Well, dear reader, what to write about after a busy day babysitting for my five little cousins? (Followed, I may add, by a gruelling drinks party...life is tough sometimes). Not a lot of choice, actually, because the only thing I've even come close to cooking today is a hot, steaming mug of hot chocolate. The way I do it is the old-fashioned way, in a saucepan rather than the microwave. It always makes me feel lovely and virtuous, just like a proper cook, even though at the end of the day, I'm only making a hot drink.
If I say so myself, my hot chocolate is pretty special. And I'm about to let you in on the secret.
Ingredients:
Four teaspoons of your favourite brand of hot chocolate
A mug of milk, nearly full
A tablespoon or so of cream
A tiny sprinkling of ground cinnamon, mixed with a little bit more of the hot chocolate powder
Possibly a quarter of a vanilla pod, although this is still filed under 'experimental' for me!
Recipe:
Measure out your mug of milk, add the cream, then pour it into a saucepan and set it on a mild heat to warm. You can add the vanilla pod to this if you're using it. Sadly, I've never managed to get the concentration quite right.
Vanilla is really amazingly nasty when over-intensified.
Pop the hot chocolate powder into the now-empty mug, with maybe just a teeeeeeeny spot of cinnamon. But I do mean TEENY. Then spoon in four teaspoons of milk from the pan. Mix until it forms a paste - you'll think it isn't going to, then suddenly it will.
Now, turn up the heat on the milk and cream mixture. You're going to need to watch it very, very carefully. First it'll seem to become a bit thicker and more syrupy. Next, it'll begin to boil. This is traditionally supposed to be bad for milk, but I've never found it does a terrible amount of damage. Just before it shows signs of boiling, it'll become a tiny bit frothy on top. This froth is your gold dust. While it's still there on top, but before the milk expands like a mad thing up the sides of the pan (which is the next stage), take the pan off the heat.
The same effect may be achieved by warming your milk then frothing it up with one of those lurid electric hot chocolate whisk jobs, but I find this is hard to get right. It also creates an absolute devil of a mess when you inevitably get it wrong.
Either way, pour your slightly frothy milk into the mug with the hot chocolate paste, then give it a mix. The mix is important - you want to stir up the paste on the bottom of the mug without disturbing the froth on top. So stick your spoon right in to the bottom and give it a gentle, wiggly sort of stir, trying to move the bottom of the spoon rather than the top. It's a bit of a knack, but you'll get the hang of it.
Now, sprinkle your beverage with the mixed cinnamon and chocolate powder, grab your mug firmly by the handle, and put your feet up.
This is going to take some time.
Wednesday 29 December 2010
Monday 27 December 2010
Creamy Bacon Cabbage
A very quick offering again tonight, as once more I really need to get to bed. I hope everyone's Christmas was as merry as mine - and by the way, the Christmas Pudding went down a treat, despite those dodgy plastic pudding bowls. I re-potted it in proper ceramic ones with muslin, and steamed it on Christmas morning. It was delicious, despite a slightly alarming last-minute blast in the hot oven, because it needed browning up a bit. The Anonymous Bystander has since announced that while it was very nice, we're all sick of Chrissy Pud now and tomorrow it will be fed to the birds...
Now it's Boxing Day, though, and I'm frankly far too exhausted by all the rich Christmas food to be keen on cooking very much. I had, however, made a somewhat unwise promise to the Anonymous Bystander that I'd cook some cabbage for lunch tomorrow before heading to bed. So cabbage it is.
With this recipe, you can vary your ratio of cabbage to bacon and cream, depending on how healthy you're feeling. I used nearly a whole pack of bacon and about 250ml of cream...but then again, I was cooking for 15.
Ingredients:
A cabbage - savoy or white, it's your choice
Lots of bacon
A slosh of white wine
A smaller slosh of water
Plenty of cream
Salt and black pepper
Recipe:
1. Chop your cabbage into quarters or eighths, cut out the tough part at the bottom, and slice along each quarter so that it's fairly thinly shredded.
2. Cook off your bacon in the oven so it's about half done, and let it cool until you can handle it. This makes it easier to chop up - I hate chopping raw bacon, because it always slips around, won't cut evenly, and sticks to the knife/scissors. Yuck.
3. Chop the bacon into dice or slices, about the same size as your cabbage pieces.
4. In a large pan, carry on cooking your bacon until it's fairly crispy.
5. Add the sloshes of wine and water, and let it bubble for a minute.
6. Add your cabbage. Give it a stir so that the bacon is mixed in.
7. Cover with a lid and leave to simmer for 5 minutes or so, or until the cabbage is cooked to your satisfaction.
8. Add ridiculous quantites of cream and stir well. Season.
9. Allow to cook for a little while longer until the cream has thickened a bit, and taste for seasoning one more time. The cardinal rule of seasoning, by the way, is that if you think it needs a certain something but don't know what, it's 99% certain to be salt.
10. Serve hot with pork or game birds. Alternatively, set aside and re-heat - it'll keep a day or three in the fridge.
Now it's Boxing Day, though, and I'm frankly far too exhausted by all the rich Christmas food to be keen on cooking very much. I had, however, made a somewhat unwise promise to the Anonymous Bystander that I'd cook some cabbage for lunch tomorrow before heading to bed. So cabbage it is.
With this recipe, you can vary your ratio of cabbage to bacon and cream, depending on how healthy you're feeling. I used nearly a whole pack of bacon and about 250ml of cream...but then again, I was cooking for 15.
Ingredients:
A cabbage - savoy or white, it's your choice
Lots of bacon
A slosh of white wine
A smaller slosh of water
Plenty of cream
Salt and black pepper
Recipe:
1. Chop your cabbage into quarters or eighths, cut out the tough part at the bottom, and slice along each quarter so that it's fairly thinly shredded.
2. Cook off your bacon in the oven so it's about half done, and let it cool until you can handle it. This makes it easier to chop up - I hate chopping raw bacon, because it always slips around, won't cut evenly, and sticks to the knife/scissors. Yuck.
3. Chop the bacon into dice or slices, about the same size as your cabbage pieces.
4. In a large pan, carry on cooking your bacon until it's fairly crispy.
5. Add the sloshes of wine and water, and let it bubble for a minute.
6. Add your cabbage. Give it a stir so that the bacon is mixed in.
7. Cover with a lid and leave to simmer for 5 minutes or so, or until the cabbage is cooked to your satisfaction.
8. Add ridiculous quantites of cream and stir well. Season.
9. Allow to cook for a little while longer until the cream has thickened a bit, and taste for seasoning one more time. The cardinal rule of seasoning, by the way, is that if you think it needs a certain something but don't know what, it's 99% certain to be salt.
10. Serve hot with pork or game birds. Alternatively, set aside and re-heat - it'll keep a day or three in the fridge.
Saturday 25 December 2010
Mulled Wine: A Quick Christmas Cracker
Merry Christmas one and all!
Just one quick Christmas recipe, because I need to get to bed otherwise Santa might not turn up! Mulled wine, wicked for Christmas and very warming in this freezing cold too. You can personalise your spice mix as much as you like, but I'll give you the basics.
Ingredients:
Bottle (or more) of red wine
Per bottle:
Some peppercorns
3 tbs brown sugar
Two oranges and a lemon stuck with cloves (you might need to stick in a skewer first to make a hole, then pop the clove in)
A good grating of nutmeg
A cinnamon stick
One or two star anise
A sprinkling of Allspice
Anything else spicy you fancy
Method:
1. Bung it all in a big pan
2. Leave overnight to infuse (optional)
3. Bring to a simmer
4. Simmer for 5-10 minutes
5. Ladle it out and booze up
6. Fall asleep in front of the fire.
Merry Christmas! The blog will (hopefully) resume on Boxing Day.
Just one quick Christmas recipe, because I need to get to bed otherwise Santa might not turn up! Mulled wine, wicked for Christmas and very warming in this freezing cold too. You can personalise your spice mix as much as you like, but I'll give you the basics.
Ingredients:
Bottle (or more) of red wine
Per bottle:
Some peppercorns
3 tbs brown sugar
Two oranges and a lemon stuck with cloves (you might need to stick in a skewer first to make a hole, then pop the clove in)
A good grating of nutmeg
A cinnamon stick
One or two star anise
A sprinkling of Allspice
Anything else spicy you fancy
Method:
1. Bung it all in a big pan
2. Leave overnight to infuse (optional)
3. Bring to a simmer
4. Simmer for 5-10 minutes
5. Ladle it out and booze up
6. Fall asleep in front of the fire.
Merry Christmas! The blog will (hopefully) resume on Boxing Day.
