Sunday 27 February 2011

Cookie?

More baking! My brother is going back to school today after his half term. Poor little feller. So I've baked him some cookies to take with him, because that's just the kind of fantastic big sister I am. Being 17, 6'1'', and probably too old for cookies, he's supremely ungrateful, but I've baked them anyway, because I love cookies.


A cookie can come in almost any shape, size or consistency, from those huge American-style ones, still soft and slightly gooey in the middle, to the medium or small English versions which are hard and crumbly all over. To my mind, only the former merits the title - the latter are really just chocolate-chip biscuits, and would probably be better off replaced by some proper shortbread. This recipe is best for American cookies, therefore, but if you must make English ones (*shudder*), just put them on the baking tray in slightly smaller quantities (teaspoon instead of dessert spoon, say) and bake for 10-12 minutes instead of 8-10.


Ingredients
(makes 18-20 big ones)


225g light brown or demerara sugar (or a mixture is fine)
200g caster sugar
250g butter
Few drops vanilla extract (NOT essence, leave it out if you've only got essence)
2 large eggs, whisked
1 tsp baking powder, one tsp bicarbonate of soda
375g plain flour
Salt (just a pinch)
200g good quality dark chocolate


Method


First of all, pre-heat your oven so your cookies actually cook later. 180 degrees, which is around gas mark 4. Line more baking trays than you think you need (about 3) with greaseproof or silicone baking paper.


Now, chop your butter into little bits and cream it with both types of sugar. As I said when we made brownies, this can either be quick and a bit boring in the food processor, or slow but satisfying by hand in a bowl. Either way, when the mixture is very light, creamy and paler than it was, add the whisked eggs and vanilla extract and beat them in, then put the rest of the ingredients bar the choclate through a sieve and fold them in. 


Chop, bash, or (at a pinch) food process your chocolate into uneven chips, flakes and lumps, then mix them evenly through the cookie dough. Plop heaped dessert-spoonfuls onto your baking trays, absolute max 6 per tray. Leave them plenty of room to spread out, remember how big American cookies are! Stick them in the oven for 8-10 minutes, or until the dough has all melted and flattened out into cookies shapes and the tops are just starting to be golden. If The dough looks mushy still don't worry. 

Leave them on the baking trays until they are cool enough to touch, then transfer to wire racks. Eat the first ones while they're still a bit warm!


Other Things To Put In Your Cookies


Most flavourings go in at the same time as or instead of the chocolate chips. Any spices or ground things go in with the flour etc. Liquids go in with the eggs, and not too much of them or the dough will be runny.

  • Glace or dried sour cherries
  • Dried cranberries
  • Raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, all berries...
  • Milk or white chocolate chips
  • Nuts - pecans are great, but also walnuts, peanuts, macademias are fantastic.
  • Cinnamon
  • Mixed spice (tastes like Christmas)
  • Ground ginger
  • Raisins or sultanas, dried peel
  • Pieces of toffee or fudge
  • Small marshmallows (the kind you put in hot chocolate)
  • Finely chopped lavender flowers (for a very delicate and sophisticated taste)
  • Very fintely grated citrus peel - lemon, lime, orange, etc.
  • Chunks of caramelised orange from marmalade
  • Cocoa powder and melted chocolate (in with the eggs for the latter) for a brown chocolate cookie
  • Banana slices
  • A spoonful of golden syrup
  • Oats
  • Stem ginger
  • Chopped nougat
  • Chopped chocolate bars - Mars, Snickers, whatever's your favourite.
  • A combination of any of the above...experiment!

If anyone thinks of some crazy combinations or just wants to tell everyone how your cookies worked out, post a comment and let us know!


Have fun cookie-ing!

Wednesday 23 February 2011

Celebratory Brownies

Lots of things to celebrate this week, hooray. My clever little sister has got herself a job offer, I've got a Stylish Blogger award (last boast I promise) and PDKTC has REACHED 1,000 PAGEVIEWS! This is definitely a case for celebratory brownies, and possibly champagne and strawberries also. I actually made brownies a couple of days ago now, but since I only scoffed the last one this morning I still feel justified in writing about them.

To me, baking is something that's either in your blood, or it isn't. For me, sadly, it's the latter - I'm not one of nature's bakers. My Victoria sponges never rise properly; my pastry is usually too hard; I don't bake my own bread (often). But however nonexistent my skills, I still love to bake. Especially brownies. They are so simple and so satisfactory. That sugary chocolate crust, the way the insides teeter on the ledge between goo and cake, the way the pieces of nut balance out the taste and texture - perfect.

Incidentally, I actually left nuts out of my brownies as the Brother is allergic, but they are traditionally included so I have put them in the recipe below. If you or a loved one are in the same position, don't worry, it works fine without.

