be neater to tie them in a square of muslin (or an unwanted pair of old tights seems to work well!).  Now cover the whole lot with the cider (hoping there is a little left over for an aperitif) bring to the boil and then simmer for about 1 1/2 hours until it can be easily pierced with a knife.

When it's ready, remove the pork and veggies and keep warm, (this is where you will be grateful if you have put all the spices together rather than having to pick out all the pesky little peppercorns).  Keep the cooking liquid to make a beautiful sauce. Melt a small knob of butter in a pan and then sprinkle in the flour and heat until it fizzes.  Now add your cooking liquid a little at a time stirring all the time until you reach the desired consistency.  Taste for seasoning but I'd be amazed if you need any salt.

It is rich, especially with the sauce so I'd recommend a simple accompaniment and  of course a nice glass of cider!

Rum truffles ('The Food Chain')

The 'Food Chain'

No this is not a science lesson akin to dog-chicken-corn, this is a different sort of food chain.  The food chain that tends to define the contents of my shopping lists. I hate wasting food and always try to be a little bit frugal but this tends to lead me on a downhill spiral of recipe upon recipe (or shall we be optimistic and say uphill spiral?)

Let me give you an example - I had a craving to make rum truffles last week, the bakery type not the chocolaterie variety.  Rum truffle recipes were a way of a bakery using up broken biscuits and old sponge, so the chain began me having to make some little sponge cakes. Half of these were iced for a yummy afternoon treat and the rest were kept for the truffles. (The leftover rum went into a yummy Zombie cocktail). I bought in the biscuits rather than making them myself, but then I had half a packet of digestives.  So I decided to make a cheesecake.  This required me to buy lots of Quark (I was doing a German -style cheesecake), and yes there was then quark leftover so I used it to make a sort of moussey-fruity dessert, thus ending the chain.

Craving for rum truffles  sponge cakes  truffles  cheesecake (and cocktail!)  mousse dessert

I made the cheesecake so as to not waste the biscuits (yes I could have just dunked them in my tea but that wouldn't have been very creative now), those biscuits were probably only worth about 30p but I refused to waste them so ended up making more things, which of course meant spending more money.  Maybe that's the curse of the foodie, every recipe inspires another, but I guess my stubborn refusal to throw things out keeps my repoiture fresh!

Rum Truffles (makes about 12 cupcake case sized truffles)

6 tbsp Cocoa
1/4 pint hot water
7 tablespoons dark or golden rum*
4 tablespoons apricot jam (I actually used homemade peach jam but I don't expect you all to have that!)
350g biscuits (nothing too exotic, digestive are ideal) crushed
350g sponge cake, crumbled
chocolate vermicelli

Put the cocoa in a bowl and pour on the water and the rum and mix well until smooth. Add everything else apart from the vermicelli and mix it together well, knead until you have a firm sticky dough, if too dry toss in more rum (or water for the boring ones out there). Roll the mixture into small balls a to fit your cases snuggly and then roll them in the vermicelli until coated. Best kept in the fridge.
Simple but oh so good.

* You could soak some raisins in the rum if you like before you mix it all together, but in my humble opinion why ruin a nice piece of decadence with dried fruit?

Beetroot chocolate brownies

Beetroot Part II

I am yet again in a glut of beetroot after a chum kindly bestowed a tray full of goodies from their allotment. So I thought I'd better try something different.

A few years ago I tried a National Trust recipe for a beetroot chocolate cake and I have made my own version.

Beetroot chocolate brownies

175g Dark chocolate
150g Unsalted butter
150g Caster sugar
2 eggs, beaten
150g beetroot grated
175g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

For the chocolate frosting:
50g unsalted butter at room temperature
25ml milk
150g icing sugar, sifted
20g cocoa, sifted

Preheat oven to 200 C. Line a 17.5 x 27.5 cm brownie tin with greasproof paper and lightly grease.

Melt the chocolate and the butter in a metal bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water. (It is crucial that no steam escapes and use a metal spoon or rubber spatula to stir). Once melted stir in the sugar and the eggs. Sieve the flour and baking powder together in a bowl and add the wet ingredients. Finally add your beetroot and mix everything well. Pour into the prepared tin and cook for 20-25 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Once cool mix all the frosting ingredients together and blend well with an electric whisk, I find it looks better not smoothed down too much on top of the brownies, keep it rough.