Thursday 23 December 2010
Fish Pie (for the cousins)
My cousins are coming for lunch here tomorrow for Christmas Eve, and as a result I've been presented with some assorted fish by the Anonymous Bystander and commanded to make a pie. This 'Oi, Rosie, make a pie' thing seems to be happening ever more frequently. I can't complain, though, because frankly I love a good pie.
Fish pie, like a lot of cooking, is quite a personal affair in terms of what you like to include. Do you prefer white fish or salmon? Smoked or plain? Prawns, mussels or both? Do you like boiled eggs in your pie? Leeks? Tomatoes? What herbs do you add? Do you top it with potatoes or pastry? Mashed or sliced, puff or filo? Or just sprinkle the filling with crushed up crisps? There are a hundred and one variations on the basic pie, but they all involve the same key elements: filling (meat, fish, or vegetables and sauce) and topping.
You'll probably find, like me, that the pie you end up with is dictated as much by the ingredients you have to hand as by your own taste. Hence, for example, my recipe today contains hard boiled eggs, even though I generally think they ruin a perfectly good pie. The reasons for this are twofold: firstly, there wasn't enough fish to feed six people and I needed to bulk out the pie's filling; and secondly, and more importantly, I'm not at home for lunch tomorrow so I won't have to eat it...
I chose mashed potato for a topping, because I love the way it soaks up the sauce in a fish pie. I prefer puff pastry in a meat pie, but mash for fish. To be honest, I'm pretty sure your preference has a lot to do with how your mum makes hers. For the filling of my pie, I used what I had available, which this time happened to be some unsmoked haddock from the freezer (skin and bones on); some smoked salmon (unusual, but it happened to be at hand); and some prawns, which I think are essential in a top fish pie.
The basic pie usually involves cooking your fish if it's raw (smoked salmon and frozen prawns already count as cooked, by the way) by poaching it in milk with a couple of bay leaves. The milk just needs to be hot, not boiling, and you'll find that the fish turns crumbly and opaque very quickly. This means it's cooked; fish takes no time at all. Once all your fish is cooked off, you can leave it to cool a bit and make the pastry or mashed potatoes for the topping, the sauce, and anything else you're including in your filling. I used the cooking liquor from my haddock where you'd usually use plain milk in a bechamel sauce, which helped to blend the flavours of the fish and sauce in the finished pie. Once everything's cooked, you need to separate the fish into bitesize chunks, either by cutting it or with your fingers, and take off any bones or skin at the same time.
Finally, the easy bit: mix all the filling elements together with the sauce, pop it in a dish, and cover with the topping. You can freeze it at this point if you like, or it will keep in the fridge overnight or for a couple of days (not too long, or the fridge will smell all gross). When you want to serve it, you just put it in the oven until the topping is golden brown and the filling is bubbling up around the sides. All it needs is some vegetables or salad to go along with it, and plenty of slices of fresh lemon. Yum.
Here's a rough recipe for the pie I made today, but bear it mind you can be very flexible with most of it.
Ingredients:
Around 1kg of whatever mixture of fish you fancy (best to avoid very oily fish though)
Around 1kg of assorted mussels, prawns, scallops, or other yummy things that you like. These should be cooked first.
Some butter
Some flour
A glass of white wine (and one for you)
Some milk
A couple of bay leaves
Lots of potatoes
Some butter and cream to go in the mash
Salt and pepper
About 5 eggs
A handful of parsley
Recipe:
1. Put your fish in a saucepan and cover with milk. If you don't have enough milk, make up the difference with water. Add some bay leaves and simmer very gently until the fish is cooked. This won't take long.
2. Set the fish aside to cool. Keep the cooking liquid for later. Make sure the rest of your filling is ready - hard boil the eggs if using, cut up the smoked salmon if using. Etc etc etc. Take a cooling sip of wine.
3. Cut and peel the potatoes, and boil then in another saucepan until they fall apart when you prod them with a knife. Drain and mash with butter and cream. Season, using more salt than you think is wise (another golden tip from the Food Guru there).
4. Separate the haddock into bitesize chunks, discarding the skin and bones as you go.
5. Make the sauce. Melt butter in a pan, add flour to make a roux. Pour in the glass of white wine and whisk until it's combined - it will be very thick. Add the haddock cooking liquid, very slowly and whisking all the time, until the sauce is the thickness you'd like in your pie.
6. Chop up your parsley and eggs, and put them in a bowl along with all the fish and the sauce. Mix together thoroughly, but try to keep the haddock in reasonably big chunks.
7. Top with the mashed potato (remember you can use pastry if you like), and make pretty patterns in it with a fork. These will turn lovely and crunchy when you cook the pie. At this point you can freeze it if you like.
8. To serve, cook in a medium oven (c.180) for 30-40 minutes, until the topping is golden and the sauce is bubbling up.
9. Drink plenty of white wine and congratulate yourself on a fantastic fish pie.
Fish pie, like a lot of cooking, is quite a personal affair in terms of what you like to include. Do you prefer white fish or salmon? Smoked or plain? Prawns, mussels or both? Do you like boiled eggs in your pie? Leeks? Tomatoes? What herbs do you add? Do you top it with potatoes or pastry? Mashed or sliced, puff or filo? Or just sprinkle the filling with crushed up crisps? There are a hundred and one variations on the basic pie, but they all involve the same key elements: filling (meat, fish, or vegetables and sauce) and topping.
You'll probably find, like me, that the pie you end up with is dictated as much by the ingredients you have to hand as by your own taste. Hence, for example, my recipe today contains hard boiled eggs, even though I generally think they ruin a perfectly good pie. The reasons for this are twofold: firstly, there wasn't enough fish to feed six people and I needed to bulk out the pie's filling; and secondly, and more importantly, I'm not at home for lunch tomorrow so I won't have to eat it...
I chose mashed potato for a topping, because I love the way it soaks up the sauce in a fish pie. I prefer puff pastry in a meat pie, but mash for fish. To be honest, I'm pretty sure your preference has a lot to do with how your mum makes hers. For the filling of my pie, I used what I had available, which this time happened to be some unsmoked haddock from the freezer (skin and bones on); some smoked salmon (unusual, but it happened to be at hand); and some prawns, which I think are essential in a top fish pie.
The basic pie usually involves cooking your fish if it's raw (smoked salmon and frozen prawns already count as cooked, by the way) by poaching it in milk with a couple of bay leaves. The milk just needs to be hot, not boiling, and you'll find that the fish turns crumbly and opaque very quickly. This means it's cooked; fish takes no time at all. Once all your fish is cooked off, you can leave it to cool a bit and make the pastry or mashed potatoes for the topping, the sauce, and anything else you're including in your filling. I used the cooking liquor from my haddock where you'd usually use plain milk in a bechamel sauce, which helped to blend the flavours of the fish and sauce in the finished pie. Once everything's cooked, you need to separate the fish into bitesize chunks, either by cutting it or with your fingers, and take off any bones or skin at the same time.
Finally, the easy bit: mix all the filling elements together with the sauce, pop it in a dish, and cover with the topping. You can freeze it at this point if you like, or it will keep in the fridge overnight or for a couple of days (not too long, or the fridge will smell all gross). When you want to serve it, you just put it in the oven until the topping is golden brown and the filling is bubbling up around the sides. All it needs is some vegetables or salad to go along with it, and plenty of slices of fresh lemon. Yum.
Here's a rough recipe for the pie I made today, but bear it mind you can be very flexible with most of it.
Ingredients:
Around 1kg of whatever mixture of fish you fancy (best to avoid very oily fish though)
Around 1kg of assorted mussels, prawns, scallops, or other yummy things that you like. These should be cooked first.
Some butter
Some flour
A glass of white wine (and one for you)
Some milk
A couple of bay leaves
Lots of potatoes
Some butter and cream to go in the mash
Salt and pepper
About 5 eggs
A handful of parsley
Recipe:
1. Put your fish in a saucepan and cover with milk. If you don't have enough milk, make up the difference with water. Add some bay leaves and simmer very gently until the fish is cooked. This won't take long.
2. Set the fish aside to cool. Keep the cooking liquid for later. Make sure the rest of your filling is ready - hard boil the eggs if using, cut up the smoked salmon if using. Etc etc etc. Take a cooling sip of wine.
3. Cut and peel the potatoes, and boil then in another saucepan until they fall apart when you prod them with a knife. Drain and mash with butter and cream. Season, using more salt than you think is wise (another golden tip from the Food Guru there).