Join me now, dear reader, on a baking adventure.

Ingredients
(Makes around 16-20)

200g sugar
100g butter
75g chocolate (as good-quality/dark as you can afford)
Few drops vanilla extract (NOT essence, it's not the same thing)
2 eggs, gently beaten
75g plain flour
Pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
100g pecans, walnuts, macadamias or Brazil nuts (or a mixture!), quite finely chopped


Method

Pre-heat your oven to 180, and grease some sort of cake tin/baking tray with butter or vegetable oil. If you've got any, line the tin with greaseproof paper or even silicone baking paper, both of which will greatly increase your chances of prising out any brownies at the end of the process.

Next, melt your chocolate. Don't do this on too high a heat, or it will 'split' - go all weird and hard. You can melt chocolate either in a very low oven in a ceramic bowl, or in the same bowl oven a pan of simmering water, making sure that the bowl doesn't actually touch the water.

If your chocolate should happen to split, take it off the heat and add a dessert spoon, or a little more, of vegetable oil. Keep it warm and stir gently until it looks better. It won't be any good for setting, but you can still use it in your brownies :)

While your chocolate is melting away, cut the butter into small chunks and cream it together with the sugar until pale and creamy-looking. You can either do this in a food processor (easy and quick) or by hand in a mixing bowl (very slow but therapeutic and good for the biceps).

When it's really pale and creamy, which will take longer to achieve than you think (don't rush it...enjoy it), you can gently beat in your eggs, chocolate and vanilla essence until completely mixed. Then sieve in the flour, salt and baking powder, and fold until combined. If you're using nuts, mix them in at this point.

Turn the whole lot out into the baking tin and pop it in the oven for 25-35 minutes, or until the top is crusty but the inside still squidgy. If you put it a skewer it doesn't have to come out clean - its not a cake!

While waiting, lick the bowl (disclaimer: licking the bowl is optional. If you get salmonella from the raw eggs, that's not my fault ok?).

Once your brownie is ready, take it out of the oven and either cut it into little brownie squares or leave it as one giant brownie, you greedy sod. Either way, leave it to cool for a bit but definitely eat the first one while they're still warm. Mmm, chocolaty celebration.

Extra brownie things

Some things you can add to your brownie mix to change it up (add when you'd add the nuts):

Cherries, either cocktail ones or sour ones
Dried cranberries or raspberries
Banana, sliced or mashed
Chocolate drops, white or milk
Little chips of toffee
...Anything else you fancy, play around!

Some yummy things to eat (and drink) with your brownies:

Ice cream and chocolate sauce
Ice cream and golden syrup
A nice mug of perfect Hot Chocolate
Strawberries and whipped cream

Forest fruit coulis
Strawberries and champagne

Have yourselves a big brownie celebration, y'all!

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Stylish Blogger Awards!



Well boys and girls. My good and incredibly kind friend stupidgirl45 has kindly nominated me for a Stylish Blogger award! As a humble newbie on the blogging scene, I'm very, very honoured that she thought of me and would like to recommend that you:

1. Send her e-champagne and shoes
2. Read her fantastic blog here
3. Add her on twitter on @stupidgirl45 because she is lovely :)

So, in return for my award, I have to post it on my blog (see above), give 7 random facts about myself, and nominate 10 other bloggers I think deserve an award. So here goes...

Factoids

1. I love a good roaring fire on a cold day. Probably a bit too much.
2. I used to have a pet rabbit called Sooty (yes, he was black). The rabbit I had before him (Benjy, after the one in Peter Rabbit) only lasted two weeks before the dog got him :(
3. Depsite all my good-food babbling, I adore those Bachelor's microwave pastas, especially the Cheese, Leek and Ham flavour.
4.When I was little, I used to stick my head down rabbit holes and shout 'Hello Mr. Easter Bunny, are you there?'
5. I am, bizarrely, embarrassed by where I live in a big way and like to do everything I can to make up for it by being nice to people.
6. I like to listen to Abba and Dusty Springfield when I'm cooking. Preferably turned up WAY too loud.
7. I'm terrified of spiders. They make me freeze up and feel like things are crawling all over me.


Oh, and 8. I'm so much of a newbie that I don't even read 10 blogs, or at least not 10 I think are stylish...so the list below is my top 8... NOT because I want to be mean but because I'm badly read.


