Foodisgood

Breads

2008-10-05T15:27:00.006+01:00

Nice quick batch of breads. Foccacia style, mini loaf, flat bread and oven bottom rolls. The last two were "baked" in a dry frying pan; I was feeling adventurous :-) All from the same initial dough, which was a basic white bread recipe with a few oats and stuff. And some gran padano cheese grated in. Probably why the crusts came out so brown.

The flat bread and little roll above it were done in a dry frying pan. Took just a few minutes on a medium heat...

Mmm salty

Few grilled courgettes with garlic, served with the foccacia style bread.

A good day

2008-07-27T23:35:00.004+01:00

I've been putting a lot more focus on riding and running as of late. After going for a bit of a loosener yesterday (40km?), I went for a nice 50k ride along a canal today to a place called Dunham Massey Hall:
All that riding left me a little peckish so I made this:

Hand made dough topped with hand made ragu, tomatoes, mushrooms, ham, mozzerella and cheddar... and fresh basil.

Not bad for one of the hottest days this year... it's a few hours later and I'm still burning up!

Stones

2008-06-12T23:40:00.002+01:00

Some of you have been enquiring about my absence - fear not I'm still here, just a lot thinner and able to run 10 kilometres... who'd have thunk it?!

This was all due to being away from the cakes for quite some time. Well, that and lots of running and mountain biking - but mainly the staying away from the cakes and chocolate... the running and cycling were the easy parts!

I'll be back soon, though the Daring Bakers seem to have vacated their old premises and my key doesn't work any more... I think they escaped while they could!

see you soon!

Mark

American Pie

2008-01-28T19:10:00.000Z

Well it is isn't?! But don't worry all political comments on America have been surgically removed!

Now I didn't have much time this month, I like to do by baking at the weekends and I had several things on. Therefore I only got one chance to pull this off, and no time to prepare. Rushed it the keyword.

As a Daring Baker I have every right to make every recipe as hard as it possibly could. So I don't own any nice tart dishes or loose bottom thingamabobs. Or measuring cups for that matter.

I assembled the dough. Guessing that a cup of solid butter was a certain weight. Why would you measure a solid in mls? baffling! Once it'd been made to work and chilled I put the dough into a square steep sided dish, stuffed in the (mainly guestimated amounts of) filling and topped it with meringue. I know what you're thinking "that'd never work for me, he must be a genius!".

But I'm a skilled eater and I'll eat anything (see the battered haggis, and battered Mars I had up in Scotland this weekend!). So when mine eventually was sliced (dug out) the runny lemon filling is no problem at all ;-)

You might be able to tell I'm not a big fan of this American mainstay; I think it lacks depth and just doesn't sit on the tongue nicely. Maybe it tastes better when done properly...

But I bet it doesn't.

Sausage and Mash

2007-11-26T00:02:00.000Z

It's Daring Baker time again!

This month the amount of sugar (in tonnes) used was... oh. Savoury? Cooool!

Now I make bread all the time... *waits for applause to die down* ...please... ...no, you're too kind! Anyway, I was happy to have a go at this new challenge in flour and yeast meddling, though I wouldn't have much time. I knew I could only do it on the last weekend of the month, since I only try each DB recipe once anyway I wasn't too concerned ( I just can't afford the professional cleaners and laundry bills!) so I dived into the shops after work on a Friday to grab everything I needed for the Saturday. 30 minutes later I had everything I needed and was... cr*p, I forgot to get potatoes. I hoped the smaller store nearby would have roasting potatoes. They didn't, they had floury normal ones. Do I buy them and save hassle now or go back and get roasting potatoes and save the recipe...

Sticky moment I think you'll agree, hey? WELL THAT'S NOTHING! NOTHING! ...compared to what this recipe doles out! I've never seen "dough" that sticky in my life. Of course, I'd bitten off more than I could "chew" (chew in quotes to highlight how unchewable 16oz of mashed potato, several cups of cooking water and some flour is). The recipe says need for 10 minutes. Knead? How do you knead superglue? I'm going out and buying a dough scraper first thing Monday! The adrenaline was pumping; I think at this point all DBers smile if not on the outside then on the inside. Cooking is fun after all, and new recipes are even funner.

I wasn't counting the cups of flour I added to make it pliable, I just kept going til it wasn't a complete joke. Still, after 30 minutes I reckon I had a cross between wallpaper paste and a normal bread dough.

Ahh time to relax, it's in the bowl proving. Then Marce starts giving me helpful hints about what to use at flavourings to make it more palatable. I hadn't thought that far ahead. I was still in survival mode. She told me what she was using and said I could use that too. So I did. -n't. In fact I was told in no uncertain terms that she'd hunt me down and batter me with her rolling pin if I did. What ever happened to All For One DBer and One For All DBers, that's what I want to know?!

Anyway, after it had been allowed to prove a little it was far more manageable. Thanks be to goddess Nigella. So a quick need and some of it was off into the slightly too small loaf tin and the rest into a flat tray.

As you might be able to tell the loaf kinda over-flowed a little. It was still quite sticky pre-baking. Still with a little pepperonata, a few cherry tomatoes and a couple of venison sausages all was well with the world.

Sausage and mash, get it?! Honestly, I should get awards for this material. The bread goes well with Marmite too. In case you wondered :-)

Very late lunch on Sunday:
Last time I made focaccia I pre-fried all the toppings and lovingly applied the toppings to the lovely doughy top. But this time I was busy watching a DVD so I just whacked it all on there. Fresh rosemary (from the back gar... shop) and thinly sliced onions. And a dredging of olive oil and a little sea salt.

Came out pretty darn good.

Dinner on Saturday: Thanks to Tanna for choosing the bread. I generally find the stickier the dough the better the bread, and this was no exception. It's wonderfully fluffy and soft, there's no focaccia left, I just packed the last of it as lunch tomorrow. I'll make them watch me eat it all!

Don't forget to check out my, probably less sticky, buddies here.

Comida Es Buena

2007-11-04T22:49:00.000Z

Mi hermanita es... *AHEM* Sorry about that, my lil' sis is a chip off the old block. Or is that a son/father thing? Anyway, my sister and her friends have started to bake together, which is strange since they are students so you'd think beans on toast would be the order of the day...

First up is a chocolate cake. ClowiWowi eats tons of the stuff. Mountains of it. She skips proper meals just so she can go back to licking the wrappers... I feel safe saying this because she lives a few aeroplane rides away.

Looks warm and comforting don't it. No, they didn't offer me any. Meanies :-P

Sadly good genes doesn't always mean good taste. Look at the swirls on this plate. Disgusting. Just get it in your mouth!

I bought ClowiWowi Shrek for her birthday, her favourite character is not the gingerbread man. So, I don't really know why I brought it up.

Impressive effort no? I'm not sure why his/her arm is coming from it's head but... who wants a "normal" one anyway! ;-)

We're gonna be meeting soon, she's gonna bake me something tasty every day. She just doesn't know it yet :-D

Fish Dinner

2007-10-10T23:55:00.000+01:00

Mmm cod. Battered and deep fried. With onion rings and chips... Ok, the health nazis won't like it, but on the plus side the health nazis won't like it :-)

The batter is made with Fursty Ferret bitter and flour. Nothing else, well, bit of salt and pepper. Just enough to make the batter easy to use (I think the term "cover the back of the spoon" is often used).

I was using a small saucepan so I chopped up the cod fillet into similar sized pieces, and cooked the fillet in two batches. It was perfectly cooked with 4-5 mins, the steam pocket created by the batter around the fish steamed the fish wonderfully.

I had a bit left over so I sliced an onion and threw it in. I put the left-over batter in the fridge for tomorrow, I have another fillet to use up. Nice and healthy after footy :-)

Say hello to my cinnamon friends

2007-09-30T11:37:00.000+01:00

Another month, another Daring Baker challenge, this time from my overly decorated buddy Marce.

I've always wanted to know how to make dough like this, kind of soft but able to keep it's airy shape. I assmue that's the egg doing it's work. I was initially quite scared it was going all wrong, I had to keep adding more and more flour to get it out of sticky and into tacky.

I used a different method in my kneading this time (I love to experiment, and by this time I thought it was going all wrong :-)), instead of using my palm to push and stretch the dough, I just flattened it out and folded it in on itself (bit like when you make puff pastry). It worked, look at the size of these puppies:

Yes, that was my biggest baking tray :-) The eagle eyes amoung you might spot small bits of hazelnut in the cinnamon swirl. I forgot I had them and the mixing dough stage.

Now I was quite busy this month, I made these on the 29th, at the last stage. I didn't have enough milk to make the glaze so I had to go out to get some while the buns proved... 2 1/2 hours later, a one nil victory, 1 Guinness and a John Smiths later they had risen. Probably more than double their original size.

I only made the cinnamon version of the recipe; the quantity of icing sugar used for the fondant was nerve jingling! After winning a hamper of biscuits and general yumminess on Friday my kitchen is 100% proof on the sugar content! Luckily I have the self-control to only have one and leave the rest. Ok, two, but's that's the end of it. Well, I suppose the box is open now I might as well finish them off, no point letting get soft.

*spits crumbs* fee, 'elf-'ontrol!!!

Now, if self-control is what you want, you need to go here, you'll find some of the best buns this side of Jessica Alba...! I hear Cream Puff's are a wonder to behold.

Where was I...? Oh yeah, a big thanks to Marce for her choice, and I mirror other DBer's comments about making this recipe again some time. I'm just off to take the retarded ones out of the fridge... happy salivating!

Milk Chocolate and (runny) Caramel Tart

2007-08-29T19:24:00.001+01:00

Now obviously you can spend hours making a cake look good and make it turn out properly.

But that's just boring, I've ~~used this excuse~~ said this before: I need something more! If you want cake perfection you're frankly in the wrong place (try here).

How I measure cakes:
Was it all eaten: Check.
Number of proposals: One.
Number of people who laugh at my efforts: 1,824 and counting (I was number 2, after God butted in with a few wise cracks!)

Obviously, this being mid "summer" in England the temperature was an unbelievable tepid 14C. So you can understand why the caramel was running.