4. Separate the haddock into bitesize chunks, discarding the skin and bones as you go.
5. Make the sauce. Melt butter in a pan, add flour to make a roux. Pour in the glass of white wine and whisk until it's combined - it will be very thick. Add the haddock cooking liquid, very slowly and whisking all the time, until the sauce is the thickness you'd like in your pie.
6. Chop up your parsley and eggs, and put them in a bowl along with all the fish and the sauce. Mix together thoroughly, but try to keep the haddock in reasonably big chunks.
7. Top with the mashed potato (remember you can use pastry if you like), and make pretty patterns in it with a fork. These will turn lovely and crunchy when you cook the pie. At this point you can freeze it if you like.
8. To serve, cook in a medium oven (c.180) for 30-40 minutes, until the topping is golden and the sauce is bubbling up.
9. Drink plenty of white wine and congratulate yourself on a fantastic fish pie.
Wednesday 22 December 2010
Cumberland Sauce
Cumberland Sauce is the one and only, best and brightest, one hundred percent winner of a sauce to have with your Christmas Ham. It's also pretty simple to make: the only time-consuming bit is julienning the cirtus peel, but if you stick on some Christmas songs or a DVD it'll pass in a flash. It is sometimes called Oxford sauce, and the internets would have me believe that they are pretty much the same thing. However, my Food Guru tells me that the difference is in the citrus peel, which is julienned in a Cumberland sauce and finely chopped in an Oxford one.
It's pretty much redcurrant jelly, melted, jazzed up with some alcohol, citrus and spices and reintroduced in a yummy Christmas disguise. Especially brilliant because you can serve it straight away, warm and runny, if you're eating a hot meal; or you can store it in a jar, like you would redcurrant jelly or jam (it sets slightly), and eat it later. It keeps as well as any other jam or jelly. Incidentally, it makes a killer Boxing Day ham sandwich or salad. A lot of people add mustard to their sauce - in fact, mustard is one of the defining elements of a Cumberland sauce - but I used cayenne pepper this year. You can use either: I'd recommend cayenne if you like a bit of bite, and mustard for a bit of a smoother, milder tone.
I've made my Cumberland sauce today so as to have something to say to you lovely people, but it's such a simple thing to do you could easily fit it into one of those periods when the Ham is soaking, or boiling, or cooling, or all those other time-consuming things you have to do with ham. Let's face it, in the time it takes to cook the ham you could make Christmas dinner twice over.
So, here's the recipe for your sauce.
Ingredients:
Makes about one or two jars full, depending on the jars and the size of your spoons
One orange
One lemon
8 or so big spoonfuls of redcurrant jelly (shop-bought is fine)
3-4 of the same sized spoonfuls of port (mmm...)
A sprinkle of ground ginger
A sprinkle of cayenne pepper
Some mustard if you like, probably instead of the cayenne
Method:
Firstly, if you're putting this in jars to eat later, you're going to want to sterilize the jars. This will help your sauce to keep for longer. Just boil them in a big pan of water for a couple of minutes, with the lids if they are metal, then fish them out (CAREFULLY, they will obviously be HOT) and dry them in a low oven while you do the rest of the recipe.
Now to the time-consuming bit. Get this over with while you watch something Christmassy on telly. You need the orange and the lemon, which should preferably be unwaxed - although if you shop at the same supermarkets I do, they won't be I'm afraid. You also need a vegetable peeler, or a nice sharp little knife. You need to peel the orange and lemon, as thinly as you can manage, taking off as much of the rind and as little of the sour white pith as possible. You can slice any pith extra pith off the rind. When you've got a pile of it needs to be julienned, which means cut into slices as thinly as you can manage.
That's the boring bit over; now it's a matter for twenty minutes or so and you're done. Put the citrus peel in a pan and cover it with cold water, then bring it to the boil and simmer quite rapidly for 4 minutes or a little longer. This is called blanching. Don't worry if the colour goes from the peel - it's meant to. The whole thing will smell gorgeous.
When it's done, drain the peel out, and get yourself a bigger saucepan with nice high sides. If the sides are too low, what happened to me will happen to you, and it's never fun to spend 15 minutes cleaning sticky redcurrant jelly off the sides of your parents' electric stove because the pan's boiled over.
Now, juice the orange and the lemon, and stick the juice, jelly and spices in the saucepan. You can add the mustard at this point if you're using it. Pop the saucepan on the heat and stir until the jelly has melted and everything has combined. Then add the port and peel, and turn up the heat. Boil vigorously for ten minutes, or until it's reached setting point (put some on a cold saucer, and if it forms a thin skin after a few moments you're sorted). This is the time to be avoiding the boil-over moment. Watch it like a hawk, and stick a cold spoon in if it looks like disobeying you. In extreme cricumstances, take it off the heat for a bit.
Now, pour carefully into the jars, if you're using them, or into a jug if you're serving it hot. You can always reheat it if it's cooled too much. Put the lids on the jars, screw firmly on, then turn the jar upside down and back upright to sterilise the lid (this is a trick I learned from 'Pam the Jam' - I kid you not - on River Cottage, with which, as you know, I am utterly obsessed).
There you have it. Cumberland sauce, to eat with the best Christmas Ham you've ever tasted. I hope you enjoy it as much as I will.
It's pretty much redcurrant jelly, melted, jazzed up with some alcohol, citrus and spices and reintroduced in a yummy Christmas disguise. Especially brilliant because you can serve it straight away, warm and runny, if you're eating a hot meal; or you can store it in a jar, like you would redcurrant jelly or jam (it sets slightly), and eat it later. It keeps as well as any other jam or jelly. Incidentally, it makes a killer Boxing Day ham sandwich or salad. A lot of people add mustard to their sauce - in fact, mustard is one of the defining elements of a Cumberland sauce - but I used cayenne pepper this year. You can use either: I'd recommend cayenne if you like a bit of bite, and mustard for a bit of a smoother, milder tone.
I've made my Cumberland sauce today so as to have something to say to you lovely people, but it's such a simple thing to do you could easily fit it into one of those periods when the Ham is soaking, or boiling, or cooling, or all those other time-consuming things you have to do with ham. Let's face it, in the time it takes to cook the ham you could make Christmas dinner twice over.
So, here's the recipe for your sauce.
Ingredients:
Makes about one or two jars full, depending on the jars and the size of your spoons
One orange
One lemon
8 or so big spoonfuls of redcurrant jelly (shop-bought is fine)
3-4 of the same sized spoonfuls of port (mmm...)
A sprinkle of ground ginger
A sprinkle of cayenne pepper
Some mustard if you like, probably instead of the cayenne
Method:
Firstly, if you're putting this in jars to eat later, you're going to want to sterilize the jars. This will help your sauce to keep for longer. Just boil them in a big pan of water for a couple of minutes, with the lids if they are metal, then fish them out (CAREFULLY, they will obviously be HOT) and dry them in a low oven while you do the rest of the recipe.
Now to the time-consuming bit. Get this over with while you watch something Christmassy on telly. You need the orange and the lemon, which should preferably be unwaxed - although if you shop at the same supermarkets I do, they won't be I'm afraid. You also need a vegetable peeler, or a nice sharp little knife. You need to peel the orange and lemon, as thinly as you can manage, taking off as much of the rind and as little of the sour white pith as possible. You can slice any pith extra pith off the rind. When you've got a pile of it needs to be julienned, which means cut into slices as thinly as you can manage.
That's the boring bit over; now it's a matter for twenty minutes or so and you're done. Put the citrus peel in a pan and cover it with cold water, then bring it to the boil and simmer quite rapidly for 4 minutes or a little longer. This is called blanching. Don't worry if the colour goes from the peel - it's meant to. The whole thing will smell gorgeous.
When it's done, drain the peel out, and get yourself a bigger saucepan with nice high sides. If the sides are too low, what happened to me will happen to you, and it's never fun to spend 15 minutes cleaning sticky redcurrant jelly off the sides of your parents' electric stove because the pan's boiled over.
Now, juice the orange and the lemon, and stick the juice, jelly and spices in the saucepan. You can add the mustard at this point if you're using it. Pop the saucepan on the heat and stir until the jelly has melted and everything has combined. Then add the port and peel, and turn up the heat. Boil vigorously for ten minutes, or until it's reached setting point (put some on a cold saucer, and if it forms a thin skin after a few moments you're sorted). This is the time to be avoiding the boil-over moment. Watch it like a hawk, and stick a cold spoon in if it looks like disobeying you. In extreme cricumstances, take it off the heat for a bit.