Nominations

I'm not sure I had even read 2 blogs a few weeks ago, so these are based on nothing more than the infantile knowledge of the internets/blogosphere I have gained since then, plus a couple of friends I think deserve more attention. Think of it as a newbie's guide to blogging! In no particular order:

1. Political Reboot Low-key but very intelligent politics blogging by a good friend of mine. I'm not a particularly political animal, but this makes me feel interested.
2. JM Tohline Author of soon-to-be-published The Great Lenore (which I for one will be reading), his blogs on writing and life always hook me. He's got a fantastic way with words.
3. Rum and Monkey From the Dark Ages of the internets before all this social media claptrap took off, Rum and Monkey's irreverent and sometimes incomprehensible satire still lives. The Bears category is my favourite.
4. shitmydadsays Justin lives with his dad. His dad says shit. Justin writes it down. Booya.
5. The Only Humor Daily shots of humor. I like a giggle with my tea break, and I look for it here.
6. Foodimentary You've almost certainly heard of it. Winner of a Shorty Award, this encyclopedic blog is my go-to for all foodie knowledge, and the guy who writes it is my hero.
7. Rose Cottage What I try to do here, only done properly and a million times better. The most beautiful food blog I know of.
8. Elizabeth Buchan The life of a writer of hugely successful romance novels. I find this a tantalising insight into the day-to-day goings on of someone who's already made it to the top of the tree.

If I've nominated you and you feel like it, you too should post your award and give 7 random facts about yourself and 10 nominations. Pass on the love folks!

That's it from me for the moment, except to say thank you so much to all who have been reading so far. I hope you'll continue, especially because I'm on the cusp of 1,000 pageviews (eeek) and there might just be a celebratory post in it for you if I get there!

Finally, one last huge THANK YOU to stupidgirl for being so kind as to nominate little ol' me, a huge boost to my ego and a great encouragement to carry on writing. I made celebratory brownies yesterday and was planning to blog on them today, but it took me so long to compile 10 (well, 8) nominations that I'll have to leave it for tomorrow. So goodnight, dear readers, and get ready for some bakin' on the morrow.

Saturday 19 February 2011

Simple Onion Gravy for Sausages

We were going to have rack of lamb for supper tonight. I won't lie, I was seriously looking forward to cooking it, since rack of lamb, as well as being a bit flashy if you get it right, is one of the first things I learned when I was first taught to cook. There was definitely a bit of showing off on the horizon.

Well, karma got its own back: when we opened the pack, the lamb smelled absolutely putrid, despite being well within date (that's what you get for buying your meat vacuum-packed at Costco, folks). Sad faces all round. We'll have to have sausages instead.

Cue my onion gravy.

I made it up one day not so long ago (as far as you can 'make up' a recipe for onion gravy...) and since then it's become one of my staples. I eat sausage and mash a lot more often than I used to! It'll jazz up the saddest of bangers and it does wonders for your mash as well (I'm biased, I LOVE mash with gravy). Don't forget to salt your mash a lot more than you initially think you need to though - it's the difference between creamy spud joy and bland failure. But back to the gravy. The best thing of all is that it's as easy as pie. A lot easier, in fact. Pie can be quite complicated.

Here it is, then; not the most glamorous of recipes, but I bet you find it useful!

Ingredients
(for 3 or 4)

One medium onion, sliced
Olive oil
Port
Beef stock
Redcurrant jelly
Salt and pepper
The pan you cooked the suasages in

Method

While your sausages are cooking and your potatoes are boiling, pop the sliced onions in a frying pan with some olive oil (not too much though, kids) and leave them on a low heat to cook through and turn that lovely golden brown particular to the white onion when it's done just right. When your sausages are done, remove them from the baking tray or frying pan onto a serving dish. Put the pan on the stove on a high heat, pour in a really good slosh of port (about a wine-glass's worth, if not more) and de-glaze it (that's when you scrape away at the sticky its on the bottom until they all dissolve into the port).

Pour the port and sausage juices into the onion pan, and add around a pint of beef stock. Obviously, you all make your own delicious beef stock and only use that in your cooking, but if you didn't, stock cubes would be fine. Let the gravy simmer for a little while, then add the redcurrant jelly. Allow the whole thing to reduce gently for five or ten minutes (this is a good time to get your mash ready). Finally, taste, season, and serve up with your champion sausage and mash. Peas or maybe some buttered leeks are a good vegetable here.

Enjoy Good Old British Bangers and Mash with the Finest Onion Gravy.

Thursday 17 February 2011

Creamy Thyme and Aubergine Bake

A quickie for now, as this wasn't my recipe. It's from Nigel Slater's Tender Vol. I - which, by the way, is a brilliant option if, like me, you have occasional trouble letting such things as vitamins into your life. And for the herbivores out there, I don't think there is a cookery book I could more highly recommend for putting the veggies first.

Plug over. (I don't even get paid for this stuff.)