And another thing, I think people who decorate their cakes are insecure. Seriously! I mean covering it in half moons of icing sugar... what are you looking for? Marriage proposals or something??!!

Yep, that is yet more milk chocolate bits in the mousse. I know how to please an audience.

So there it is. No need to pretend to be polite and inquire about the recipe.

Yes, I have spoons... oi! Put the spatula down, there enough for everyone!
Form a QUEUE!

tut... animals...

Mushroom and Beef Pie

2007-08-28T00:15:00.000+01:00

You gotta love a good pie. There's a nice bar near us that serves pie with beers from across the globe. the beer was nice, my pies are better :-)

This one is chestnut mushrooms and porcini mushrooms, fried together and then added to the minced, organic beef. I think there's some dried chilli and garlic in there too. No onions since I didn't have any :-) The topping is puff pastry. As you can see the base/gravy came over the top at one point; it all adds to the whole thing in my biased opinion!

It's Cheescake O'Clock

2007-08-01T23:31:00.001+01:00

I was given my first dessert cookbook for my birthday recently, all the recipe have chocolate in them!

It's the first weekend and I made two things from it. Shortbread, which takes minutes and is well easy. Anyone could do it...

And this double chocolate cheesecake. Again, easy if you have a spare two hours... and you melt the chocolate for the filling before you let the gelatin in the cream base start to set!!!

Thus the top got a little messy as I tried to even it all out...

There are crushed hazelnuts in the bottom which really added a whole new dimension to the cake. It was supposed to be an toasted oat bottom but I substituted digestive biscuits... and should have used more butter (which was measured in tablespoons in the book??) and of course a little chocolate to help it all bind nicely :-)

The filling was comprised of yoghurt, whipped double cream, a bit of gelatin and some cream cheese. It was split and 175g of white chocolate was added to one half and 175g of dark chocolate to the other half...

Which give a wall of creamy chocolatey goodness at the end!

Daring Bakers - July: Strawberry Mirror Cake

2007-07-29T23:59:00.001+01:00

I had mixed feelings about this cake. After my last contact with gelatine, Bavarian cream and the Daring Bakers I knew I had to make this work. And try to follow the recipe exactly (or risk incurring the [justified] Cream Puff Rough Justice(TM)) . So this is why, this time, I did my best to omit the booze from the cake.

The various shops/liquor stores/distilleries I visited trying to find the kirsch were all out. I knew I'd regret that strawberry liqueur bender I went on around the last days of June... who knew it would be so easy to dry up all the sources within 50 miles... and what chronic bad timing!

Anyway, as you can see the recipe was followed precisely. Apart from the big flat rectangular sponge bit. And the measuring the dimensions of cake tins bit. And American cup sizes bit... oh and the powdered gelatine bit... hmm precisely... what's baking without a little edge of your seat re-jigging of things hey? Hey?!?!?!

A few DBs had there birthdays this month, I decided to take my cake into work. bet none used plates like this!:

Yes, I bet my bosses were very impressed... :-)

I don't even like Pooh et al but it's a birthday cake, novelty plates were called for!

The smart (or picky) people reading this would notice that there was a slight darkening of the sponge along the bottom. Any chef worth her/his weight in salt would have removed these. But I thought, no, it's up to me to show people what happens when you make basic errors. Consider yourselves taught, I won't be showing you again... The recipe called for a large flat sponge. I didn't have a baking sheet like that so I improvised. I put it in a cake time and made it twice (plus) as tall and sliced it in half...

Also, measure how high your sponges are before putting them into your cake mould. Otherwise you'll look like a right Muppet when you can see a halo of cake under your mirror... ha ha... *cue much nervous laughter*

The cake was a right pain getting to work (it's tradition to buy everyone cakes at our office). I took pics of the mirror top before I wrapped it to take to work. It was perfect when straight from the fridge, in it's little cocoon... The top got a little smudged on the way to work, I think it hadn't set properly... it was super concentrated strawberry syrup it was made from, maybe that didn't help...
The concentrated topping was needed since I'm not a big sponge fan... bit bland for me. I'm not a big cream fan either to be honest... still, how many people had one of these for their birthdays!

Would I make it again? No. Was it fun to make? I certainly wasn't bored! It was different. I'm usually a stickler for perfection, but I don't feel the need to perfect this cake like I do the Gateau St Honore...

Anyway, thanks to Peabody for choosing this challenge. It was certainly something I've never seen before, and I guess I enjoyed making it too. :-)

Check out the other Darers here!

Recipes are for the... well, prepared...

2007-07-29T23:33:00.000+01:00

Looks like a veggie feast doest it?!

Well apart from the chunks of black pudding sausages it is! :-D Those are the purple looking things. There's also goats cheese, onions, garlic, shredded cucumber in there too. The "filler" is just eggs and a dash of double cream (with salt and pepper). I used store-bought shortcrust pasty because I have a life; blind baked it using greaseproof paper and dried beans to keep the base from rising.

The onions were cooked under the sausages under a hot grill; Then put into a frying pan with crushed garlic and, right at the end, the shredded cucumber (that's the healthy bit kids ;-)).

I cooked it for about 20 mins at 190C, or until the goats cheese had bronzed and the centre had solidified somewhat. I didn't want it rock hard though.

A drizzle of EV olive oil would have been lovely, but I used Worcestershire sauce instead :-)

I made this bread a week before the quiche, but it would have been nice together I guess. It's your basic loaf of bread, but I added some poppy seeds and some saffron to the mix. Interesting... gives it a nice colour, and the poppy seeds work really well with cheese...

Poppy Explosion

2007-07-01T23:17:00.000+01:00

Yes, the long thin one was the perfect size for a hot dog. If I ate such rubbish... *ahem* I experimented more with this batch of bread. I wanted some nice airy rolls to soak up the sauce for my dinner... (lamb in an anchovy, rosemary and red wine sauce since you ask, but no, no pics, maybe tomorrow).

As well as trying different sizes and forms, I added more yeast then the recipe called for. And a little bicarbonate of soda. They were definitely more fluffy than usual, maybe a push it a little more next time though.

PS some people say that cockroaches will outlast a nuclear bombardment... I will still be finding poppy seeds in my kitchen until the last star in the universe puffs out it's last light particle!

PPS that's a long time from now.

PPPS there are no cockroaches in MY kitchen!

Worlds Best Tasting Chicken

2007-06-27T00:06:00.000+01:00

Farmhouse Direct's chicken is just simply wonderful. It has such a rich chicken flavour that I just couldn't bear to hide it. It was good enough to just eat on its own... but I was (eternally) hungry so... PS it costs quite a bit, but you're paying for quality so... beans on toast for me for the rest of the week!

Look how juicy that is! Oh, yeah... I quickly pan fried the chicken with just a little seasoning, then just finished it off in the oven for 10-15 mins (around 200C ish) til the juices are clear and the skewer is hot to the touch (of your lip). Leave to rest.

I made this dish two days running, and just varied the cream sauce. The sauce is made in the same frying-pan that the chicken was started in (which was transferred to a roasting tray for its stint in the oven), to which was added a little butter and lots of field mushrooms (sliced). Then I added a touch of chicken stock before the recipes diverges...

1) a drizzle of white wine vinegar, a little wholegrain mustard and the pan juices from the resting chicken.

2) sliced garlic, little bit more butter and again the pan juices.

The final ingredient was Jersey double cream (almost clotted!).

This is tonight's version (2).

I served the juicy, succulent, aromatic chicken sliced and by itself, so I could choose how much mushroom/sauce I wanted with the chicken. The sticky rice helped to soak up the sauce.

Rosemary and Cremé de Cassis II

2007-06-17T23:02:00.000+01:00

This is my second try in recent days. The first attempt bugged me... so this time I tied it in a pie crust. I tried the icing a different way too and it seems to have set and not run all over the place!

Oh, the orange bit on the pastry at the bottom of the pic is orange marmalade... the crust broke on me so I tried to glue it together. It worked as far as I can tell.

Rosemary and Creme de Cassis fun

2007-06-15T19:47:00.000+01:00

My colleague "Stuie" had invited a few work colleagues around to his for lunch at his nice little place in Old Trafford, Manchester. The food was delightful, home made stuffed breads and "zucchini" bakes etc... but he had also challenged me to make a dessert using two things you wouldn't usually associate with each other.

His white chocolate and basil base with strawberries and balsamic vinegar dressing looked great and was divine to eat. Now it was my turn. The below picture shows how my first and only attempt looked the night before. Last minute as usual! No recipe either, but it felt right... silly boy.

Lovely looking isn't it? It is a rosemary chocolate base with a cremé de cassis icing. ...the not too sweet topping really helped the not sweet at all base and together they tasted divine. All you nee to do is warm some double cream with some crushed rosemary, then after removing the rosemary just dump in some dark chocolate. At this point saner people than I would be thinking this would make a great pie filling... too easy I lament!

The topping is made from golden icing sugar (regular readers would know how much the golden sugar has messed me about in the past!) with a few tablespoons 0f water and cremé de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur).

This is where it all goes wrong! Because the golden sugar made the icing a dirty cream colour I had to put more blackcurrent liqueur in to turn it pink/blackcurranty. This meant it was never going to bl**dy set properly, and would mean it spread out on-top on the choccy (see pic). In The next morning it had separated a bit too. No worries, I'll just roll it, to make it a) easier to roll , and b) easier to eat.

I could b1tch about why it went wrong, but suffice to say it took me longer than planned to get to said lunch and consequently my dessert had melted into each other. The rescue plan was then to be able to spread it onto digestive biscuits, but since I'd tried to rescue it by putting it into the fridge it was too cool to spread... so (if this were a film Leslie Nielsen would be playing me) to soften it I put it in a oven that was cooling down after being used... it only needed a few seconds...

The chocolate fondue was nice ( :'-( ) but was blown out of the water by the strawberries and white choc... oh well, live and learn!!!

Ganache bites

2007-05-28T13:36:00.000+01:00

So what to do when you buy 100% cocoa solids chocolate? It's a bit bitter to eat on its own, so I went back to my favourite gooey recipe and tried that.