Now, pour carefully into the jars, if you're using them, or into a jug if you're serving it hot. You can always reheat it if it's cooled too much. Put the lids on the jars, screw firmly on, then turn the jar upside down and back upright to sterilise the lid (this is a trick I learned from 'Pam the Jam' - I kid you not - on River Cottage, with which, as you know, I am utterly obsessed).
There you have it. Cumberland sauce, to eat with the best Christmas Ham you've ever tasted. I hope you enjoy it as much as I will.
Tuesday 21 December 2010
Roasting the Christmas Ham
Time for Part Two of our super-exciting Christmas Ham serial. Today, I felt that the recipe said it all.
Roasting the Christmas Ham
Ingredients:
1 ham
Water
Cider
Vinegar
Lots of cloves
Honey
Soft brown sugar
Mustard (your choice)
Marmalade (it's better without too many bits in, as they tend to burn)
Recipe...
So. You and I have soaked our Ham overnight to remove the salt. Now, we need to drain the water off it and weigh it, in order to work out the cooking time. My enormous gammon was too big for our kitchen scales (there's a phrase I never thought I'd write), so I had a hilarious time with the full-sized bathroom version. Let's just say that I weigh around twelve Hams.
You need to allow 10-15 minutes of cooking time per 450 grams of Ham. Mine took two hours. The perceptive among you will now be able to work out how much I weigh, what fun. The means of cooking is a slow simmer, covered with a lid, in the biggest pan you can find. I simmered my Ham in a can of Woodpecker cider, a good big slosh of white wine vinegar, and water to top it up. Ideally you want to cover your Ham with the cooking liquid, but if, like mine, your pan isn't quite big enough you can just settle for turning it over halfway through cooking. By a slow simmer, by the way, I mean that while the water is steaming it is certainly not boiling fast - just barely moving, with the occasional bubble glooping onto the surface.
Once the Ham has simmered for its allotted time, remove from the heat and let it cool in the cooking liquid until the water doesn't scald you if you dip a finger in (the first few tests might be a bit tricky...). This is because you're going to need to handle the Ham for the next bit, and while it needs to be warm, you don't want to burn yourself on it. By the way, you'll need to save your cooking liquid for the minute, so don't pour it down the sink just yet!
Now for my favourite bit. You need to peel the skin (but not all of the fat) off your Ham, then score the fat in a diagonal chequered pattern (that's 'checkered' for the 3 readers I apparently have in the US), so that the Ham is covered in little diamonds. Then you need a lot of cloves. Push one into each junction in the pattern (ie, in the corner of each diamond) so that the Ham is studded with cloves in a diamond pattern. Put the Ham in a deep roasting tray. You're ready for the honey glaze.
I use a honey and marnalade version, which goes roughly as follows: tablespoon of mustard (I prefer the grainy kind with ham, but it's up to you); however much honey you think will cover your ham (I used 8 tablespoons for mine); half as much brown sugar and marmalade as you used of honey. Mix it all up and pour over the Ham in the roasting tin. You'll also want to add a few ladlefuls of the cooking liquid from earlier, as this stops the Ham from drying out, and is also yummy. It just needs to cover the bottom of the roasting tin.
Now into the oven, for around 40 minutes, on a high heat (call it 200 - I used the top right oven in the aga). Don't think you can wander off for some mid-cooking TV though, because you need to baste your Ham every ten minutes, to keep it moist as it cooks and to make sure as much of the glaze as possible stays on the Ham and not burned onto the bottom of your roasting tin. By basting, I mean you pull it out of the oven, grab a spoon and use it to pour whatever juices are in the bottom of the pan over the top of the Ham. These juices will get less runny and more syrupy as the cooking goes along.
It will probably sizzle and spit at you, and bits of the glaze are 99% certain to burn. Don't worry about any of this. It will be delicious, I promise. The burned edges of glaze will taste like caramelised oranges rather than gross. Trust me.
Ham looking golden with some burn-y edges? Good. Out of the oven and onto a serving dish or any convenient flat surface which you don't mind wiping sticky honey off later on.
And now for this year's experiment. I poured the leftover juices into a small saucepan and set it on a medium heat to reduce. Once it had reached what looked a bit like the setting point of a jam, I let it cool and thicken slightly then poured the resulting deep golden-brown mess over my Ham. Most of it, I have to admit, ran off into the dish, but there was just a bit more sticky glaze than usual, and frankly, anything which adds more honey glaze to a ham is worth it in my book.
So there we have it. Christmas Ham, perching smugly on my serving dish and looking sticky, meaty, shiny, ever so slightly Victorian, and utterly fantastic (if I do say so myself). Tomorrow, Cumberland sauce, the only thing to eat with your Ham. But for now, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Roasting the Christmas Ham
Ingredients:
1 ham
Water
Cider
Vinegar
Lots of cloves
Honey
Soft brown sugar
Mustard (your choice)
Marmalade (it's better without too many bits in, as they tend to burn)
Recipe...
So. You and I have soaked our Ham overnight to remove the salt. Now, we need to drain the water off it and weigh it, in order to work out the cooking time. My enormous gammon was too big for our kitchen scales (there's a phrase I never thought I'd write), so I had a hilarious time with the full-sized bathroom version. Let's just say that I weigh around twelve Hams.
You need to allow 10-15 minutes of cooking time per 450 grams of Ham. Mine took two hours. The perceptive among you will now be able to work out how much I weigh, what fun. The means of cooking is a slow simmer, covered with a lid, in the biggest pan you can find. I simmered my Ham in a can of Woodpecker cider, a good big slosh of white wine vinegar, and water to top it up. Ideally you want to cover your Ham with the cooking liquid, but if, like mine, your pan isn't quite big enough you can just settle for turning it over halfway through cooking. By a slow simmer, by the way, I mean that while the water is steaming it is certainly not boiling fast - just barely moving, with the occasional bubble glooping onto the surface.
Once the Ham has simmered for its allotted time, remove from the heat and let it cool in the cooking liquid until the water doesn't scald you if you dip a finger in (the first few tests might be a bit tricky...). This is because you're going to need to handle the Ham for the next bit, and while it needs to be warm, you don't want to burn yourself on it. By the way, you'll need to save your cooking liquid for the minute, so don't pour it down the sink just yet!
Now for my favourite bit. You need to peel the skin (but not all of the fat) off your Ham, then score the fat in a diagonal chequered pattern (that's 'checkered' for the 3 readers I apparently have in the US), so that the Ham is covered in little diamonds. Then you need a lot of cloves. Push one into each junction in the pattern (ie, in the corner of each diamond) so that the Ham is studded with cloves in a diamond pattern. Put the Ham in a deep roasting tray. You're ready for the honey glaze.
I use a honey and marnalade version, which goes roughly as follows: tablespoon of mustard (I prefer the grainy kind with ham, but it's up to you); however much honey you think will cover your ham (I used 8 tablespoons for mine); half as much brown sugar and marmalade as you used of honey. Mix it all up and pour over the Ham in the roasting tin. You'll also want to add a few ladlefuls of the cooking liquid from earlier, as this stops the Ham from drying out, and is also yummy. It just needs to cover the bottom of the roasting tin.
Now into the oven, for around 40 minutes, on a high heat (call it 200 - I used the top right oven in the aga). Don't think you can wander off for some mid-cooking TV though, because you need to baste your Ham every ten minutes, to keep it moist as it cooks and to make sure as much of the glaze as possible stays on the Ham and not burned onto the bottom of your roasting tin. By basting, I mean you pull it out of the oven, grab a spoon and use it to pour whatever juices are in the bottom of the pan over the top of the Ham. These juices will get less runny and more syrupy as the cooking goes along.
It will probably sizzle and spit at you, and bits of the glaze are 99% certain to burn. Don't worry about any of this. It will be delicious, I promise. The burned edges of glaze will taste like caramelised oranges rather than gross. Trust me.
Ham looking golden with some burn-y edges? Good. Out of the oven and onto a serving dish or any convenient flat surface which you don't mind wiping sticky honey off later on.
And now for this year's experiment. I poured the leftover juices into a small saucepan and set it on a medium heat to reduce. Once it had reached what looked a bit like the setting point of a jam, I let it cool and thicken slightly then poured the resulting deep golden-brown mess over my Ham. Most of it, I have to admit, ran off into the dish, but there was just a bit more sticky glaze than usual, and frankly, anything which adds more honey glaze to a ham is worth it in my book.