Firstly, a few notes about aubergines 
(mainly because they're cool)

There are about a million kinds of aubergine, ranging in colour from white through variagated to purple, in size from the tiny ones in Thai Green Curry to absolutely frigging massive, and in shape from long and skinny through round to big and bulbous.  NOT ONLY is it, technically speaking, a berry (thanks Wikipedia), it's also a close relative of tobacco. More importantly, aubergines are used in cooking all over the world, including Thailand, Turkey and the Middle East, France, Italy, and India.


Nigel will tell you all about salting aubergines in his recipe, and I'm pretty sure he knows best. Salting, by the way, is what you're supposed to do to take the bitterness out of vegetables like aubergines and courgettes, stop them from absorbing too much oil when fried, and improve their taste on cooking. You slice them up, stick them in a sieve, and pour over a load of table salt. Then you leave them for half and hour, and rinse it off again. There's a lot of talk recently about it being unnecessary to salt aubergines nowadays, because the types we grow now are much less bitter than the aubergines of yesteryear. My advice would be, if you're using those big purple aubergines they import to places like Tesco's, you're probably ok - they're not supposed to need salting. If you're using another kind, better safe than sorry and it won't do them any harm.

The Bake

Anyway, this bake is a lot of wonderful things all rolled into one, really. Its star player is the aubergine (eggplant to my American readers), one of my all-time favourite vegetables as it is, but here it's dressed up in its best and really made to shine. Aubergine is usually more friendly with tomatoes than with cream, but somehow in this recipe the thyme ties them together, and the parmesan seasons the whole bundle...and honestly I can't think of another vegetable dish I'd be as happy to serve as a main course!


That's another thing. Thyme. I must be about the only person in the world who feels that it's sometimes over-used (it is in my house, anyway...), but here, like the aubergine, it fits perfectly into its place and shows off like nobody's business! I'm sure you could use rosemary or another woody herb in its place, but it just wouldn't be the same.


Sadly, in the interests of avoiding prosecution for plagiarism I can't give you a straightforward recipe. In short, though, you cook off sliced onion, garlic and aubergine in a pan, layer them in a dish with thyme, salt and pepper sprinkled in there too, pour over a lot of cream, top with parmesan, and bake til it's hot through and golden-bubbly on top. God it's good.


This goes fantastically with things like beef and chicken, and last night we actually ate it with some breaded hake - I find hake is a pretty good blank slate for painting with flavours, so the creamy aubergines were definitely the star of the show that was yesterday's dinner. If you don't want it to upstage your main dish, serve it with something robust like maybe a flavoursome beef braise or a big, hearty stew. That said, it can also take centre-stage if you want it to. I for one have been picking at the leftovers from the fridge all day, which includes having it for lunch.

In conclusion:

Aubergines are very cool vegetables, and utterly delicious. You should eat lots of them, starting with the Creamy Bake and working out from there. Have fun with aubergines. Thank you and goodnight.

Friday 11 February 2011

'One-Tray' Chicken and Potatoes

A fairly quick roast chicken number which I knocked together for supper last night. It's pretty simple, but turns out delicious with gravy and some fresh vegetables, or even just frozen peas if you're feeling lazy. The secret is the lemon - I always include a lemon with my roast potatoes, it does something mysterious and delicious to them which I may not understand, but still can't get enough of. Lemon goes fantastically with a roasting chicken as well. In addition, putting chicken and potatoes in the same tray lets the roasties absorb some of the chicken's flavour while they cook, which makes for extra-delicious potatoes.

Straight on to the recipe today - there's not a lot of extra chatter needed about roasting a chicken I think.


Ingredients
(for 3-4)

One large whole chicken
Five medium-sized potatoes suitable for roasting - King Edwards and Maris Pipers both roast well and are easy to get your hands on
Whole head of garlic
Big handful of whole fresh rosemary stems (don't use dried, just leave it out if you can't get a hold of it)
A whole lemon, fairly large
Knob of butter
Generous splash of olive oil

Method

First off, peel your potatoes and chop to the size you like your roasties. I make mine slightly smaller than instinct tells me, as they're more likely to get nice and crispy in the chicken's cooking time.

Splash some olive oil into a large roasting tin, arrange the rosemary in the centre and make sure it's coated in oil, then settle the chicken on top of the rosemary. Scatter the potatoes around the edges of the tray. Chop the garlic head in half, then break off the individual half-cloves and scatter them over and around the potatoes and chicken. rub a couple over the chicken, and if you like stuff a few into its cavity. Separate your knob of butter into three pieces - one for the cavity of the chicken, and two to balance on or rub over its back. Finally, chop the lemon in half, then half again, and squeeze each quarter over the potatoes and chicken. Drop the squeezed-out rind into each corner of the tray. Now pop the whole thing into a medium oven, around 180 C.


