Monday 27 December 2010

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.

Sunday 19 December 2010

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 10th 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 11th - 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 13th – 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 16th – 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 17th – 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 18th – 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 19th – Now I am hungover and am planning a corned beef hash and fried egg as my cure.

Thursday 9 December 2010

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)

Friday 3 December 2010

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.