So there we have it. Christmas Ham, perching smugly on my serving dish and looking sticky, meaty, shiny, ever so slightly Victorian, and utterly fantastic (if I do say so myself). Tomorrow, Cumberland sauce, the only thing to eat with your Ham. But for now, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Monday 20 December 2010
Soaking the Christmas Ham
First, a quick note: I've had a few requests for photos to accompany my food-themed rantings. I totally understand (there's nothing I like better than drooling over pictures of other peoples' cooking), but I'm faced with a slight impediment in the form of a digital camera. The Christmas present haul may remedy the situation, you never know. Otherwise, unless any of you want to provide me with some state-of-the-art photographic equipment, the photo element of the blog will have to remain in the Research and Development phase for a little longer. Rest assured that I'm working on it.
And now, on to...
The Christmas Ham, Part One
Today was the first stage of a two-day marathon - the preparation of the Christmas Ham. This has become a tradition in my family since I was small, and a very pleasing development over the last couple of years is that nowadays the Ham (it definitely merits a capitalisation, by the way) is my job. Soaking a Ham may seem a rather tenuous subject for a whole day's worth of blog, but it's a vital part of my Christmas and so, in my opinion, merits a bit of a spotlight.
Besides, I was too busy decorating the Christmas tree to do much cooking.
Incidentally, we don't actually eat the Ham on Christmas Day - that's reserved for turkey, often at one of my aunts' houses. After bouncing and squeaking my way through the latest River Cottage (I'm a Hugh fanatic; if you aren't, you should be) I'm inclining towards goose as my favoured Christmas Day roast - more moist and flavoursome than turkey, I think.
The Ham, however, will always be my unquestioned favourite on the festive food front. Although it's not the star of the Big Day, it fills in all those other foodie gaps in the Christmas menu: with hot roast potatoes, winter vegetables and Cumberland Sauce on Christmas Eve; a couple of slices with a salad as a supper to follow the excesses of the Christmas lunch; far, far better than cold turkey sandwiches on Boxing Day. If you're careful, it might even last until New Year.
I honey-roast my Christmas Hams, which gives them a delicious caramelised crust - but that's for tomorrow. Today is the first, and much less glamorous, stage of Ham preparation, the Soaking of the Ham. Because a raw Ham bought from the butcher is cured with salt to preserve it, you have to remove the salt before cooking it. The best way to do this is to soak it in cold water overnight, turning it over at some point and changing the water every so often when you have time. I don't have a dish large enough to cover the whole Ham with water without it overflowing, but if you do then you shouldn't need to turn it, just change the water.
And that's it. Whenever you get around to it the next day, drain your Ham, put it in a huge saucepan, cover with fresh water and a can of cider, and prepare for Day Two...
And now, on to...
The Christmas Ham, Part One
Today was the first stage of a two-day marathon - the preparation of the Christmas Ham. This has become a tradition in my family since I was small, and a very pleasing development over the last couple of years is that nowadays the Ham (it definitely merits a capitalisation, by the way) is my job. Soaking a Ham may seem a rather tenuous subject for a whole day's worth of blog, but it's a vital part of my Christmas and so, in my opinion, merits a bit of a spotlight.
Besides, I was too busy decorating the Christmas tree to do much cooking.
Incidentally, we don't actually eat the Ham on Christmas Day - that's reserved for turkey, often at one of my aunts' houses. After bouncing and squeaking my way through the latest River Cottage (I'm a Hugh fanatic; if you aren't, you should be) I'm inclining towards goose as my favoured Christmas Day roast - more moist and flavoursome than turkey, I think.
The Ham, however, will always be my unquestioned favourite on the festive food front. Although it's not the star of the Big Day, it fills in all those other foodie gaps in the Christmas menu: with hot roast potatoes, winter vegetables and Cumberland Sauce on Christmas Eve; a couple of slices with a salad as a supper to follow the excesses of the Christmas lunch; far, far better than cold turkey sandwiches on Boxing Day. If you're careful, it might even last until New Year.
I honey-roast my Christmas Hams, which gives them a delicious caramelised crust - but that's for tomorrow. Today is the first, and much less glamorous, stage of Ham preparation, the Soaking of the Ham. Because a raw Ham bought from the butcher is cured with salt to preserve it, you have to remove the salt before cooking it. The best way to do this is to soak it in cold water overnight, turning it over at some point and changing the water every so often when you have time. I don't have a dish large enough to cover the whole Ham with water without it overflowing, but if you do then you shouldn't need to turn it, just change the water.
And that's it. Whenever you get around to it the next day, drain your Ham, put it in a huge saucepan, cover with fresh water and a can of cider, and prepare for Day Two...
Thai Fishcakes (and Garlic Bread)
Hello, hello, hello. I'm back, after a slightly-longer-than-planned 'one week' hiatus (that one worked...) I've been staying with the Boyfriend again, and extending his culinary knowledge even more. I won't bore you with stories of all the alpine cooking I did during my ski break, because to be quite honest we just ate a lot of pasta. In addition, while we did make one sauce ourselves it was pronounced 'not saucy enough' by the Boyfriend (genuine quotation there) and has therefore not made the cut for blog inclusion. No, really, it hasn't.
So, Thai fishcakes and garlic bread, both of which I made this week at Boyfriend's house, as part of my Teach Him Cooking initiative. I have to say, he did a lot of this himself and both dishes turned out brilliantly.
Thai Fishcakes
Boyfriend and I made this for our supper, and served it up to his mum as well. She loved it, which was a big relief for me - cooking for any mother is always an anxious time, and the other half's mother is the most nailbiting of all! We used the recipe from Real Cooking by Nigel Slater. By the way, in case you're wondering, this is not my only cookbook. It is, however, the Boyfriend's only cookbook, so whenever I cook with him we use it: hence its frequent appearances on these pages.
Fishcakes, like many things, almost all follow a basic recipe. Poach the fish, often in milk; mix with mashed potatoes and herbs and flavourings of your choice; form into fishcake shapes with your hands; possibly dip in flour, beaten egg, breadcrumbs (in that order); fry in shallow hot oil and enjoy.
These fishcakes, however, followed a slightly different method, which to my mind made them much more authentically Thai. The flavourings (chilli, lemongrass, garlic, shallott, ginger, nam pla - thai fish sauce, if you were wondering - coriander, salt and pepper) were pulsed into a slush in the food processor, as was the raw fish. We then combined the two by hand in a bowl (fishy fingers, lovely), made fishcakes out of the raw fish with a little flour to stop it sticking to our hands, and shallow fried these to eat. This did mean we had to be careful that they were cooked right the way through as well as being nice and crispy on the outside, but on the plus side the lack of potatoes made them waistline-friendly. Sadly, we immediately cancelled this out by serving them with roast potatoes.
We also served them with a green leaf salad and, most importantly, the dipping sauce included in the recipe, which was an absolute stunner and very simple to make. Vinegar and sugar heated up until syrupy, then add soy sauce and chopped chilli, garlic and coriander. Genuinely beautiful.
Once again, I'm sorry not to include a recipe, but you can find it in Nigel Slater's Real Cooking. He should definitely be paying me for the promotion.
Garlic Bread
So, Thai fishcakes and garlic bread, both of which I made this week at Boyfriend's house, as part of my Teach Him Cooking initiative. I have to say, he did a lot of this himself and both dishes turned out brilliantly.
Thai Fishcakes
Boyfriend and I made this for our supper, and served it up to his mum as well. She loved it, which was a big relief for me - cooking for any mother is always an anxious time, and the other half's mother is the most nailbiting of all! We used the recipe from Real Cooking by Nigel Slater. By the way, in case you're wondering, this is not my only cookbook. It is, however, the Boyfriend's only cookbook, so whenever I cook with him we use it: hence its frequent appearances on these pages.
Fishcakes, like many things, almost all follow a basic recipe. Poach the fish, often in milk; mix with mashed potatoes and herbs and flavourings of your choice; form into fishcake shapes with your hands; possibly dip in flour, beaten egg, breadcrumbs (in that order); fry in shallow hot oil and enjoy.
These fishcakes, however, followed a slightly different method, which to my mind made them much more authentically Thai. The flavourings (chilli, lemongrass, garlic, shallott, ginger, nam pla - thai fish sauce, if you were wondering - coriander, salt and pepper) were pulsed into a slush in the food processor, as was the raw fish. We then combined the two by hand in a bowl (fishy fingers, lovely), made fishcakes out of the raw fish with a little flour to stop it sticking to our hands, and shallow fried these to eat. This did mean we had to be careful that they were cooked right the way through as well as being nice and crispy on the outside, but on the plus side the lack of potatoes made them waistline-friendly. Sadly, we immediately cancelled this out by serving them with roast potatoes.