That's the hard part over - all you need to do now is to wait for it all to cook. This will take at least an hour, probably more, and even up to two depending on the size of your chicken and the strength of your oven. Keep checking it regularly, and if the chicken's not browning properly you can turn up the oven to high for ten minutes to get it going. 


It's obviously important to cook your chicken through, to avoid infections like salmonella which are present in raw chicken. To check, stick a knife or skewer into the thickest part of the bird. If the juice which comes out is clear, rather than pink, it's cooked through. You'll be able to see if the meat isn't done when you carve the bird anyway - it should be opaque and a fairly pure white colour - if it's pale pink or at all translucent, you might consider giving it another few minutes in the oven. It gets easier to tell as you become more experienced.


When your chicken is finally done, the potatoes will probably still need a while to finish cooking. This is fine - lift out the chicken from the tray, pop it in a serving dish, cover with some tinfoil and leave in a warm place to rest. All meat needs 'resting' after cooking - it basically means keeping the meat warm but leaving it for a while before eating, which allows the proteins in the meat to relax and distributes the juices more evenly, leading to a juicier and more tender mouthful when you come to eat.


When you remove the chicken, give the pan a good shake to agitate the potatoes and mix the rosemary in more evenly. If you're making gravy, you'll also want to carefully tip the juices from the meat into a separate container for use in a sec, and sprinkle a bit more olive oil over the potatoes to make up for the lost fat.


While the potatoes are finishing off, in a hotter oven if they have a long way to go, you can cook your vegetables - frozen peas are quick, and broccoli is supposed to protect against some forms of cancer, so they'd be my choice. You can also make the gravy. Once the potatoes are done, you're ready to eat. Enjoy a nice roast dinner once in a while!


Finally: GRAVY for this chicken dish

My standard gravy for a chicken roast goes as follows: 

Either skim the fat off the chicken juices, or use one of those clever little separating jugs like this one to get to the good bits of dripping and discard the bad. Put the good bits (the liquid that sinks to the bottom when you leave the juice to sit for 5 minutes, while the fat sits on top) into a saucepan, add a tablespoon of flour, and stir vigorously with a whisk over a low heat until it's all combined. Then pour in about a pint of chicken stock (homemade is best, of course, but Knorr stock cubes are a good substitute if you've run out), whisking all the time. Add a glass of red wine, and leave to simmer gently for five minutes. Taste and season. You can add a spoonful of redcurrant jelly if you like a sweeter sauce, but otherwise that's it. Not too hard, and way better than Bisto!
 

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Risotto!

General chatter:

I LOVE a good risotto. By which I don't mean basmati rice overcooked with some sad looking peas added, but a proper Italian-style dish with arborio rice or similar, which takes time and attention to get right. Once you've got the basics of a dish like that, it'll repay you a thousand times by acting as a delicious blank slate on which you can draw up the exact meal you feel like eating. It's reliable in its basic ingredients, which are almost all things you have lying around in the average kitchen, and in its timing - my risottos always take at least 40 minutes, and never more than an hour. It's great as a starter or a main, if you're eating alone or with friends. If you haven't already, I hope you'll give risotto a good couple of tries, and come to love it every bit as much as I do.

A light risotto makes a lovely lunch, say with crayfish, crab, chilli and coriander (I ate this while out for lunch last week, and it was fantastic). A big bowl of risotto with bacon (pancetta if you've got it) and peas, liberally sprinkled with parmesan shavings, is my best friend when I'm curled up in front of the telly with a glass of white wine after a long day. Somehow it feels like more of an achievement than spaghetti and tomato sauce, although it takes about the same amount of effort (if maybe a touch more time in the kitchen)!

For a big dinner, I always think risotto makes a stylish accompaniment to your main dish - if you're sick of potatoes as a side, give risotto a go. Try something like thyme and wild mushroom risotto with lamb, perhaps, or a chilli-based one with asian braised pork belly. Pork belly's very trendy at the minute too, and it's quite a cheap cut. If you're serving your risotto as a side dish, it might be best to dole it out yourself - and think 'less is more'. You want the risotto to be a partner to your meat or main dish in this instance, rather than the main event - although, of course, it can certainly hold its own as a centrepiece if necessary. Try serving it in a roasted, scooped-out half of butternut squash.

Pre-cooking risotto (for dinner parties) 

Another little tip, which I learned from the Food Guru, is that you can actually part-make risotto in advance. PLEASE bear in mind when I say this that I don't mean days in advance - if you leave rice for too long before re-heating and eating it, it can harbour various very nasty little stomach bugs, which anyone who's picked at an ill-advised morning-after Chinese will vouch for. They don't just stop at a dodgy tummy either, and your life is (hopefully) worth more than a couple of grains of rice.