----
I should also mention that in my previous Beetroot entry I wrongly said that beetroot in white sauce is my Mother-in-law's way of serving it. Father-in-law has since pointed out that it was his mother's recipe and he used to have it as a boy, so it seems it's passing down the generations. I have also since been looking in some of my older recipe books and I can find a similar recipe from circa 1940 so there we are, a bit of history of beetroot and my in-laws for you!

Beet

Basil

Had dinner with friends on Saturday night and our hosts had a most envious basil bush in their herb garden. After listening to me ramble on about all the cooking possibilities for most of the evening, I woke up the next morning to find a huge bag of the stuff on my door step; I am loving the fact that my kitchen smells a little bit like Italy and I have lots planned for it:



Basil Oil - ridiculously easy but so useful to have in the kitchen. I will be using it to sex-up pastas, risottos and salads, also for homemade pizzas and bruschetta.

Pesto - Mmmm pesto. Pesto does not need to be limited to pasta or gnocchi, I'll be using it as a coating for chicken in salads, using it in soups, stuffing chicken breasts, again bruschetta. YUM!

Also try - serving basil with mozzarella and tomato drizzled with olive oil for a simple salad, pasta salads, stuffing meat etc

Basil Oil
Take a clean jar or bottle and losely pack with basil leaves, pour over olive oil. Unlike other flavoured oils when using soft herbs like basil you need cold olive oil rather than warm. After a couple of weeks strain and rebottle.

Pesto
2 cloves of garlic
500ml basil leaves compact but don't squish them down too much
50g pinenuts
50g Parmesan cheese, grated
150ml olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

In a blender whizz together the garlic and basil, then add the pinenuts and parmesan whizz again. Then pour in the oil with the motor running. Season to taste.

It is best kept in the fridge, it will last longer if you make sure there is always a thin layer of oil at the top of the jar.

Tomato Salsa - chiffonade your basil, then add to concasse tomatoes, garlic and finely chopped shalots with a good glug of olive oil.*


* Excuse the cookery lingo:
Chiffonade - lay individual basil leaves on top of one another then roll up from the stem end and slice thinly
Concasse - cut the tomato into quarters, remove the seeds (a teaspoon is excellent for this) and then finely dice.)

The Passata Saga

Oooh there is nothing that angers me quite so much in this world as a bad recipe and yesterday my anger levels were truly tested. I thought it would be a nice and seasonal activity to make some passata from the abundance of tomatoes the local market had to offer.  It seemed a simple recipe, lots of tomatoes, shallots, garlic and fresh herbs tossed in a roasting pan and cooked until soft in the oven. That all went fine and dandy, smelt amazing, I was content.  The next stage in the cooking process is where everything went dramatically wrong - sieving the damn thing.  For those of you who don't know passata is basically just sieved tomatoes so its thicker than chopped tomatoes, thinner than puree and is a great thing to have in the cupboard for a quick thrown together pasta or as a base for lasagne or homemade pizza sauce etc etc. 

Pasteurising the 'sauce' not passata
(before I knocked one of the jars over)

The recipe I was using (from the previously praised and now banished from the kitchen River Cottage cook book Preserves by Pam Corbin) said I could push the cooked tomatoes through a nylon sieve.  Impossible, stupid idea, just resulted in a tomatoey water and would have taken hours to get through the 7Kg of tomatoes I had cooked.  Promptly gave up on that idea, a mouli is a good way of making passata but I had wanted to avoid spending the money, but decided it was worth it and well I had little choice. Alas there was no mouli to be found in my little Surrey town, all I could find was a potato ricer, which I figured may do the job.  Nope.  This had the far more dramatic effect of squirting tomatoes all over the wall and my clothes (lesson there to always remember the apron). 

At this stage a hissy-fit was more than likely so lovely fiancé stepped in to calm me, i.e. he poured me a large glass of wine and politely suggested a blender.  I won't type what I said when one of the full kilner jars fell over in the preserving pan while I was pasteurising it, let's just say a passing sailor would have been shocked. So in the end I did not have the desired passata, rather a pasta sauce but it still tasted fabulous at least.

Beetroot

It's in season and it turns everything in your kitchen, hands included, a hilarious colour of pink, how could anyone not love beetroot (or 'beets' to our american cousins)? Every time I eat beetroot I feel like a 'proper adult' as I never ate it as a child. My sister and I weren't allowed; presumably and quite rightly, because we would have ended up getting that pink stain all over our clothes and the wallpaper.

