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.

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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.