Bleak warning over.

Anyway, to pre-cook risotto just do the basics the hour before your guests arrive rather than the hour after they get there, when you're busy trying to be a star hostess (or host...). Make up the basic recipe (which I'll stick below in a bit - apologies to all who know it back to front, some people aren't so lucky!) to the point where the rice has nearly absorbed enough stock, which you'll know by tasting and feeling the hardness of the rice in your mouth. 

So you've got your risotto base and any other extra bits ready, and when zero hour comes you just need to mix it all together and reheat, adding extra stock and a bit of wine if necessary: it tends to thicken as it cools. You can do that after you've seated your guests, and they'll all be SO impressed that you whipped up a risotto by magic in five minutes.

Enough chatter. Here's a basic recipe, with tips on how to start making alterations:

Ingredients
(For one)

A small onion
Risotto rice - three small handfuls for a generous serving. Or three big handfuls, if you have small hands... Remember that it increases 3x in size while it cooks. Arborio rice is the easiest to get your hands on, I'm pretty sure they sell it in Tesco!
Glass of white wine
Stock - 500ml or so. The type depends on your flavours - chicken for a risotto involving chicken or other pale meats, vegetable for vegetarian risotto. I've never heard of risotto with beef stock before, but I suppose you could try it...
Grated cheese - cheddar is ok, but parmesan or really nice peccorino is best.
Salt and pepper


Method

This method will make you the absolute blank canvas of risottos. To alter them, you just put whatever ingredients you're adding in the following categories, and add them when I mention that category in the recipe. A lot of things, including all meat and vegetables like butternut squash, which makes a fantastic risotto by the way, need pre-cooking - just cook then however you like them most.

Category 1. Hard-stemmed herbs (thyme, rosemary, any whole or freshly-ground spices); onion-style ingredients (garlic and chilli are the most common here)

Category 2. Herbs which can be tough (mint is the main one, as it needs a bit of extra cooking time. Possibly also tarragon is you use it, but add some chopped leaves at the end too); dried herbs (All of them. But please don't use them if you can help it, they're honestly gross); vegetables which barely need any cooking (frozen peas, which you can add straight from the freezer by the way; spinach)

Category 3. Pre-cooked additions (pieces of chicken, beef, pork, fish or shellfish, vegetables with a long cooking time or which you want to roast before adding - No1 here is butternut squash, which makes a yummy risotto when oven-roasted in small chunks and added last-minute); soft herbs (for mixing through; examples are coriander, parsley (lovely!), dill)

Category 4. Finishers (a knob of butter just before serving makes it nice and shiny; some cheese, preferably shavings of parmesan or peccorino, is essential, either mixed through or scattered on top - or both; fresh herbs to scatter on top for a nice final presentation)


Bearing all that in mind (phew!), here's your basic method:

Finely chop the onion to about the same size as your grains of rice. Don't panic, it can be bigger if it must be. Sweat the onion and any ingredients from Category 1 in some butter or olive oil until softened and translucent. By this point your stock should also be ready and within reach. Add the rice, raise the heat a little, and mix around until all coated with the oil. Add the wine.

From now on, your rice is going to absorb liquid until it's cooked through, which will take around 40 minutes. During this time, don't just leave it to spoil, keep a close eye on it. For the next 40 minutes, this thing is your baby. Your job is to keep adding stock in small amounts, so that there's enough liquid there for the rice to absorb, but not so much that the risotto will be runny when it's finished absorbing. It shouldn't be swimming in liquid, but it shouldn't be sticking to the bottom of the pan either. It's a delicate balance and will probably be a bit scary the first time, but you'll get the hand of it!

The mixture will thicken gradually as the starch in the rice cooks. Just how thick it should be is up to you - various different regions of Italy have their own traditions. My favourite way of describing traditional risotto is "all'onda", which literally means 'like a wave' - the risotto should make little waves on the plate as you tip it up. This is traditionally achieved by adding cold butter and cheese at the end of cooking, but you don't need to worry too much about that with this basic recipe.

The most important thing is to keep on tasting. You know how pasta is best al dente, with just that touch of bite left in it? Well, when your risotto rice gets to al dente stage, it's about ten minutes before it's ready. This is the time to add your Category 2 ingredients. Be very careful with stock from now on - do add if it needs it, but beware of adding too much at once. If you do, you'll end up with rice soup, not risotto.

This point - just on al dente - is also the time to remove your risotto from the heat if you're pre-preparing it. Carry on from this point in the recipe later, once you've brought your pan back up to heat. You may need to add a little wine or stock to loosen it up a bit if you've let it cool.