We also served them with a green leaf salad and, most importantly, the dipping sauce included in the recipe, which was an absolute stunner and very simple to make. Vinegar and sugar heated up until syrupy, then add soy sauce and chopped chilli, garlic and coriander. Genuinely beautiful.
Once again, I'm sorry not to include a recipe, but you can find it in Nigel Slater's Real Cooking. He should definitely be paying me for the promotion.
Garlic Bread
Really just so I have an actual recipe for you today, I thought I'd mention the garlic bread we made a couple of days ago also. I should stress that this is not meant as an accompaniment for the fishcakes...
Garlic bread may be readily available in supermarkets everywhere, freezable and all, but it's also pretty easy to make if you're feeling saintly. Made all the easier in this case by the fact that we had lunch at Pizza Express and blagged some of their garlic butter to use!
If you aren't best friends with the staff at your local pizza emporium, you might want to thoroughly crush some garlic, mix it with salt and mash it into some butter until it's thoroughly combined.
After the garlic butter-obtaining stage, its easy. Grab a baguette and cut some slits in it, as if you were slicing it but don't go all the way through. Shove some butter into each slit, wrap the whole mess in some tin foil and bake it until it's a bit crispy and all the butter has melted. Munch.
Recipe for Garlic Bread
Ingredients:
Garlic
Sea salt
Butter
A Baguette or two
Recipe:
1. Mash together the crushed garlic, salt and butter until thoroughly combined.
2. Cut slits into the baguette
3. Put some butter into each slit
4. Bake in a hot oven, wrapped in tinfoil, until crispy and until the butter has melted.
Friday 3 December 2010
Creamy Chicken Pasta with Caramelised Onions
First, an apology. I've dropped the ball. There has, I admit, not been a post for...yes, it might be three days. This is because I've managed to escape the grim northern wastes for a while (getting out hours before the snow closed the roads completely...) to stay with the Boyfriend, where there have been interesting things to do which have distracted me from blogging. Enough said, I think.
In addition, I will be gallivanting off for some skiing in France this week, hammering the last nail into the blackened coffin that is my overdraft, so there will be a week-long hiatus from tomorrow until next weekend. My sincere apologies to my dedicated followers. As a reward, though, for your patience, I'll write an extra-long superblog next week and tell you all about the cheap and cheerful ways I attempted to feed myself in snowy Europe, as opposed to snowy Northumberland. So at least you've all got something to look forward to.
And so to recipes. This week, I've been attempting to teach the Boyfriend to cook - and to be fair to him, he's not doing badly. His enthusiasm reminds me of me, back when I first learned to cook pasta! We made ourselves supper one night this week, nothing too sophisticated but just a bit yummy nevertheless.
A bit of a note on shopping - I've found that student shopping always ends up more expensive than you'd expect, even if you're trying to save. My theory on this is that a lot of students end up having to buy things like flour, spices, tinned tomatoes, pasta and so on which the average family house might expect to have in their store-cupboard. If you're a student or trying to save money, I'd remind you that dry goods keep for a long time in your cupboard, so if you do a big 'store' shop at the beginning of the term or the year, you might end up saving more in the long run, especially if you try to pick your recipes based on what you've got in your cupboard.
Also on shopping - I had to look around a bit, but eventually I did find some free-range chicken breasts, which worked out about a pound more expensive than the battery ones. To my mind, it's really worth the money, because if you're going to kill and eat a chicken you ought at least to make sure the bird has had a decent life first. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has done a lot in this direction. Of course, if you can't afford it, you can't afford it, but you might want to have a bit of a think about where you stand.
Boyfriend and I used chicken breasts with the skin on and pan-fried them (the skin keeps them moist and stops them from burning before they're cooked through). We ate them whole, but after eating our supper we decided the dish might be nicer if you chopped the chicken fairly small, cooked it off, and mixed it with the pasta just before eating.
It was utterly delicious, though, and simple as anything to prepare. We sliced an onion and popped it in a pan with butter and olive oil on a low heat, along with a couple of sprigs of rosemary and some chopped garlic. Let it sweat for quite a while, until it's really soft and caramel-y, then we whacked in some marsala or balsamic vinegar and reduce the mixture down until it caramelises fully. At the same time we cooked off the chicken and boiled some pasta and green beans in the same pan (saves on washing up!)
Finally, we deglazed the chicken pan by pouring in some marsala and scraping away at the delicious sticky bits on the bottom of the pan. These are absolutely the best bits and their flavour should never be wasted! We combined the reduced marsala and onions (take out the rosemary sprigs first) with cream and the chicken juices, poured that over the drained pasta and beans, and ate with the fried chicken. Very creamy, totally dreamy.
Here's the recipe, which is based on one from Nigel Slater's Real Cooking:
Ingredients (for two):
2 chicken breasts
Some green beans
A few handfuls of pasta
Olive oil
Butter
An onion
Some Marsala, Madeira, or Balsamic vinegar
Some garlic cloves
A bit of rosemary
Method:
1. Chop the onions and garlic and sweat in a pan with butter, olive oil and rosemary until very, very soft. This may take a while. At the same time, fry the chicken (either chopped or whole, your choice) in some olive oil.
2. Ten minutes before the chicken is done, pour some Marsala over the onions (turn up the heat a bit, as well) and put the pasta and chopped green beans in boiling water.
3. When the chicken is done, deglaze the pan by pouring over some Marsala and scraping at the sticky bits over a high heat, then add this to the onions. Remove the rosemary from the onions
4. Let the alcohol boil off, then add some cream.
5. Drain the pasta when it's done, then add it to the sauce and mix well.
6. Either stir in the chicken or serve it with the pasta to the side.
7. Enjoy.
In addition, I will be gallivanting off for some skiing in France this week, hammering the last nail into the blackened coffin that is my overdraft, so there will be a week-long hiatus from tomorrow until next weekend. My sincere apologies to my dedicated followers. As a reward, though, for your patience, I'll write an extra-long superblog next week and tell you all about the cheap and cheerful ways I attempted to feed myself in snowy Europe, as opposed to snowy Northumberland. So at least you've all got something to look forward to.
And so to recipes. This week, I've been attempting to teach the Boyfriend to cook - and to be fair to him, he's not doing badly. His enthusiasm reminds me of me, back when I first learned to cook pasta! We made ourselves supper one night this week, nothing too sophisticated but just a bit yummy nevertheless.
A bit of a note on shopping - I've found that student shopping always ends up more expensive than you'd expect, even if you're trying to save. My theory on this is that a lot of students end up having to buy things like flour, spices, tinned tomatoes, pasta and so on which the average family house might expect to have in their store-cupboard. If you're a student or trying to save money, I'd remind you that dry goods keep for a long time in your cupboard, so if you do a big 'store' shop at the beginning of the term or the year, you might end up saving more in the long run, especially if you try to pick your recipes based on what you've got in your cupboard.
Also on shopping - I had to look around a bit, but eventually I did find some free-range chicken breasts, which worked out about a pound more expensive than the battery ones. To my mind, it's really worth the money, because if you're going to kill and eat a chicken you ought at least to make sure the bird has had a decent life first. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has done a lot in this direction. Of course, if you can't afford it, you can't afford it, but you might want to have a bit of a think about where you stand.
Boyfriend and I used chicken breasts with the skin on and pan-fried them (the skin keeps them moist and stops them from burning before they're cooked through). We ate them whole, but after eating our supper we decided the dish might be nicer if you chopped the chicken fairly small, cooked it off, and mixed it with the pasta just before eating.
It was utterly delicious, though, and simple as anything to prepare. We sliced an onion and popped it in a pan with butter and olive oil on a low heat, along with a couple of sprigs of rosemary and some chopped garlic. Let it sweat for quite a while, until it's really soft and caramel-y, then we whacked in some marsala or balsamic vinegar and reduce the mixture down until it caramelises fully. At the same time we cooked off the chicken and boiled some pasta and green beans in the same pan (saves on washing up!)
Finally, we deglazed the chicken pan by pouring in some marsala and scraping away at the delicious sticky bits on the bottom of the pan. These are absolutely the best bits and their flavour should never be wasted! We combined the reduced marsala and onions (take out the rosemary sprigs first) with cream and the chicken juices, poured that over the drained pasta and beans, and ate with the fried chicken. Very creamy, totally dreamy.