I like to cook it in the oven (remember to keep the leaves, good alternative to spinach). Give them a scrub to get off any soil but keep the skin intact. Wrap in kitchen foil and put in a hot oven (Gas 6), smaller ones may only need half an hour but bigger ones may take quite a lot longer, when you can pierce them with a knife easily they're done. Once cool enough to handle remove the skins.

Things I will be doing with beetroot:

Red flannel hash - it isn't red and there certainly is no flannel involved but this is basically the name for corned beef hash with added beetroot. I am still slightly appaled by the dog food like quality of corned beef but fiance-dearest encouraged me to try it and I do now find it a bit of a guilty pleasure. (On a separate note it's a great stomach filler before a night of drinking).

Balsamic, honey glaze - drizzle cooked beetroot with honey and a splash of balsamic vinegar then finished in the oven for 20 mins (hot oven). Nice accompaniment to a roast.

White sauce - this is how my mother-in-law serves it, top cooked beetroot with white sauce and finish in the oven. It turns a beautiful colour.

Of course the cooked beetroot goes fantastically in salad. I loved Raymond Blanc's recent Kitchen Secrets series, and his Hot smoked salmon, beetroot salad and horseradish crème fraîche recipe looks fantasic: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/brandonrostsmokedsal_93502

Raspberry Vinegar

For the past couple of weeks every time a chum has popped round they have wrinkled up their noses and demanded to know why my house always smells of vinegar. Which is a slight exageration, but there is some truth in it, what with all the chutneys I have been making there has been a certain tang about the air of late.

These smells reached their crescendo last night as I made raspberry vinegar, which had been stewing in a bowl on the kitchen table for the best part of a week. I decided to make raspberry vinegar after reading Susan Loomis' On Rue Tatin, which is about her experience (as an American) moving to France as a cookery writer. The recipes in it look fantastic; I was particularly intrigued by her suggestion to serve goats cheese with raspberry vinegar and lavender honey. When I stumbled across a recipe for raspberry vinegar in the River Cottage Preseves book, Preserves, by Pam Corbin I couldn't resist. The colour of the vinegar is stunning and it was incredibly simple to make. And better yet that should be the end of my house smelling of vinegar!

Raspberries stewing in vinegar

Raspberry Vinegar

1kg Raspberries
600ml white wine vinegar
Granulated Sugar

The raspberries need to be put in a bowl with the vinegar, smash them up a bit and then leave to stew for 5 days. Strain through a blanched jelly bag over night. Then measure your liquid, for every 600ml vinegar add 450g sugar. Bring this to the boil stirring to dissolve the sugar and boil for 10 minutes. If any scum rises remove it. Remove from the heat and bottle once cool.


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In other news, I think my preserving phase is taking over my mind - I had a meeting yesterday and ended up educating the poor chap about pectin levels in different fruits!

Mushrooming

Fantastic looking but very, VERY
poisonous

My wonderful chums got me a foraging/ mushrooming day course for my birthday this year.

My mushrooming day began with me in a state of panic over my morning coffee, as I had it in my head that I would be the only person on the course and it would be me and a couple of mad old hippies traipsing through the Surrey countryside. Thank God those fears were unfounded and I had a fantastic day, exhausting though, clearly I am not used to spending a Saturday concentrating on lectures and rummaging about in the forest.

I am pleased to say I collected quite a horde, I am a rather sore loser and would have had quite a sulk if I had returned with an empty basket. I collected quite a number of ceps (otherwise known as porchini or penny bun) and a rather unappetising looking boletus which I have been assured is very tasty.

Lunch was provided and was very in-keeping with the foraging/ countryside theme. On the menu was watercress soup with cep and olive bread, game casserole (for which I did apologise to the bunnies when I came home for eating their cousin) followed by cranachan, all very tasty indeed.

Our hosts, Peter and Clifford had a back up plan in case we were unsuccessful in our hunt so had gathered a number of fungi which grow in fields (as opposed to our woodland hunt) for us to take home and I gladly took some of them home as well.

Field Mushrooms

The field mushrooms became our dinner that evening, most were just fried off with butter, garlic and parsley and served on ciabatta. For the puff balls I tried Clifford's recommendation of cutting a slice which looked not dissimiliar to a slice of bread, then drizzled with olive oil, some crushed garlic and fresh herbs and toasted under the grill, yum.