When the rice reaches the texture you like best, add your Category 3 ingredients (they should be at room temperature, don't add chicken and so on straight from the fridge) and combine, cooking for a minute more just to heat them through and allow the flavours to combine.

Cheese, salt and pepper, and any Category 4 ingredients in, and serve straight away, topped with more cheese. Even the plain risotto needs some cheese stirring through before serving, and make sure you check your seasoning before you finish cooking.

With the babble removed, that's:
'cook chopped onions, rice in, stir, wine in, stir lots and add stock slowly (c.40 minutes), finish with cheese and seasoning.' 
That simple. When you've sorted that out, you'll have all the wonderful world of risotto at your fingertips. 

Happy exploring!

Friday 4 February 2011

Marmalade!

As anyone with an interest in preserving fruit or making jam will know, late December to early February is Seville orange season. It's not a long one, but Seville oranges are very important for one simple reason - they're the variety used to make the very best marmalade. My marmalade-making session has lasted for four days now, and to celebrate finishing those lovely sticky orange jam jars, I'm treating you all to a marmalade extravaganza.

Classic marmalade is a preserve made with Seville oranges, which are not usually used for eating because of their bitter taste and thick peel. A traditional marmalade contains prepared, softened orange peel, sliced into pieces. The thickness of the pieces varies depending on the type of marmalade, and each thickness has a different effect, so that a thick cut marmalade is often more bitter and caramel-tasting, whereas a thin cut marmalade is lighter and has a more fruity scent.

These days, though, marmalade goes far beyond the tradition orange version, and now it's pretty much of a case of anything goes (as long as 'anything' means a citrus-based preserve...) You can have marmalade made from other varieties of oranges (sweet oranges, blood oranges, tangerines...); lemons and limes; even grapefruit. As long as it's a citrus fruit, you can make it into marmalade. You can also add all sorts of exciting bits and pieces, from spices and extra flavourings (cardamom, vanilla...) to the spirit of your choice (whisky is a good one to start with). You can mix your fruits together as well, although it might take a while or a good recipe to get the ratios right for the best flavour.

Despite all this excitement and variety, and purely because it's Seville season, I stuck to a traditional base for my marmalades. I made two batches, one plain and one a bit...experimental. To the latter, I added all the ginger in the house (which turned out to be one 5cm stem, a bit manky round the edges...) and a few star anises. I've called it 'Medium Cut Seville Orange Marmalade with Star Anise and a Hint of Ginger'. Catchy,I know.

Just as there are a million varieties, there are a million million recipes even for a traditional marmalade. I didn't go for anything too flashy, just one that caught my eye from my Ballymaloe cookbook. It begins with whole oranges, which are washed thoroughly then cooked before being sliced and cooked again with sugar and juice to make the marmalade. The alternative method is to slice the orange peel first, then cook the marmalade, again in two stages. Either way, however, it's vital that the peel is soft before you add sugar for the second stage of cooking, as once the sugar is added the peel won't soften any more, and you can end up with nasty hard bits in your marmalade.

Anyway, I can't give you an exact recipe as it's not mine, but here's a very rough breakdown of how it worked for me.

I'll give you the basic version first:

I had about 3kg of Seville oranges, and four lemons, which I used because they're very rich in pectin, so they'll help your preserve set well, and they add a nice hint of sharpness (although to really bring this out you need more than 4 lemons per 3kg of oranges!). These I washed, paying attention to any defects on the peel and trying to get rid of them - you're putting the peel in your mixture later on, so you don't want any unsightly dark patches or lumps spoiling the perfection of your jars.

Next up was to boil the whole oranges and lemons in plain water. I split them into two batches even at this early stage, frankly because it's impossible to fit 3kg of oranges plus water into one domestic saucepan, and I own some pretty big saucepans. So, per saucepan was 1.5kg oranges; 4 litres of water; and 2 lemons. You need to boil fast until they're soft, which for me took about 2.5 hours. The water will froth and rise up the pan like Satan's minions, before making a leap for freedom over the rim, thus rendering your stove stickier than it has ever been before and, if you're me, meaning you have to wash the kitchen from floor to ceiling after every batch. Watch out for this. It can be prevented by turning your hob down a little bit.

Sterilising shenanigans

Once you've boiled your oranges, you need to leave them in a warm place to cool, making sure you reserve the cooking liquid for later, and sterilise your jam jars to remove any bacteria which might feel like breeding in your nice sugary marmalade. Now, this can be easy, or it can be fraught with danger and excitement: it's up to you. I managed to come out of it just 5 jars down, and with only minor burns to the upper thighs, but you might not be so lucky. It's tempting to take what you think will be shortcuts, so take the following advice very seriously:


1. DO NOT TRY TO POUR BOILING WATER INTO A COLD JAR. It will explode and shower you with scalding water and broken glass. This is not even as fun as it sounds.