Here's the recipe, which is based on one from Nigel Slater's Real Cooking:
Ingredients (for two):
2 chicken breasts
Some green beans
A few handfuls of pasta
Olive oil
Butter
An onion
Some Marsala, Madeira, or Balsamic vinegar
Some garlic cloves
A bit of rosemary
Method:
1. Chop the onions and garlic and sweat in a pan with butter, olive oil and rosemary until very, very soft. This may take a while. At the same time, fry the chicken (either chopped or whole, your choice) in some olive oil.
2. Ten minutes before the chicken is done, pour some Marsala over the onions (turn up the heat a bit, as well) and put the pasta and chopped green beans in boiling water.
3. When the chicken is done, deglaze the pan by pouring over some Marsala and scraping at the sticky bits over a high heat, then add this to the onions. Remove the rosemary from the onions
4. Let the alcohol boil off, then add some cream.
5. Drain the pasta when it's done, then add it to the sauce and mix well.
6. Either stir in the chicken or serve it with the pasta to the side.
7. Enjoy.
Monday 29 November 2010
Austerity Pie
Another leftover-related recipe today, and also what you might call A Pie For Our Times. I was handed some leftover chicken this morning by an Anonymous Bystander and told to make a pie. Mmmmmmm, Chicken Pie, thinks I. Leftover No. 1 was born.
Nos. 2 and 3 were the peas which my Dad didn't eat for his lunch, and the puff pastry which didn't go into Saturday's Tarte Tatin. Add them together, and what do you get? Credit crunch heaven, plus a handy excuse to avoid driving through 9 inches of snow for groceries. Isn't winter Fun.
I actually just winged it today and didn't use a particular recipe, so I'll stick my rough method at the bottom of this post. Where I have used copyrighted recipes in the blog, I've just posted a link where you can find out more, rather than plagiarising. Hooray. If anyone's interested in trying to reproduce and/or improve my recipe, go ahead.
Essentially, cooked chicken, plus some vegetables (I chose peas and leeks, pretty much because they were what needed using up), plus a sauce, plus pastry makes...PIE.
My chicken was cooked already - the end of Saturday night's roast. All I had to do, then, was sweat some leeks in butter, boil some peas for my Dad's lunch and wait for him not to eat them all, and whip up a killer sauce. Now, my sauces tend to be a tiny, tiny bit hit-and-miss. Since to me the keystone of a good pie is the sauce, I was slightly on my guard - but this time everything went to plan beautifully.
I put together a roux (melt butter, add flour, for any beginners out there!), and added about a litre of chicken stock, whisking the mixture the whole time. Well, probably a litre of chicken stock. To be honest, I poured it in from a jug until it looked the right consistency - smooth, but not watery - and didn't bother with the measurements. I chucked in the end of a bottle of white wine too. Another leftover. This pie is drawing them in like a thrifty little magnet.
The sauce at this stage was nice enough, but a bit bland and boring, so for flavour I added cream and some dijon mustard. Leeks love cream, and chicken and dijon is a match made in heaven, so I was hoping the combination would be a winner. Some seasoning with salt and ground black pepper, and a final quick reduction to boil off the alcohol from the white wine, and voila! Austerity Sauce.
Could I possibly be taking the recession-inspired name thing just a touch too far? Hmmm.
In fact, this is the only part of the pie which isn't austere, since cream, mustard and wine are all fairly pricey, but it did taste brilliant.
Final stages are easy as pie (oh dear). Leeks, peas and chicken in sauce. Sauce in pie dish. Roll out pastry (which, by the way, I had carefully stored all neatly folded up because it's puff pastry from the Tartes and needs to be folded, rather than just rolled into a squishy ball, to preserve the buttery layers which make it puff up in the oven). Pastry over pie. Optional decorative leaves, berries and so forth cut out from spare pastry, which I always do because it's like being back at primary school. Brush pie with egg. Pie in hot oven for 15-20 minutes. Pie out. Eat at will. So far I've held out, but it LOOKS good...
Recipe for Austerity Pie
A.K.A Chicken, Leek and Pea Pie, if you must.
Ingredients:
Cooked chicken, torn into bitesize pieces
2 small leeks
A handful of peas (frozen are fine)
Any other miscellaneous vegetables you feel like adding, or switching with one of the above
Knob of butter
Flour
About 1 litre of chicken stock
White wine (a glass or so)
1 tsp of mustard
A glug of cream
Salt and pepper
Puff pastry (you can buy this at the supermarket, and it's just as good as homemade. Honest.)
Method:
1. Sweat the leeks in some butter until they are soft, and boil the peas for a couple of minutes until cooked. Pre-heat your oven to around 200 (gas mark 6 or 7 I think).
2. Melt some butter in a saucepan and add a couple of shakes from your bag of flour. Combine and allow to cook for a minute or so. It should be thick but not insanely thick. Use your commonsense. This is a roux. It should smell a bit nutty but not be brown, just light gold.
3. Whisking constantly, add the wine and then the chicken stock to your roux, until the consistency is what you'd imagine having in your ideal pie, or a tiny bit runnier.
4. Whisk in the mustard and the cream, and season with the salt and pepper.
5. Tasting on the way, let the sauce simmer until the ingredients are all well combined, the alcoholic taste from the wine has vanished, and the sauce is the right consistency for you. You can add some water to thin it out a bit if necessary.
6. Mix all the filling together, and put in an ovenproof dish. Roll out the pastry (if you need to, you can get it ready-rolled) and cover the filling with it. Leave a generous amount around the edges, because the pastry will shrink a bit as it cooks.
7. Playtime. Make leaves, berries, flowers, smiley faces, or inappropriate bodily parts out of any spare pastry to decorate your pie. Stick these to the top with some beaten egg, otherwise they won't stay put when they start to cook.
8. Brush the whole pastry top, including any decoration, with beaten egg. If you don't have a pastry brush, it can be done with your fingers. I know, because I have - aah, remember those student days.
9. In the pre-heated oven with it, for 15-20 minutes. Keep an eye and don't let the pastry burn. It should be a lovely golden-y brown.
10. Eat your pie. You deserve it.
Nos. 2 and 3 were the peas which my Dad didn't eat for his lunch, and the puff pastry which didn't go into Saturday's Tarte Tatin. Add them together, and what do you get? Credit crunch heaven, plus a handy excuse to avoid driving through 9 inches of snow for groceries. Isn't winter Fun.
I actually just winged it today and didn't use a particular recipe, so I'll stick my rough method at the bottom of this post. Where I have used copyrighted recipes in the blog, I've just posted a link where you can find out more, rather than plagiarising. Hooray. If anyone's interested in trying to reproduce and/or improve my recipe, go ahead.
Essentially, cooked chicken, plus some vegetables (I chose peas and leeks, pretty much because they were what needed using up), plus a sauce, plus pastry makes...PIE.
My chicken was cooked already - the end of Saturday night's roast. All I had to do, then, was sweat some leeks in butter, boil some peas for my Dad's lunch and wait for him not to eat them all, and whip up a killer sauce. Now, my sauces tend to be a tiny, tiny bit hit-and-miss. Since to me the keystone of a good pie is the sauce, I was slightly on my guard - but this time everything went to plan beautifully.
I put together a roux (melt butter, add flour, for any beginners out there!), and added about a litre of chicken stock, whisking the mixture the whole time. Well, probably a litre of chicken stock. To be honest, I poured it in from a jug until it looked the right consistency - smooth, but not watery - and didn't bother with the measurements. I chucked in the end of a bottle of white wine too. Another leftover. This pie is drawing them in like a thrifty little magnet.
The sauce at this stage was nice enough, but a bit bland and boring, so for flavour I added cream and some dijon mustard. Leeks love cream, and chicken and dijon is a match made in heaven, so I was hoping the combination would be a winner. Some seasoning with salt and ground black pepper, and a final quick reduction to boil off the alcohol from the white wine, and voila! Austerity Sauce.
Could I possibly be taking the recession-inspired name thing just a touch too far? Hmmm.
In fact, this is the only part of the pie which isn't austere, since cream, mustard and wine are all fairly pricey, but it did taste brilliant.
Final stages are easy as pie (oh dear). Leeks, peas and chicken in sauce. Sauce in pie dish. Roll out pastry (which, by the way, I had carefully stored all neatly folded up because it's puff pastry from the Tartes and needs to be folded, rather than just rolled into a squishy ball, to preserve the buttery layers which make it puff up in the oven). Pastry over pie. Optional decorative leaves, berries and so forth cut out from spare pastry, which I always do because it's like being back at primary school. Brush pie with egg. Pie in hot oven for 15-20 minutes. Pie out. Eat at will. So far I've held out, but it LOOKS good...