I emptied the chunks of choc (about 73g after I snacked on a few pieces to see what it was like - It made my pint of bitter taste sweet!) into a ban-marie with a little double cream (equal measures -ish). The simmering water melts the chocolate at a slow pace, so it doesn't split. At least in theory, the 100% stuff isn't half delicate! You're not to work it too much otherwise it can get quite bitty, but I did stir it to get the cocoa butter back in the with solids.

I added a fair bit of sugar too to sweeten it a little, and added a little drab of whisky. A 10 year old Talisker to be exact, one of the finest whiskies.

I put the concoction on a silicon mat and left it in the fridge to firm up. About 10 mins later I came back with a spoon, scooped up a little and rolled it in cocoa. Back in the fridge (minus one).

Lovely and firm at first, then they just melt on the tongue... mmmmm

Gateau Saint Honoré... ish

2007-05-27T11:46:00.000+01:00

Well that was fun! Saint Honoré is the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. But even someone with his immense powers could not help me... No doubt if you're checking other posts on this gateau and you'll notice mine looks rather different... I'm such a good chef I let the recipe take me, rather than forcing it into something it shouldn't be... *ahem*

For those of you not in the know (I'm still not) this cake has three main parts: 1. Puff pastry, 2. Choux pastry and 3. St. Honoré Cream.

1. The puff pastry is tough, tough work; mine took hours of labourous attent... ok, £1.59 from the local shop, but I walked there so that should count, no?!

2. Pate a Choux – Cream Puffs Dough
4 ¾ oz. all purpose flour (135 gr)
1 cup water ( 240 ml)
2 oz unsalted butter (58 gr)
¼ tsp. salt (1 gr)
1 cup eggs (240 ml)

Sift the flour and set aside. Heat the water, butter and salt to a full rolling boil, so that the fat is not just floating on the top but is dispersed throughout the liquid (mine still had some butter on the top, don't fret). Stir the flour into the liquid with a heavy wooden spoon, adding it as fast as it can be absorbed. Avoid adding it all at once or it will form clumps. Cook, stirring constantly and breaking up the lumps if necessary, by pressing them against the side of the pan with the back of the spoon until the mixture comes away from the sides of the pan, about 2-3 minutes (mine happened much quicker, it's like making a white sauce). Transfer the dough to a mixer bowl. Let the paste cool slightly so that the eggs will not cook when they are added. You can add and stir the eggs by hand but it requires some serious elbow grease (elbows were thoroughly greased, but it wasn't too much work). Mix in the eggs, one at a time, using the paddle attachment on low or medium speed. Do not add all the eggs at once. Check after a few, the dough should have the consistency of thick mayonnaise. Transfer the dough to a piping bag and use as desired (go mad! I did :-D).

Seriously easy considering the results, even mine turned out (too) well. Sooooo much fun!

3. Saint Honore Cream (Rapid Chiboust or Diplomat Cream)
1 envelope unflavored gelatin (7 gr.) *warning 1*
1/4 cup cold water (60 ml)
1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons sugar (130 gr)
½ cup all-purpose flour (70 gr)
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 egg yolks
2 cups whole milk (500ml)
1 Tb. rum *warning 2*
¼ cup whipping cream (57 gr)
3 egg whites dash of salt 1/2 cup sugar (105 gr)
Vanilla pod (I used essence to hilarious out comes!) *warning 3*

Soak the gelatin in the 1/4 cup of cold water. Put the sugar, flour, and salt into a saucepan and stir together with a whisk. Add the yolks and enough milk to make a paste. Whisk in the remainder of the milk. Place over low heat and stirring constantly, cook until thick. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla and the gelatin. Stir until the gelatin is completely dissolved. Stir in the whipping cream.Set the mixing bowl in cold water and stir until the cream is cool. Place the egg whites in a clean bowl and using clean beaters, whip them with the dash of salt. As soon as the whites begin to stiffen, gradually add the 1/2 cup of sugar and beat until they are very stiff. Fold the egg whites into the cooled cream.

So now you have all the main ingredients.

"Warning 1" refers to reading packet instructions. I didn't because of "Warning 2"... I found that the rum had the affect of making me forget to read the packet instructions on the gelatin. Well maybe not forget but you get the inference ;-) "Warning 3" refers to the fact I used essence and because of "Warning 2" I might have used too much... oh dear... It's been a week since I made it and I still wince :-)

You need to make a circle of the puff pastry, and pipe a few concentric rings of the choux pastry onto it. Put 12* puff balls on the baking sheet around the "cake" and bake the puff pastry circle and the cream puffs at 400F (205C) until the pate a choux has puffed (about 10 minutes). Reduce the heat to 375F (190C) and bake until everything is dry enough to hold its shape, about 35 minutes longer for the puff "cake" and 8 minutes longer for the cream puffs (just pick them up and take them out as they are done). *And if you have lots of choux puff pastry left over just go mad and make loads X-D

Now either the little gelatin sheet I used wasn't working, or I used too much rum or the too much rum I'd ingested meant I missed something, but my cream just did not set. Things were going so well until this point too, the puff pastry had puffed, the choux balls and choux'ed; what followed was simply comedic gold to any observer, imagine a dam that's springing leaks of cream and some little boy trying to scurry around stopping the leaks with his fingers...

Apart from turning the air blue and the counter top cream things were going quite well... I poured *so embarrassed* the honore cream into my cream puffs and put them straight into into the fridge as quick as possible. I then added another gelatin sheet to see if that would help... it firmed up a but so I poured *blushes* more honore cream into the cream puffs (I'd had a few drinks by then so I was snacking as I went :-)).

Then it was just a matter of praying to Saint Honoré and hoping the cream would set some while remaining inside the cream puffs. At this point you're supposed to dip your cream filled cream puffs into caramel... oooookkkkkkkk then, I instead poured caramel (that's the chocolate looking substance in the pic, I'd used golden sugar so it was darker than usual anyway) onto the rim of the "cake" and fixed the puffs onto it. At this point the rum/apple juice cocktails really started to kick in... I poured more caramel into the base of the cake (with the idea of making the bottom more able to take the cream), then poured the honore cream into the centre... to cover that fact it hadn't turned out well, I just kept on going with the cream puffs...

It might look a mess (guilty) but it tasted great. It went down pretty well at work the next day, there wasn't much time between the lid coming off and the lid going back on the empty box.

Thanks to Helene and Anita for the challenge, I hope you're not too mad at the mess I made of it :-) Roll on next month's challenge, I definitely won't be drinking next time!

Four Cheese Pizza

2007-05-20T00:13:00.000+01:00

Mozzarella di buffalo, crumbly goats cheese, dolcelatte and parmesiano.

Mmm mmm.

The dough was made from several different flours but it still came out quite well. I used Giorgio Locatelli's recipe, so a little milk and olive oil was added to the blend. Plus I put died oregano and basil into the hot water before mixing it into the flour mix.

It was also cooked on a pizza stone so it have a nice crisp bottom to it...

Luckily for me the pizza was soooo good it nearly made up for the loss of the FA Cup to Chavski... still, it can't take away the moment when... no, must put it behind me... &(&^%& %$$$£$ £%&^(#*)@(!!!!!!

Boring Chicken?

2007-04-15T23:35:00.000+01:00

You have to be creative. Sometimes things may go wrong. Well, for you amateurs maybe... ;-)

The slightly over caramelised parts in the pic is (curly) parsley - maybe I should have covered it for a bit while it roasted... I didn't bother with the duck I did last week... (yes it was gorgeous ;-)) but that was covered with orange slices so it had protection... not that the caramelised parsley wasn't interesting to taste :-)

I thought to myself: 'Chicken with a nice caramel crust would be nice. Oh, and maybe some smoked paprika. I have lots of parsley too...'. At this point readers of Terry Pratchett would realise that I got hit by a random Thought particle which inspired me to combine all of these things! Amazing hey?

I made a butter paste with the parsley and paprika. This was inserted into the area between the skin and meat on the breasts (after a while in the fridge to cool down). You make a pocket using your hand, just work it in gently (the skin should be quite tough to break, but don't push it).

I smeared some on the outside of the bird and sprinkled on a ground mix of salt, vanilla flavoured sugar, sage and oregano.

I halved an onion and put it in the cavity before putting it in the onion, skin still on. After the roasting, I put it into the gravy (made from the pan juices, white wine and a little chicken stock).

I was pretty boring from then on, I roasted potatoes in duck fat and served it with the chicken, gravy and sprouts.

Sun Dried Tomato and Olive Bread

2007-03-25T23:43:00.000+01:00

This is just a normal loaf of bread recipe. Made with organic flour no less.

Ok, and a couple of additions, I chopped up some sun dried tomatoes (that came in olive oil) and some black olives (that were in brine, how ironic...).

Plus, on top of the basic recipe I added a little sugar and some baking powder; just to see what happened really.

Looks quite nice no? It tastes great. It won't last for ling though... weird that...

Curry night

2007-03-12T22:55:00.000Z

Marinade:
Lemon grass
Turmeric
Dried Chili
Paprika
Can of tomatoes (without the can)
Onion
Garlic cloves
Ground Fenugreek
Cumin
All whizzed up until it formed a nice paste.

Chunky pork chops, cut into... well, chunks.

There might be more in the marinade, I made it yesterday and marinaded the meat over night. I got a pizza to keep the wolves at the door... :-) Those two things combine to wipe my memory.

I removed the meat from the marinade, and took off all the marinade I could. In a sauce pan I fried a few mustard seeds until they popped and then added the meat. Once that had time to fry a little I added the marinade and then a couple of Kaffir lime leaves.