2. DO NOT PUT GLASS JARS INTO A VERY HOT OVEN. When you take them out they'll explode; if you try to pour marmalade into the survivors, these will also explode.

3: DO NOT POUR HOT MARMALADE INTO A COLD JAR. You guessed it. Explosion central.


Once you've cleared up the broken glass, water, and hot marmalade mixture from the floor a couple of times you should get the idea.

Now that we've all finished laughing at my shenanigans, here is the correct way to sterilise:

Put your jars in a large pan covered with water. Place on hob and bring to the boil. Boil for 5-10 minutes. Carefully remove jars and place in a warm (not hot) oven to dry. Make sure jars are still warm when potting the marmalade.

Ok? Do not deviate from these instructions. Trust me on this one.

...And on with the show

Right. So, after several hours and some injury time, I'd sterilised my jars and the oranges were well and truly cooled (you can leave them overnight at this point, by the way, although you need to keep your clean jars warm so it's best to do that bit just before you go into the second stage of cooking). This is the time for the mind-numbing bit, so I stuck on some BBC iplayer and got down to it. You have to scoop out the middle segmented bit and pips (but not the pith) from all the oranges and stick it in a muslin bag. Then you need to slice all the orange peel, as thickly or thinly as you like, and put peel, cooking liquid from before, and muslin bag full of orange innards back into your enormous saucepan. Once you've brought this lot to the boil, it's time to add the sugar; I used 3.3kg per batch (ie per 1.5kg of oranges).

I know. I think it's an insane amount too. But those oranges are seriously bitter and you need to balance that out.

I stirred the mixture until the sugar had all dissolved - you can tell, because that grainy feel goes away as you stir - then brought it to a fast boil (again, not on the very hottest setting, though, because it'll overflow the saucepan otherwise) and let it bubble away.

What you're looking to achieve at this point is a set, and it's a bit of a difficult thing to measure. Every few minutes, take a tiny spoonful of your mixture out of the hot pan and pop it on a cool plate. When it's cooled, if you push it with your finger and the skin wrinkles up, that's a set. Don't worry if it's all hideously confusing when you first start testing; you'll get there, whether it takes hours or no time at all. Also, I re-boiled my star anise marmalade after it had cooled because it seemed a bit runny, and it didn't seem to do any harm - the set improved the second time. I'm not sure you'd do this if you were a purist, but for me it worked fine!

Once you've achieved your set, you just transfer your marmalade mix into a jug with a ladle (or pour, if you can manage without spilling it!) and pour from the jug into the warm jars, trying to keep a consistent ratio of peel to liquid in each jar. Then all you have to do is wait for it to set fully, maybe giving a gentle stir from time to time to help distribute the peel evenly. Voila! Your very own marmalade!

Ginger and Anise Marmalade:

For the ginger and anise marmalade, simply dice some ginger very finely (I used 33g, but to be honest if you've got more I'd put it in, a hint of ginger isn't really enough!) and add it, along with 4 or 5 star anise, at the stage when the oranges are boiled whole.  Make sure you remove the anise before you add the sugar.

Last but not least, a couple of things to do with your sticky orange friend:

  • Obviously, spread it on the best bit of toast you can lay your hands on.
  • Remember the Christmas Ham (I'm sure you do). 
  • Spread on some thinly baked sponge cake, roll up, and serve warm like an orange Arctic Roll.
  • Make it chunky, with demerara sugar, and dip sausages in it.
  • Have a spoonful with some vanilla ice cream and good quality chocolate sauce.
  •  Spread it on top of an orange cake (like lemon drizzle, but with orange juice). Or, hide a spoonful or two at the bottom of your usual cake mix.
  • Add a spoonful to gravy for gammon or duck.
  • Make little pastry tartlet cases and fill them with marmalade before baking (good one for the kids).
  • Use to glaze some chicken and cook on a bbq or in the grill pan. 
  • Make bread and butter pudding, but with marmalade as well.
  • Try it with a savoury mature cheese like cheddar, brie, or goat's cheese.
  • Pick out bits of chunky peel for a sneaky sugar hit.

Ok, it's not the quickest thing in the world to make, but if you set aside a Sunday to dedicate to the Seville orange, I don't think you'll regret it. It's pretty therapeutic watching the stuff bubble away; you can catch some TV while you slice the peel; and best of all, there is almost no feeling more virtuous than tucking into your very own homemade marmalade for breakfast. Think how proud your mum would be.