Recipe for Austerity Pie
A.K.A Chicken, Leek and Pea Pie, if you must.
Ingredients:
Cooked chicken, torn into bitesize pieces
2 small leeks
A handful of peas (frozen are fine)
Any other miscellaneous vegetables you feel like adding, or switching with one of the above
Knob of butter
Flour
About 1 litre of chicken stock
White wine (a glass or so)
1 tsp of mustard
A glug of cream
Salt and pepper
Puff pastry (you can buy this at the supermarket, and it's just as good as homemade. Honest.)
Method:
1. Sweat the leeks in some butter until they are soft, and boil the peas for a couple of minutes until cooked. Pre-heat your oven to around 200 (gas mark 6 or 7 I think).
2. Melt some butter in a saucepan and add a couple of shakes from your bag of flour. Combine and allow to cook for a minute or so. It should be thick but not insanely thick. Use your commonsense. This is a roux. It should smell a bit nutty but not be brown, just light gold.
3. Whisking constantly, add the wine and then the chicken stock to your roux, until the consistency is what you'd imagine having in your ideal pie, or a tiny bit runnier.
4. Whisk in the mustard and the cream, and season with the salt and pepper.
5. Tasting on the way, let the sauce simmer until the ingredients are all well combined, the alcoholic taste from the wine has vanished, and the sauce is the right consistency for you. You can add some water to thin it out a bit if necessary.
6. Mix all the filling together, and put in an ovenproof dish. Roll out the pastry (if you need to, you can get it ready-rolled) and cover the filling with it. Leave a generous amount around the edges, because the pastry will shrink a bit as it cooks.
7. Playtime. Make leaves, berries, flowers, smiley faces, or inappropriate bodily parts out of any spare pastry to decorate your pie. Stick these to the top with some beaten egg, otherwise they won't stay put when they start to cook.
8. Brush the whole pastry top, including any decoration, with beaten egg. If you don't have a pastry brush, it can be done with your fingers. I know, because I have - aah, remember those student days.
9. In the pre-heated oven with it, for 15-20 minutes. Keep an eye and don't let the pastry burn. It should be a lovely golden-y brown.
10. Eat your pie. You deserve it.
Sunday 28 November 2010
Christmas Pudding and "Leftover Jelly"
Two recipes today, in a double whammy of a first post:
Christmas Pudding...
Mmm...Christmas Pudding time! It's such a peaceful, festive feeling to stir a big bowl of fruity pudding mix with the snow six inches deep outside; in fact, I don't think there's anything better than a warm, yellow-lit kitchen and a snowy view from the window.
I used Nigel Slater's recipe from The Kitchen Diaries, which is a bit different (if you're interested!) because you steam the puddings for three hours or so before storing them until Christmas Day. That combination of fresh and dried fruit, warming Mixed Spice and bland, comforting suet feels like the first sign of Christmas. Certainly the first in my kitchen anyway! It also makes you feel like a proper, full-on, real-life, Downton Abbey-style cook, and for this reason, everyone in the world should try it.
I was pretty proud of myself, then, when I put the puddings in to steam. My pride was very shortlived. I used some plastic pudding basins with fitted lids, which claimed to be oven-safe and boilable. What a surprise - they weren't. In fact, all the bits above water-level in my bain marie melted. First post, first kitchen disaster, and may there be many more! As a result, I turned out some mildly deformed half-cooked Christmas treats and spent a hilarious half hour trying to peel the plastic lids off to get to the salvageable bits.
Well, hilarious in retrospect.
They actually turned out fine in the end, if a bit oval-shaped - and they smelled fantastic. Spicy half-cooked mixed peel. Total seasonal bliss.
I've stuck them in the kitchen cupboard to keep until Christmas Day. Since it's -4 outside, I may as well have put them in the fridge.
...and "Leftover Jelly"
"Leftover Jelly" is actually partly yesterday's recipe, because it stems from some Tartes Tatins which I made as a present for my aunt (and also an apology for having nearly ruined her lunch party. I pulled out of helping her a week beforehand...oops). I used twelve apples to make two tarts, from a recipe of my mum's which will no doubt find itself up here one of these days, and the juice of an orange to keep them from browning while I peeled them. Result: two tarts (yum) and a load of fruit peel.
Why am I excited? Because I've been watching River Cottage Bites, and I've been wanting to try this jelly for weeks. It's made out of the leftover bits of fruit you would usually compost, feed to the chickens or throw away.
I simmered the peel in water for 45 minutes (most of which I spent hovering over the pan inhaling the wonderful smell) then tipped it straight into a jelly bag to strain. Slightly specialist equipment, but we have one at home because half of our garden seems to be an orchard, so in autumn we make a lot, and I do mean a LOT, of apple jelly. You can acually use a tea-towel to strain it though. I just never have...
I hate having to wait overnight for all the juice, but you definitely get a better, clearer jelly if you do (and NEVER squeeze the jelly bag, folks. It's practically a capital offence).
So we come to today, which was essentially a matter of sterilising jars (you literally just boil them for ten minutes) and boiling fruit juice up with sugar until it succumbed to my will and came to setting point, which is when a skin forms on half a teaspoonful. Simples. Three jars of sticky, gooey, oozing "Leftover Jelly", which is a humble name for a very, very beautiful thing. They're the colour of molten amber, and when you hold them up against the light they gleam like little jewels. I feel like a jelly queen.
Plus, they will taste AWESOME on my breakfast toast.
Christmas Pudding...
Mmm...Christmas Pudding time! It's such a peaceful, festive feeling to stir a big bowl of fruity pudding mix with the snow six inches deep outside; in fact, I don't think there's anything better than a warm, yellow-lit kitchen and a snowy view from the window.
I used Nigel Slater's recipe from The Kitchen Diaries, which is a bit different (if you're interested!) because you steam the puddings for three hours or so before storing them until Christmas Day. That combination of fresh and dried fruit, warming Mixed Spice and bland, comforting suet feels like the first sign of Christmas. Certainly the first in my kitchen anyway! It also makes you feel like a proper, full-on, real-life, Downton Abbey-style cook, and for this reason, everyone in the world should try it.
I was pretty proud of myself, then, when I put the puddings in to steam. My pride was very shortlived. I used some plastic pudding basins with fitted lids, which claimed to be oven-safe and boilable. What a surprise - they weren't. In fact, all the bits above water-level in my bain marie melted. First post, first kitchen disaster, and may there be many more! As a result, I turned out some mildly deformed half-cooked Christmas treats and spent a hilarious half hour trying to peel the plastic lids off to get to the salvageable bits.
Well, hilarious in retrospect.
They actually turned out fine in the end, if a bit oval-shaped - and they smelled fantastic. Spicy half-cooked mixed peel. Total seasonal bliss.
I've stuck them in the kitchen cupboard to keep until Christmas Day. Since it's -4 outside, I may as well have put them in the fridge.
...and "Leftover Jelly"
"Leftover Jelly" is actually partly yesterday's recipe, because it stems from some Tartes Tatins which I made as a present for my aunt (and also an apology for having nearly ruined her lunch party. I pulled out of helping her a week beforehand...oops). I used twelve apples to make two tarts, from a recipe of my mum's which will no doubt find itself up here one of these days, and the juice of an orange to keep them from browning while I peeled them. Result: two tarts (yum) and a load of fruit peel.
Why am I excited? Because I've been watching River Cottage Bites, and I've been wanting to try this jelly for weeks. It's made out of the leftover bits of fruit you would usually compost, feed to the chickens or throw away.
I simmered the peel in water for 45 minutes (most of which I spent hovering over the pan inhaling the wonderful smell) then tipped it straight into a jelly bag to strain. Slightly specialist equipment, but we have one at home because half of our garden seems to be an orchard, so in autumn we make a lot, and I do mean a LOT, of apple jelly. You can acually use a tea-towel to strain it though. I just never have...
I hate having to wait overnight for all the juice, but you definitely get a better, clearer jelly if you do (and NEVER squeeze the jelly bag, folks. It's practically a capital offence).
So we come to today, which was essentially a matter of sterilising jars (you literally just boil them for ten minutes) and boiling fruit juice up with sugar until it succumbed to my will and came to setting point, which is when a skin forms on half a teaspoonful. Simples. Three jars of sticky, gooey, oozing "Leftover Jelly", which is a humble name for a very, very beautiful thing. They're the colour of molten amber, and when you hold them up against the light they gleam like little jewels. I feel like a jelly queen.
Plus, they will taste AWESOME on my breakfast toast.
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