A little mound of rice and some coriander and all's well :-D

Bacon and Cabbage

2007-03-04T21:28:00.000Z

This is another impulse thing. I was walking around the supermarket and picked up the things I felt like, no recipe really in my mind. In the back of my head I knew I had some pancetta lardons that were coming to the end of their time. I'd had a very average Thai the night before, but paid very un-average prices! Sadly I don't mean the good side of average :-(

Then a cabbage lunged at me! A savoy no less. You'd think they'd be more dignified... So I have pork and cabbage, what brilliantly intricate meal could I create...? I fried the bacon bits, and added a red onion and fried it some more (adding a little olive oil now). When they were bronzed I added the cabbage. Stirred it, popped on a lid... 7-10 mins later I added a splash of balsamic to deglaze and then served. S&P of course... and a little toasted sour dough bread drizzled with EVOO. Simple

Lamb and Basil Meat Balls

2007-02-26T22:42:00.000Z

As usual my decisions for what to have for dinner were ruled by necessity. I had lots of basil slowly loosing their turgidity (not just a food blog, a lesson too :-)). So having lots of ragu too, I thought having meat balls would be fun.

I finely diced a small onion (and probably only used half) and added it to the organic lamb mince (400g). From this I could tell how much onion to add, I wanted the meat by itself to "hold" the onion i.e. after a brief mix with a hand there was no onion left in the bowl when I lifted the meat. To this I added a couple of cloves of finely diced/crushed garlic, salt & pepper, and as much basil as you can realistically fit in. I could have added a little cumin here, but my Lazy gene kicked in and I could be bothered to... blah blah blah... I then added an eggs and got stuck in with my hand until the egg was completely incorporated. Keeping my hands moist with a bit of water roll bits of the mix on the palm of your hand. The water should stop them sticking to you.

This is the little fellows who went into the fridge for tomorrow's consumption, they're about the size of large button mushrooms. They've also been lightly dusted with flour; That is, dunked in flour and gently thrown from hand to hand to get rid of the excess. this is supposed to protect them from getting too dry. It also helps brown them.

Pan fried quickly to brown, then pour off the fat [or transfer the balls to another pan with the ragu] add the ragu (this way you get the little flavoured caramelised bits) and leave for about 10 minutes or so? Basically the balls are nearly cooked through through the browning process (depending on the size of your balls). You could leave them slightly longer to help marry the flavours... I kept some back for lunch the next day instead :-)

I served these with bread. Me = Lazy

French Onion Soup

2007-02-17T14:26:00.000Z

I stole this idea from a colleague at work. He was putting on a dinner party and asked me if I had a particular recipe I used. I didn't. So I looked around and found a few to see what the general deal was... I (we) ended up buying some beef bones from a butcher in Manchester one lunchtime, the plan was to put them to good use by making beef stock. I don't make by own stocks generally, not beef anyway.

I dumped the bones into a large saucepan and emptied in some water and salt. Boiled them for about 3-4 hours, skimming the top every 15-20 mins. I left it in the fridge over night so I could get the rest in the morning (it solidifies on top...).

For the soup I used 2 large white onions, half moon type cut and fried in a little butter and oil for around 20 mins. Til they got all nice and brown. Towards the end I put a little golden caster sugar in, just to add that little more caramel flavour. Plus a finely sliced clove of garlic.

A glass of white wine was used to deglaze the pan, and left to boil off until half the amount was left. Then in when a little smoked paprika, beef and chicken (bottled bouillon) stock. 30 mins simmer later it was ready.

To top it off I used some grilled ciabatta gran padano cheese on toast :-)

Toad in the Hole á la Nazca

2007-02-12T21:08:00.000Z

No, that's not toad in the hole (TITH), that is where the story begins. Tempura. I usually make my own batters, but wanted to see what the packet stuff could do. I wasn't going to buy rice flour, I still have loads of other flours I need to get rid of (space is a concern...).

The tempura turned out really well, I got some raw tiger prawns, broccoli, button mushrooms and courgettes to fry. Mmm crunchy goodness.

Much crispy goodness later, I still had some mushrooms, courgette and batter left. Believe me, there was no room left in the inn!

I'm not the biggest fan of courgettes, I very rarely buy them. Watery and just a little dash of flavour. They were nice battered, but not as good as the competition.

I also had gone mad when buying sausages in the butchers, they had Toulouse, and black pudding sausages. I couldn't choose between them, so I bought both x-D

What better way to get rid of a few sausages that to TITH them. None! I hear you cry. (PS I've been reading lots of Cream Puff recently, her style is catching... you may have noticed).

So, there's a normal Yorkshire pudding mix (125ml/4oz flour, egg, salt and milk), with a little tempura mixed in (I kept it in the fridge), with the Nazca bit: paprika, S&P, garlic and fresh parsley. Lots of parsley. Waste not, want not.

I stir fried the courgette and mushroom to give them a little colour, and to cook off some of liquid in them.

I put a big ceramic dish in the oven on 230C, with a little sunflower oil and a dash of olive oil. Heat is key hear, I need the oil to get smoking hot rather than just burn. Then added the sausages. Put it back in the oven. A few mins later I whipped it out again to put in the courgette and mushroom mix. Maybe the constant opening didn't help, put I think it helps the dish recover from the cold sausages... anyway, once it was hot again I whipped the dish out and poured over the batter mix. Rolled it around, making sure there was a good even coating and put it back in the oven quick like!

20-30 mins later it was ready. I think the Tempura helped it crispen up, it wasn't as soggy as usual. The courgettes were nice and sweet, and the batter nice and herby. And the sausages...?
Mmmm sausagggggge *drools*

That Iberian Feel

2007-02-04T21:11:00.000Z

I've been very lazy lately, just simply not being creative. Eating easy stuff: crackers and cheese., pate on toast you get the idea.

In the shop the other day I came across lots of interesting ingredients to inspire me. Just normal stuff, but things I'd run out off. I decided to make my store cupboard full again.

Then use it all up :-)

My parents make paella quite often; living in the home of paella (Valencia, Spain) it'd be rude not too. I think traditionally you're supposed to use rabbit or goat, if you're near the sea you get served sea food.

I bought organic chicken (on the same day I read the UK had Bird Flu!) and since I bought smoked paprika and saffron also, I though this would be a good combination.

So, quickly put...

Fry onions. Fry chicken pieces. Stir in carrots, garlic, paella rice and smoked paprika. After a couple of mins add chicken stock (or water I guess). Here I added a little saffron. I then left it for 20 minutes. You could stir it, but I wouldn't too much. If you have a paella (the name of the actual dish/pan) then that's great. i just used a saucepan, a deep frying pan would be good too. The best bit of a paella is the crispy bottom, mine was more risotto like though...

This a kind of piri piri pork dish. With steamed veg, asparagus, baby corn and baby carrots.

The organic pork loin was marinaded in a mixture of smoked paprika, garlic, olive oil and dried chilli. After an hour is was shoved under the grill for about 15 minutes. I took the left over juices from the port and added a little white wine and cooked it off. Then added a little butter... now it's a jus :-)

Chicken Wrap

2007-01-27T09:52:00.000Z

So as I was wandering through Manchester yesterday I came across the deli counters in the Arndale... purely accidental of course...

Then seconds later I was in the possession of Peccorino Romana and Prosciutto di Parma. Weird!

Luckily I had some organic chicken breasts at home. I was toying with the idea of stuffing the breasts into a foil bag with some herbs and white wine, but when I looked at the breasts they were practically crying out to be stuffed; they had arrived almost butterfly'd, all i had to do was lay the stuffing down and just fold over the rest of the breast. It was a sign.

So after a few slices of the Peccorino, some cracked black pepper (the cheese was salty enough) and some parsley-butter they were ready to wrap. I laid the breast on the end of a diagonally laid slice of ham, picked it all up and rolled away from me, tightly. I rubbed a little olive oil onto the top and banged it in the oven.

I prepared two breasts. I was ravenous/gluttonous. To go with it I boiled some purple sprouting broccoli. Once cooked I poured a little of the purple water into a saucepan with the juices from the chicken, freshly chopped parsley and some white wine. Simple sauce followed.

Chicken Milanese.... kinda

2007-01-07T19:45:00.000Z

Things were a bit sparse in terms of food when I got back from holiday. I'd emptied out the fridge, and didn't have anything in the freezer but peas (I don't generally have much frozen food in anyway).

Therefore when I shopped online I was getting a little click happy. Did I really need all the fresh food I was buying? Specially since one of my Xmas pressies was a deep fat fryer :-D

I've been busy frying everything from chips to broccoli (in an ale batter) yesterday and at lunch before the game (come on Utd!). I would have taken pics of the onions etc... but all you'd see is blurring of hands, food and dip ;-)

Now I had lots of basil swiftly on it's way to wilting beyond control, along with crispy rolls that were not so crispy...

This was when the idea of a basil crumb crust for my organic chicken breasts surfaced. So i whizzed them together (this was when I decided chunky bread crumbs would be best), beat an egg, butterflyed the breast.

With the supporting cast of purple sprouting broccoli and new potatoes ready, it was just a matter of dunk, cover and pan fry.

It was very crunchy, with a lovely moist centre.

PS I wasn't deep frying the purple broccoli, I had the regular sort too. Told you: click happy!

And a good Xmas was had...

2007-01-04T17:58:00.000Z

...by all but the bullock, turkey and pheasant!

Well that was fun, now all I have to do is run it all off :-) What follows is a small sampled of what I sampled. Needless to say there was some aged brandy and whisk(e)y mixed in, and a bit of chocolate...

First up was a fabulous rib-eye roast. With tahters :-)

It was tre delish, to be sure...

Here's the Christmas cake, that's fruit cake with marzipan and icing on top. It usually has some plastic santa/reindeers on the top. This year it was a plastic holly arrangement :-)

Then we're onto the turkey, a huge beast - cooked for hours! It's stuffed to the gills with sage and onion stuffing. Turkey rules! (This was butcher bought)

Now we're onto the pheasant. A friend of the family, or a cousin?, has his own farm and rears all this kinda stuff. I think we got duck eggs from him last year. It's good to have friends.

Now my Nan has plucked her fair share of these birdies, she was on hand to make sure I didn't make a right hash of it. As you can see, I did :-) Oops, I'm sure no-one wanted the skin anyway ;-)

Note to self, don't try and rip them all off at once!

I'd show you the finished article, after roasting, but my camera ran out of space and the battery died. It tasted great, with a bit of bacon (added to prevent the bird from drying out [some Muppet tore off the skin!])