I wanted to preserve the ceps and boletus, so sliced them and they are drying on wire cooling racks in the warmest spot in the house I could find - which happens to be next to my other half's computer, which is drying them out nicely. I have since been looking into this and have found that many mushroomers prefer to blanch them in butter or oil and then freeze them, which I will be trying next time.

The day was organised by Peter Sibley and Clifford Davy of Wild Harvest www.wildharvest.com, highly recommended.

Fruit Liqeurs

Now, I am a woman who likes the occasional drinkie and I particularly like a drink which doesn’t cost too much and I can take some sort of credit for how tasty it is. For that reason I am a big fan of making fruit liqueurs and at this time of year the markets and countryside are abundant with lots of tempting fruits. I have made more fiddly drinks, such as Limoncello, in the past but while yummy I still prefer the very simple gin or vodka based drinks which only require fruit, sugar, booze and maybe some added spices.


Fruity boozy goodness



The benefit of these sort of drinks is once you know the very simple method you can experiment with all sorts of drinks.

You will need-
Large sterile jar/ bottle (ensuring a large enough opening for your fruit of choice)
Fruit (sloes, damsons, plums, peaches, blackberries, cherries etc)
Caster sugar
Lots of cheap gin/ vodka (I always use very cheap supermarket branded spirits, there is no need to use the good stuff)
Spices (optional)

Prepare your fruit, ensure they are of sound quality (you don’t want anything bruised) and clean either by wiping over with a damp cloth (good for plums etc) or washing briefing (better for fiddly things like blackberries). Soft fruits such as blackberries can go straight in the jar but for fruits with a stone I recommend pricking a few times with a large needle. You want to fill your jar about two thirds of the way up with fruit, ensuring it is compact but not squashed, then pour on the sugar until it reaches half way up the fruit. Now pour on your spirit until the top of the container and chuck in any spices, seal tightly and give it a good shake. Shake it every day for a month and then strain it through a jelly bag and seal in smaller bottles after 3 months.

I have been known to use damsons and plums that have been used as above in making scrummy jams, and once just served as they were with ice-cream, that was quite an intense dessert though!

A few recommendations-

• Sloes need more sugar than damsons, plums less than either
• Sloes, plums and damsons all work particularly well with gin.
• Good spices to experiment with are vanilla pods, cinnamon sticks and with gin juniper berries work very well indeed.

Also experiment with mixers for the drinks and the endless variety of cocktails you can make, I have found pomegranate juice goes very well with elderberry vodka, and damson gin makes for a great punch at parties.

Drinkies and Petit Fours

We had drinkies with the neighbours on Friday, for which I offered to bring something dessert-ish for us all to nibble on. And just to make sure that nothing goes simply the host is also wheat and dairy intolerant, not the easiest person to make a dessert for. I struck upon an idea to make petit fours that way avoiding baking which is of course so often laden with butter and flour.

I made Caramel Custard Squares from Good Housekeeping’s, Step-by-Step Cook Book. Which were fine but not a recipe I would particularly recommend, just not enough wow factor for the faff that went into making them. To accompany the squares I went a bit nostalgic and decided to make every 7-year-olds favourite, peppermint creams. I also thought it would be a good idea to experiment with different flavours and recruited my lovely fiancé to join in.



Lovely fiance's 'builder's grout'

In a matter of minutes, we had beautiful peppermint creams rolled in very dark chocolate shavings to make them a bit more adult-friendly. We did however also have a kitchen-full of various bowls of creamy paste in a myriad of colours including something that looked like builders grout and something yellow with crunchy bits in. Maybe we had been sampling a bit too much of the ridiculously sweet mixture but our flavours of choice were: limoncello (crunchy – fiancé had fun trying to reduce it down to improve the texture), crème de mures (bloody nice actually), elderberry vodka (made no difference apart from making it runny).

Needless to say only the non-embarassing ones (peppermint choc and crème de mures) ended up being offered to the neighbours and they were all finished which is a good sign, though we did get through a truly impressive amount of wine and rum so judgement may have been impaired.

Lesson of the day: cooking with fiancé dearest is huge amounts of fun, and better yet I have no fear of being rivalled for the role of cook in the relationship!