Xmas

2006-12-19T19:04:00.000Z

Been a while since my last post, lost of office parties and general merriment has been going on :-)

Anyway... last year I roasted a duck, this year I'm sitting back and watching (and maybe snapping pics!).

I'm off to Ireland to be with the family (90% Irish decent ;-)). I haven't asked but we're probably having Turkey, we've had goose and similar in the past. Our family lives in a tiny village in Co. Laois, right next to the farms of their friends, we've got some nice treats straight from the farms in the past :-D

So, baring a miracle this'll be my last post this side of the New Year, so have a happy Christmas to all who celebrate it, and a Happy New Year to everyone who's looked at a Gregorian calender this year!

PS this is what I want for Xmas

Chicken Sweetcorn Soup

2006-12-11T22:19:00.000Z

What else to do with corn on the cob and organic chicken thighs...?

I browned 4 chicken thighs (with skins still on) in a little butter and olive oil, then added a couple of cloves of garlic and half an onion (halved with the skin still on). Lots of salt and pepper, then a litre of chicken stock is pored in... I also added a couple of dried birds-eye chillies for fun.

Once the stock was in I added the two ears of corn, halved, and let them boil in the soup. Once tender (about 8 mins) I withdrew them, ran them under cold water and "de-kerneled" them by slicing lengthways in about 4-5 strokes. I then took the chicken out and de-skinned and de-boned it, and shredded it. Whilst corn and chicken-less I cooked the rice noodles in the soup.

I strained the soup to extract the noodles and onion chunks (and removed the skins at this point [they add colour to the soup]). I put the noodles in a bowl and replaced the soup, chicken and corn into the pan to warm through again. Then served. Then said "yummy!".

All Day English Breakfast Lasagne

2006-12-03T20:13:00.000Z

Catchy title hey?

I promised Ivonne, of the Cream Puff variety, that I would make this dish one day. She might have dared me... who can remember?

I used chipolatas, Danish bacon, black pudding, boiled egg, mushrooms and tomatoes (well the sauce had them :-)) No beans though, I hope I don't loose any points. I precooked all the good stuff first, and most of it made it into the lasagne... I gave in to temptation... sue me :-P

Now I've never used this dish before for a lasagne, and since I don't measure anything it was all going to be fun getting it all in there.

As it turned out, the crispy bits were the best!

Mozzarella (left over from lunch) and parmegianno to top it off. It tasted goooooooooood, how else does lasagne taste?

Caesar Salad

2006-11-29T19:06:00.000Z

I had some anchovies left over from the weekend, so I was thinking what I could use them for. In a flash of pure (what would eventually be recognised as) self-hate I thought Caesar salad!

I got this recipe from Gino from UKTVFOOD. The salad was the best I've ever had, though it means I'll have to eat salad for days because I made so much dressing! It's day two and it's getting a liiiiittle boring ;-)

I whacked it into my food processor and a minute (or two) later I had this:

It came out like (home made) mayonnaise, consistency-wise, and like Caesar dressing taste wise. Ok, I am lying here, I've never chosen to have Caesar salad in a restaurant so how would I know what it tastes like? I may have to compare now though... and have a massive steak to balance all those nasty salad leaves.

Along with some crispy fried bacon and a few croutons it was pretty darn good (the first day...)

Quick lamb koftas with minty yoghurt

2006-11-23T23:15:00.000Z

Another recipe hemmed in by TV programmes or a football match (we lost... Spanish refs are [censored for ridiculous accusations]).

First the onions were diced finely and fried in quite a dry pan until the edge was taken off, and they browned a little. They were dumped onto my chopping board and spread out thinly to cool.

I placed chopped basil and coriander into a bowl, along with organic minced lamb. The onions were added along with finely chopped garlic. To that I added freshly ground cumin, cayenne pepper, ground turmeric and paprika.

That was all mixed thoroughly by squeezing it together by hand (you might want a bowl of hot, soapy water nearby for afterwards :-)) (I didn't, D'oh!)

I made four patties from about 400g of mince. Two were left to mature over night in the fridge, two were fried then and there.

The yellow stuff you can see is turmeric coloured juice/fat (before you ask I had my cholesterol checked today and it was below the average for a Brit :-)) (which is not saying much! :-( )

I served the koftas on basmati with fresh coriander stirred through and chucked on top (presentation counts for nothing! The only reason you're seeing this recipe is that a Cream Puff nagged me :-P)

...and a minty yoghurt concoction. Greek yoghurt mixed with a dash of white wine vinegar, vanilla infused caster sugar and dried mint (they were out of the fresh stuff, and I used the last of mine on the rack of lamb at the weekend :-))

These are the babies I made yesterday and left to mature. They tasted pretty good for improvisation.

I C E & Pavlova's bitch

2006-11-19T04:09:00.000Z

Shush! Don't mention the I-C-E.

Well that was our code to keep our "ickle" baby sister from hearing the 'must have' ice cream. Nowadays she's all grown up and has lost that craving for ice cream... HAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAHA

I used this recipe, from uktvfood again! Tamsin Day Lewis's recipe, who's a great cook of good, old fashioned, recipes. Even if I do find her hair disconcerting... anyway, that's enough about me!

This recipe calls for 4 egg yolks. Which means I have 4 egg whites to mess with. What better than Pavlova to go with my ice-cream. I used an average recipe again, but it still burnt! No idea what I'm doing wrong... though I suspect it's my gas oven... grrr

Still the top part could be salvaged! This is it sprinkled onto the I-C-E :-)

Stir Fried Fusion

2006-11-14T22:42:00.000Z

Again my choice of meal was governed by the time, I had 30 mins in between cookery shows :-D

I had a packet of assorted sea food, prawns, squid and muscles. They were fried in a little garlic oil and then drained (loads of water came out).

Rice noodles were boiled and drained.

The baby corn what quartered lengthways and fried in garlic and ginger. Then in went spring onions (scallions) and baby vine tomatoes.

To build the dish (:-)): Seafood, rice noodles, stir fried veg., rocket and fresh coriander. A little ground pepper and soy sauce and it was fit for a king.

Garlicy bread

2006-11-12T20:32:00.000Z

This is "my" basic pizza dough with a few additions. I've added Gran Padano and dried oregano. And when I say my recipe, I mean Giorgio Locatelli's recipe of course :-)

I've described the pizza process before here. The topping consists of a few cloves of garlic, roughly bashed with a mortar and pestle, and then covered with some nice Greek olive oil I just bought from the market. A little on top, then some sea salt. I rolled this one quite thick to give it that nice doughy feel; with the oven on max and pizza stone nice an hot inside it was time to cook :-)

Lacksa thing

2006-11-08T23:57:00.000Z

If you've read the below fudge recipe you'll know I needed something basic and easy to put on while I fiddled with the unknown new recipe. I'd cooked this recently but not bothered to blog it since it was soooo simple and I'd done something like it before.

However, following recent feedback I thought I'd try informing readers a little more. So I showed some intermediate stages in the fudge recipe and added a few little helping "oh, my god should this really happen?!" hints. I don't know if is should happen, at least you know it happened here!

So, quick easy lacksa, I think I've spelt it wrong but Wikipedia is too.. far... away......

Onions, sliced and fried in oil/butter until brown.
In with garlic and ginger grated, dried chilli chopped.
Next, baby corn on the cob, roughly chopped, and chucky chopped mushrooms next.
S&P.
After they'd fried a little, in went a blend of toasted cumin and coriander seeds, ground fenugreek, turmeric and cayenne pepper.
I waited til the spices had had a chance to cook off the raw feel to them, then I added coconut milk and chicken stock.
Then in with the sweet snap peas, I suppose they could have gone in much nearer the end (I left mine for 45-50 mins) but I had fudge to do!

To serve, rice noodles and fresh coriander.

Macadamia fudge

2006-11-08T23:37:00.000Z

I added a tracker recently, at the time of writing I've had 120 visitors since last week. It's nice to know someone is actually reading this stuff, I hope it doesn't all go to my head... from all the cakes I've been baking lately it's more likely to my stomach (not hips, I am a man after all).

Anyway... Fudge. I was recently wandering through the Arndale Market and found a stall that sells nuts, nuts and chocolate covered things. Being a sucker for expensive things I bought some raw macadamia nuts (and some roasted and salted ones to eat while relaxing later on ;-)). I thought it would be nice to try a little kind of toffee thing, I've never done toffee or anything like it before. I trawled for recipes and decided on this one, because a) it was in British measures I could readily adapt and b) because it was the simplest I found. So after buying a thermometer yesterday I thought I'd give it a whirl tonight. I cooked a very simple Lacksa type thing so I could concentrate on this new recipe (see above).

Once I'd followed the recipe (wow, that was a LOT of sugar!) and it had finally reached soft ball (took ages!) I let it rest for a few minutes (in which time I ran for my camera)...

(looks yummy hey? ;-)) ...then stirred in the [saucepan] bashed, toasted nuts. Stirred until thickened and then poured it into a makeshift container: pyrex dish coated with a silicon baking sheet.
And viola: (this is when it's still pretty hot and molten. It solidifies pretty quick... if you leave a bit of a plate to test :-)

Blueberry Brownies

2006-10-29T23:07:00.000Z

Friends at work have been demanding blueberry muffins from me. They're not happy with chocolate fudge cake and chocolate cheesecake, ooooh no! It was even free! And yet they demand more. A lesser person would have given in, but I'm a bastion of pride (and hence numerous embarrassing falls) and elegance.

I used (dried) sour cherries in my cheesecake lately, and on inspection of the same isle of the local supermarket I found similar dried fruits, yes, you guessed it, blueberries. Now, Marks and Spencers like to import their "fresh" blueberries from somewhere suitably far away (and hence pumping: ozone eating chemicals into the air (hence the greenhouse effect accelerating); and at the same time particulates which block the suns rays from the earth (hence, paradoxically, negating the said heating effect)) I thought it would be better to get the dried ones... that, er, i didn't check where they came from... er, so yeah, ignore my previous rant...

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's book The River Cottage Year, or some such, has a recipe for brownies and cherry sauce. While I used the recipe for the brownies, I decided to chop up the blueberries and chuck them straight into the mix.

You can see the results here... if you look very closely you can hear me salivating :-D

Swirly Cheesecake

2006-10-21T17:51:00.000+01:00

Yes, more cheesecake! Got a problem there...? No? Good :-)

I used this recipe on this occasion, again from UKTVFood. I hope they don't charge :-S

I made some adjustments to the recipe as it was set out, most were on purpose (D'Oh!), I didn't put the sugar in the choc, but put it all in the general mix. What difference that make nobody will ever know... or more importantly, care. :-)

The other thing I added, this time on purpose!, was chopped dried cherries. Why not? The texture of my other cakes was lovely and smoothe, this will be as smooth apart from the chewy bits :-) I could have soaked them in a liquer or something, but I don't have any cheap stuff and I'm not going to put in £40 whisky/brandy in there, I'd prefer to drink it thanks!

This next pic shows the huge chasm I put into it... *ahem*

Well the deli I was in earlier had one so... :-) Gotta fly Nanny McPhee is... er, Die Hard is just starting!!!

Choccy Cake

2006-10-16T00:17:00.000+01:00

Ivonne made her pound cake and it inspired me. I've adapted that recipe and merged it with this one from UKTVFood. Mine's not as well finished as Cream P's but when is it ever? :-)

I don't have a round thingie, so I just used a normal cake time, and instead of making two thinner ones I made one large one. This was due to the fact that I'm lazy, there's less washing up and I only have one this size :-) That pic is of the botton, I flipped it so it is easier to spread the choccy onto.

My topping was a bit like Ivonne's, it's just cream and chocolate... oh, and a bit too much Couvoisier Brandy. Oh well, what's wrong with a little kick in your cake?

The result was a lovely moist choc cake, with a "subtle" brandy twist... I enjoyed mine with lots of cream :-)

Ribs!!!

2006-10-01T15:17:00.000+01:00

I got a little tipsy on Friday after work, which isn't a bad thing, until you wake up with the vague image of you at a supermarket checkout...

Luckily I did buy some real food and not just chips and dip! But since I wasn't planning on buying ribs I didn't really have a recipe on my mind. As fate would have it Catesa logged on as I was recipe hunting and she was nice enough to confide in me her family recipe. Not the secret sauce of course but at least I had a model to follow.

I par-boiled the sweet little things in salted water for about 10 minutes, then removed them and let them cool a little. In the meantime, I mixed some organic ketchup with Worcestershire sauce, oregano, some of the boiling liquid, paprika, cayenne pepper and salt and pepper.

I left the ribs in the "barbecue" sauce overnight, then roasted them in the oven for 30 minutes.

Eat with gusto and lots of wipes :-)

Cold salmon fajitas

2006-09-28T22:02:00.000+01:00

Looking quite yummy no? They tasty very yummy.

I bought honey smoked salmon chuncks (not a can in sight!) to go into this little dish (inspired by the one and only Catesa [she eats her weight in salmon every day, true fact!]). I had some creme fraiche left over from my previously blogged dishes, so I mixed a couple of spoon fulls with diced cucumber, thyme, parsley and the salmon chunks.

The I pressed my torti... ok, you got me... I opened a packet of mini tortillas and wrapped them up.

Simple. An lovely too.

Salchicha al vino with creme fraiche

2006-09-27T23:46:00.000+01:00

Again I've nicked this from Nigel Slater, though I've adapted it somewhat to fit what I had in the "magic" fridge.

I used Toulouse sausages, which have a high herb content, but use what you have to hand (that's Nazca's motto I think :-)).

First I sweated/fried off an onion, and a sliced stick of celery in a saucepan. When nice and see-through I added the de-skinned sausage lumps and browned them off. The sausage should stick to the pan (mine doesn't have a non-stick surface) which creates lovely crusty/caramelised bits of sausage. At this point I threw in garlic, dried chili, 1/2 red pepper and sliced chestnut mushrooms. Once they'd had a chance to warm through I chucked in the white wine (before the bits stuck to the pan burnt, but after the mushrooms had visibly started to cook), I used enough to just cover the contents of the pan.

At this point I also added thyme (because I have a huge wad of it) and parsley (because I had a huge wad of it). But oregano would be nice too. S*d it, just whack any herbs in, how bad can it be?

Once the wine had reduced to about half (but more importantly, the rice had cooked) I put a spoon full of creme fraiche into the mix and stirred it in... 30 secs later it was ready to serve.

Puff of inspiration

2006-09-23T00:51:00.000+01:00

I wasn't going to have Chilli this weekend, until I saw a certain blog. I haven't had chilli for ages I thought.

So a tub of creme fraiche, and some steak mince later... viola as they say in Peckham (Only Fools and Horses joke there).

Onions, garlic, dried chilli, Farmers' Market steak mince, paprika, cayenne pepper, tins of italian tomatoes and a touch of water. Oh... creme fraiche and crispy pitta. Sorted. You'll have to imagine the chives.

Chicken in pesto soup

2006-09-20T23:26:00.000+01:00

For this recipe you need lots of spring onions and basil that is getting older than the use by date. My usual scatter-gun approach to shopping went awry again, but from mistakes usually come strokes of genius... but er, I think time will have to tell on this one I think.

To use up my basil I made a quick pesto with the basil, spring onions and garlic. I drizzled in the olive oil while it was being blended. I put that in the fridge over night as I cooked the stir fry that night... hence the monge tout and baby corn you can see above :-)

I browned two big chicken legs in a sauce pan, and added chicken stock once the pieces had had a chance to work off the fat from the skin. After about 30-45 minutes (I was watching football and reading a book so lost track of the time), I removed the chicken and turned up the heat. In went a bottle of Riesling (minus a glass ;-)) and I left it to reduce to about 2/3.

I separated the chicken pieces whilst the "pesto" was added along with the left over monge tout and baby corn. I also had some left-over rice* and decided to add that with the chicken seconds before serving.

It turned out quite nice, though it was missing that je nais se quois to properly cap it off I think. There again, maybe it was just too much fusion cooking, it is after all two left-over meals and chicken pieces. A dish too far maybe.

There was certainly nothing at the bottom of my bowl though :-)

*from the day before stir fry (salmon steak with vegetable rice [fired onions, peppers, garlic etc and then rice and water, you get the idea])

Duck Soup

2006-09-10T22:35:00.000+01:00

What do you mean you can't see the duck?! Oh yeah, it was a duck cured sausage that I used. Did I not mention that?

Recipe:
I diced a red onion and fried in a little bit of butter... ok, a good wedge. Once they'd started to caramelise I added large chunks of the duck sausage and a couple of cloves of roughly sliced garlic. Once they'd had a few minutes to start the fat melting I added a large carrot (quartered length-ways) and about a litre of chicken bouillon.

I had soaked a mix of dried lentils, peas and other assorted "healthy" bits in water over-night, they went in next; along with some dried porcini mushrooms. To be honest I think the mushrooms didn't taste of much in the end, I think they must have surrendered their flavour to the wonderful background taste though.

After exactly 45 minutes (i.e. the first have of West Ham V Aston Villa) I removed the large chunks of sausage and chopped them up a little and mixed them back in.

The first serving was much broth-ier than the encore I took the picture of above.

Like me, what it lacks in looks it makes up for in outrageous talent... ha... I, er, mean... taste.

Pockets of goodness

2006-09-09T21:15:00.000+01:00

I was watching Nigel Slater the other day and he came up with this really simple recipe involving goats cheese, pesto and puff pastry.

We had a French market in Manchester this weekend, I went down on friday and picked up some gorgeous blue brie and a nice lump of goats cheese. The blue brie was harvested for dinner on friday night (I even bought some fancy crackers: rosmary, wheat and, cheese and walnut). There's not much of that left now :-)

For the pocket you place the goats cheese in the centre of a square of puff pastry, dollop on a spoon of pesto (Giovenese in my case [bought at an extortionate price from Marks and Spencers; it was only quite average too!]). Egg wash the outer sides and fold towards the middle, then egg wash the outer side.

As you can see I had some pastry left over (it was store bought). Luckily I had picked up some fine pork sausages at the farmers' market and I had one left over from breakfast (which was accompanied by black pudding and fried eggs :-))

So a quick sausage roll was produced. Still more pastry left over: so the smaller of the parcels is just pesto and parmegianno regianno rolled into a sausage.

20 mins at ~210C yielded what you can see here.

Orange

2006-09-07T22:22:00.000+01:00

Er, yeah... oranges and just more oranges. Six to be exact, I hand... used my processor to squeeze them. The green bits are little slices of fresh mint, the deeper orange bits are orange peel.

It's definitely the healthiest thing that pint glass has ever seen, I can guarantee that!!!

BBQ and other stuff

2006-09-02T11:03:00.000+01:00

I've been off on holiday really and not really taking care to blog.

I was traveling through France with my parents, a very businesslike road trip. Above is the BBQ I had at my bro's place on the way to France. I bought loads of sausages at the farmers' market and took them down; Toulouse sausage, pheasant and venison, Angus beef sausages, and some rare breed pork sausages. We bought a disposable BBQ and along with a few bottles of red had a great time. They even convinced me to whip up some burgers, they didn't have to lobby too hard!

We were staying in Canterbury after that, before going through the Channel Tunnel to France. Above is Canterbury cathedral as seen through one of it's streets and behind the main(?) gate. We had a terrific roast buffet near there, turkey, ham, beef... and all you can eat veg. :-)

Then it was onto France, we stopped the first night in Chartres. Nice little town - I've done this all before, France I mean, but about 20 years ago! I don't remember much. That night I had fish soup, wonderful. And tasted my dad's onion soup (we're in France so I won't call it French onion soup :-)). I had the roast duck with pomme frites. These guys know how to make frites. I'm not sure what I prefer more, the great British chip, or the French Fry (not the American version obviously). Oh, it has a cathedral too:

That second pic is stitched, that's why it looks a little funny aspect wise :-)

Lunch was my favourite time, we'd pull into a supermarket and pick up some salami or other meats, and a few tomatoes n' olives. Maybe a little cheese too. On the motorway we'd pull into a picnic site and break the baguette up and just lunch away. Simplicity is best :-)

We came into Toulouse then, we stayed on the outskirts and ate in the hotel for ease. I had what looked like (and tasted) like a blood sausage. It was OK, but coming from Lancashire it wasn't a patch on what I could get back home. Still the salad buffet was nice, mmm prawns.

Then it was on to Madrid, a nice little trip through and over the Pyrenees.

Once in Madrid we went out looking for somewhere to eat, luckily there was a nice Gallegan restaurant next to the hotel. We had a starter of pate (of some sort), Chanterelles in garlic, stuffed peppers and tomato bread/toast. Very very nice. And we finished of with steaks. It was a long hard journey just sitting in the back of the car being driven around. ;-)

Needless to say I felt a little heavy after the week of debauchery (I haven't mentioned the brandy, wine and whisky!), so I was a little uncertain when I saw the small passenger jet that was to take me home, luckily I made it back to tell my story.

Chicken... thing

2006-08-13T23:09:00.000+01:00

Bear in mind that what you see in these photos is a dish after I'd already partly tucked into. I was hungry I only remebered after a while :-)

Organic chicken legs dipped in a mixture of flour, paprika, cumin and cayenne (S&P too). I would have put in other spices, dried chilli for example, but I was between TV shows so I was rushing (hence the ripped parsley for the potatoes :-)). I dusted it off and roasted it for 40 mins.

The ickle potatoes I simply boiled in salted water and smothered them (after crushing) in butter and parsley.

Potato Gratin Dauphinoise

2006-08-09T22:45:00.000+01:00

I had lots of potatoes left over from the roast rib eye at the weekend. I like to kill as many birds with as few stones usually, so I decided to whack the remaining spuds into one big glorious dish. I also had some cream left unused from said steak bonanza; just in case I wanted a nice creamy sauce for my meat.
I decided on dolphin potatoes because it's rich, creamy and, as Nigella would say, soul food. My soul is perfect at the moment, but you never know when it might need a top up so I decided to practice... just in case.

Plus I have a new toy, food processor, and this dish involved lots of thin chopping. Perfick. After saving hours on the chopping of potatoes I made it all back on the washing up. Hey ho.

The red/purple bits you may be able to pick out are red onion slices. What you won't see is the garlic and large amount of black pepper (and salt). I'm not one for bland food.

I buttered the ceramic dish and pre-heated the oven to 180C. I packed in the potato slices, onion and garlic nice and tight.

In a saucepan I heated a mix of cream and milk until simmering point. There might have been more cream than milk... :-) This gets poured onto the potato mix slowly until it just reaches the upper layer. You want a few bits of potato sticking out to crisp up. (I think I had just enough to cover the mix too much, hence no (too) crunchy bits, but also no waste).

Then added some dolcelatte (birds/stones again) and butter blobs onto the top then slammed it in the oven. I was gonna leave it for about an hour... but checked it 10 mins before and it was done. Christmas come early!

Got an eye for a good piece of meat

2006-08-06T22:04:00.000+01:00

Had a long day yesterday, music festival, night on the dancefloor (and yes, Naz is cringeworthy while struting his stuff) and then I came home and sat through Utd's game against Ajax (I'd recorded while I was out). We won btw :-)

When I woke up this afternoon I took this beauty out of the fridge and let it warm up. It was about 3-4 inches thick I guess. To go with it I put a simple marinade together. I bashed some rosemary in a mortar and pestle (with salt) then added a little olive oil. I pan fried the Rib Eye joint quickly to get the cooking process going (it helps break the fat down [it doesn't "seal" the meat, that's a myth]). I covered the joint in dijon mustard, pepper and the rosemary mix and bunged it in the oven for a few hours. Served with roast taters and digest for a week!

King of food

2006-07-30T21:14:00.000+01:00

Whoa, it's been some time!

2006-07-25T19:15:00.000+01:00

It's been hot, and OK, not as hot as a few other places but I'm very sensitive to the heat. I resemble a paranoid vampire when the sun is about.

Ok, since my last post I became a year older. I took my parents and little sis out for a meal in Manchester; I took them to Piccolino's and we were all very impressed. I had the turbot with gnocchi, wonderful light dish and left lots of room to finish off my sister's lasagne :-D What? Bad for to swap plates? Is it really? (Mona you make these reviews look easier than they are :-))

My dad and I finished on a couple of malt whiskies, Lagavulin for those of you with interest.

They also got me a food processor. I've been meaning to get one for ages but they beat me to it (freeing me to buy something else :-))

So to christen it I thought I'd go Thai/Chinese on some free range chicken. I dumped in a load of fresh coriander, garlic, ginger, chilli, cayenne pepper, cumin, ground coriander, lime juice and S&P. There might have been other things, I was excited :-) I blended them while drizzling a little (olive) oil into the mixer. The mix was poured into a freezer/fridge bag and introduced to the chicken breast quite intimately. I left it over night to marinade [I also created one for that night without the curry spices].

Served on rice they were great. The mini sauce I had that night reminded me of a Peruvian (South American) sauce, the name escapes me... but it's green and spicey. My bro will know, I'll ask him at some point.

No pics, I'm lazy at the best of times, when it's hot I'm... well, you can imagine!

Vongolle a la Nazca with tiger prawns and scallops

2006-06-24T19:53:00.000+01:00

I cooked the vongolle in white wine, finely chopped onion, garlic and olive oil for a few minutes. They all opened up, it was going to be my day! ;-)

I emptied the vongolle from the saucepan but left the juices behind and reduced them.

Meanwhile, I pan fried the tiger prawns and scallops in butter and olive oil.

To the wine reduction I added fresh oregano, fresh parsley, lime juice and a double cream. And then added the shelled vongolle to warm through.

I arranged the seafood around the bowl and served the vongolle sauce on a mound of basmati.

No pics I'm afraid. You'll just have to imagine the large smile on my face too :-D

Cookies!!!

2006-06-18T21:12:00.000+01:00

Recipe is here. The only difference was that I used vanilla extract rather than expresso (I don't drink coffee so buying expresso was not an option really).

See food and eat it!

2006-06-17T16:05:00.000+01:00

I was in the mood for some seafood today. So I went for quick, easy and sublime.

In a little butter I pan fried the scallops and tiger prawns for a couple of minutes. Then lifted them out and placed them on the buttered toast. Then into the butter I added a little olive oil and the asparagus. Near the end I added a little balsamic vinegar.

Salt and pepper and consume!

Pork Stir fry (sans pictures)

2006-06-15T20:50:00.000+01:00

Super hot wok, veggie (or any high flash point) oil and preperation. That's all you need for a good stir fry... well, assuming you have ingredients of course.

Having everything julienne'd (er, sliced nice and thinnly [this was done after four pints of Guinness {not recommended to extend your life }]) before hand is always a bonus. Then you just fry them in order of cooking time.

Day 1: Pork strips, baby sweet corn, spring onions, orange pepper, bamboo shoot, water chestnuts, chilli, garlic, lime juice/peel, bundles of fresh coriander and soy sauce. Served with stir fried noodles.

Day 2: Pork strips, baby sweet corn, mushrooms, spring onions, chilli, garlic, ginger, lime juice/peel, bundles of fresh coriander and soy sauce. Served on naan bread (obviously!). It had to be quick, England were about to pulverize Trinidad & Tobago... well, kinda! ;-)

Get it all in

2006-06-11T23:16:00.000+01:00

I was going down to London on Friday to celebrate England's first game in our inevitable sucessful World Cup. So I needed to get rid of the perishables on Thursday.

After slicing the raw chicken, I put paprika and cayenne pepper on/into it and pan fried it. I added red peppers, red onions and mushrooms. And emptied them onto baby tomatoes. Onto that went fresh parsley and (torn) fried eggs.

I sliced the chicken and added that to the mix. The concoction was then forced into pitta bread and snaffled pretty quickly.

Pork belly a la curry

2006-06-06T23:26:00.000+01:00

Some regular viewers will remember I did a root vegetable soup not so long ago. Yesterday for those with memory problems. Today I had a pork belly joint to cook and left over soup to finish. What to do?

I rubbed Thai 7 Spice into the pork, with a little paprika and salt, and let it rest for about 20-30 minutes. Then into the oven (190c) for 70 mins.

I reheated the soup I had left, added tumeric, cumin, dried coriander and cayenne pepper. Let that cook out for about 30-40 mins and then added the juices from the pan of the resting pork and stirred.

I still have that other half for tomorrow. I think it'll be soup again tomorrow too, kinda over -bought on the veggie side!

Muscle surprise

2006-06-05T22:31:00.000+01:00

No pic today I'm afraid, tough game of football this afternoon so I couldn't manage the stairs again after upping them twice already :-)

As I was in a dire need for food and a beverage I started by opening a bottle of Spitfire. Mmm hopy goodness :-)

Then I emptied, into a saucepan, the leftover Cornish pasty mix from yesterday. Potatoes, swede, onion and carrot. Fried that in olive oil for a min or two, then in went salt and black pepper [I under-peppered the pasty yesterday :-( ], a dried chili (whole, but split down one side) and two cloves of garlic (whole). Then boiling water to cover and a little dried oregano because it was looking at me from the cupboard.

Into the serving bowl I ripped some flat leaf parsley, and chucked in a few plump mussels. I removed the chili, and crushed some of the soup contents to thicken it a little. Then poured it over the muscles. It was surprisingly edible, it went down nearly as gratifying as the beer :-)

Cornish pasty

2006-06-05T00:46:00.000+01:00

I've been weak recently. Ordering pizzas and buying easy food. Today I had some time, in between X-Files DVDs, so I whipped up a proper pasty.

The filling consisted of a mix of raw steak, potato, carrot, onion and swede. Seasoned with lots of salt and pepper. I laid a pile in the middle of the shortcrust pastry (store bought) and added a little butter on top. Then I folded it over and expertly crimped it, as you can no doubt see ;-)

The pastry was a little soft, you may be able to pic out a few patches. I cut a little hole in the top too, I didn't want any explosions!

40 mins at 220-230C and all was ready. The little one to the side was part of the leftovers...

Stuff your pockets!

2006-05-31T22:37:00.000+01:00

Pitta pockets that is.

I had a grand idea to create something tasty for all to see. However, after waiting for the bus for an hour I was more interested in getting fed, and quickly!

So into the frying pan went the onions and cubes of pancetta. Into the next pan went red peppers and button mushrooms. I split them so they'd fry and not steam/boil themselves in an over-crowded pan. I told you I was hungry, two pans makes it quicker :-)

Once the onions and pancetta had a chance to brown I added the garlic and dried chilli. I wanted the flavour of chilli, not the bite... so no seeds.

Then in I tipped the onions/pancetta into the peppers/mushrooms so I could use the frying pan to fry the omellette quickly. The omellette was fried on a high heat, stirring so all the egg could set, while still molten I grated some Parmesan onto it. Once the omelette had set, I moved it to the saucepan with the other ingredients and broke, and stirred it in.

Serve in pitta pockets :-)

Oh, and since I was hungry the camera never had a chance!

Thai-ish pork and lemongrass kebabs

2006-05-27T18:10:00.000+01:00

...well OK then, burgers :-)

I emptied tons of chopped coriander and parsley into a bowl of pork mince, then added a couple of cloves of garlic, and some bruised and finely chopped lemongrass. Seasoned with sea salt and pepper of course.

I mixed the mixture roughtly and let it sit on the counter for a few hours. I came back and started to scrunch it between my fingers. i had an egg on standby incase it was to herby to stick together. luckily it was fine by itself (I can now practice cutting holes in my bread and pan frying it with an egg in the middle ;-) ). I shaped the burgers (after wetting my hands [stops it sticking]) and left them in the fridge to firm up.

I bought the salad as a packet (I chose being away for rest of the weekend as an excuse to throw my money away!). I got lamb's lettuce, another type of lettuce and shredded beetroot. To that I added a mixture of balsamic vinegar and lemon flavoured EV olive oil. With a little tomato and seasoning it was immaculate :-)

Nazca does not only like his food!

2006-05-25T22:35:00.000+01:00

I shopped online again, got a delivery tonight in fact. 90% of the bill was for booze :-)

I got a few ales I'd never had before (and a few I had), a few bottles of wine I've never had (Jacob's creek, grenache shiraz) and a few cans of Guinness [for the onion gravy ;-)].

And these beauties:

All this booze is for my consumption. We have 6 weeks of football coming up, come on England!

Actually, the whiskies will be delightfully supped over the next few months. Nothing added but just a few drops of water :-)

Pasta: Bolognese

2006-05-22T23:28:00.000+01:00

Ingredients:
Bacon sliced (fried and removed)
Onions diced
Mushrooms hallucinogenically enhanced
Pimienta stuffed olives roughly chopped (added after the onions/mushrooms had cooked out a bit)
(Add the bacon back in)
White wine vinegar and a little water (de-glasing)
Sun-dried cherry tomato paste
Organic ketchup (it was at this point I looked to my trusty cupboard for a can of tomatoes or passatta to find an empty cupboard, D'oh!)
Dried herbs: oregano and basil
Freshly ground pepper (no salt at this stage, olives and bacon are pretty salty)

The pasta was added to the sauce, with a little extra virgin olive oil and more pepper. Parmegiano reggianno to top :-)

On the pic front, it was late, there was little to no natural light. I picked the best froma few different setting. hope you can see :-)

Brownies!! And Camera!!!

2006-05-17T18:49:00.000+01:00

I made some more brownies anticipating the arrival of my camera :-)

I adjusted the recipe to make then even more moist. I used 100g of 70% cocoa, not 50g and 50g of cocoa like last time. I should have added a little more flour to the mix but I decided to use cocoa instead :-) I still added chucks of choc....

Brownies!

2006-05-14T19:51:00.000+01:00

Catesa showed me the recipe she uses, and Cindy has a great recipe (or three!) too.

I changed the recipezaar one slightly, I used a mixture of cocoa and chocolate. I just used chocolate chucks as my added feature, along with gorgeous vanilla pod insides.

They were yum, I should have a camera soon, but probably not in time to catch the last of the batch! ;-)

Scones (at last)

2006-05-02T00:08:00.000+01:00

Dry: Self-raising flour, vanilla infused caster sugar, cocoa powder. I rubbed butter in, then added an egg and a little milk. Then in went the whisky soaked raisins :-)

baked in a hot oven for 20 mins and viola, yummy stuff :-)

Duck! Phew, that was close!

2006-04-30T23:52:00.000+01:00

It's bank holiday weekend here int he UK, which means I usually get some cooking done :-)

Saturday I made pork burgers. Dried chilli, garlic, onions, parsley and coriander mixed with pork mince. Served on a bap with a nice spinach, lambs lettuce, black olive, onion and cherry tomato salad. It was yummy!

Today I had duckling breast, pan fried with baby new potatoes. (lunch)

And this evening I had a rosemary marinaded sirloin steak with baby new potato wedges (fried in duck fat), with a mushroom, onion and parsley cream sauce. With a side salad for health reasons :-D

Scones tomorrow! [I had to buy a cutter :-)]

Cheese on toast... ;-)

2006-04-25T23:13:00.000+01:00

Feeling lazy again today... I mean, feeling normal today. I decided to do a no fuss/quick dinner. I bought a mini loaf and sliced it lengthways. I lightly toasted both sides (apart from the one with the crust on). Spreaded a little ground garlic/olive oil paste (alioli?) over the bottom and topped it with both cheddar and mozzarella. A few slices of chorizo on top and voila :-)

Easter fare

2006-04-18T19:40:00.000+01:00

My brother has been visiting recently, so we've been mixing home cookery with take aways and restuarants/pubs. After a week of this even I'm thinking about detoxing!!

The home cooked food ranged from my oft tried quick recipies like the potato/chorizo bake and Thai green curry.

The food in the restaurants ranged from the disapointing under-cooked pizza (even pizza hut would have been embarassed) to the deliciously rustic cheese/pate board.

This was all accompanied with lots and lots of ale/bitter or guinness. Things are only now starting to get back into focus... football this evening was a chastening experience! :-)

Plus, I also ate a choccy egg given to my by my boss at work, it came with a darth vader pen holder which was cool. The choccy was nice, if not a little on the dark side... :-D

Meme smeme

2006-04-08T23:48:00.000+01:00

I was tagged by the delightful Catesa *grumble*

1. Please list three recipes you have recently bookmarked from foodblogs to try:
Er... while I haven't bookmarked anything, I've certainly taken what I've read of many websites to shape what I try out. I don't usually gp for deserts but Cindy makes me at least want to try. I also check out Mona to see what's happening, in a food sense, aross the pond. Then there's Mae and Ivonne who I visit regularly. I also read most of the posts these ladies get, and from there hop the posters' sites if a name/comment piques my interest.

And of course I'm chatting through the day with Catesa about food, I'm after all eating for two people... her and me! :-)

2. A foodblog in your vicinity: I suppose MG is the close to me that I read.

3. A foodblog (or more) located far from you: see above, none are exactly around the corner!

4. A foodblog (or several) you have discovered recently (where did you find it?):
FoodCrazee after he laughed at my misfortune at being tagged by Catesa!

Herb butter chicken and lemon syrup and ganache sponge cake

2006-04-02T16:34:00.000+01:00

Chicken

I got a nice (expensive) organic chicken and made a nice herb butter from fresh basil, parsley and lemon zest to stuff under the skin (you use your fingers to open up a space at the neck end of the bird between the breast and the skin). Olive oil was rubbed into the skin with salt and pepper. Half and oinion went into the cavity and the rest was used as a bed for the chicken as it roasted for 2 hours (taking off the foil for the last 25 mins).

Once the chicken was done I removed it from the roasting tray and skimmed off some of the fat left in the tray, then put it back on the burner with a little chicken bouillon. I scraped the bottom of the tray with the spactula to tray and get all the nice crusty bits into the fray. Then I passed it through a sieve and returned it to the heat.

Cake

I still had some 72% cocoa chocolate left over from cheesecake weekend. So I decided to make a ganache, so to go with it I bought a cherry sponge loaf from the supermarket. I sliced the loaf in half, length ways, and layed it bottom to bottom. I used the juice from a lemon and a little water with golden caster suger (infused with the leftover vanilla pod [again see cheesecake recipe] to create the syrup. That was poured over the sponge.
In a bowl I placed the chocolate and a little cream to warm over boiling water (the water didn't touch the bowl). When they'd melted I stirred in a little butter and a little cocoa powder. I poured this over the cake a let a little drizzle over the side... very artistic I thought. It's at this point that I remembered I hadn't put any Courvoisier in either the syrup, ganache or on the sponge. D'oh!

Still it tasted OK ;-)

Pizza and cheesecake (II)

2006-03-28T00:00:00.000+01:00

More or less the same as yesterday, though with more experience :-) I still had half the dough I made yesterday to use. (I shared the second pizza with house-mates).

Today I used mozzarella and a creamy goats cheese. Yesterday's goats cheese was subtley diffrent, it was much better melted, but then it had no real texture.

The combination of the cheeses today was much better than yesterday, coupled with the fact I was using the pizza stone for the second time, rather than the first, the pizza was much better. (It had 3 types of italian salami/ham on and tomatoes [with fresh basil]).

The cheesecake, after time to harded and mature in the fridge for the day, was sublime. Best yet.
I'm gonna take some in for the people at work (otherwise I'll finish it).

Sunday cookathon - pizza and cheesecake

2006-03-27T01:02:00.000+01:00

As regular readers will know I just came back from Rome, where I'd been snacking on pizzas daily :-) I was inspired to make my own today, after purchasing a pizza stone yesterday (Saturday).

Using the Italian type "OO" flour I made up the dough using salt, yeast, milk, olive oil, water and a sprinkling of oregano.

When I opened the box with my new toy the instructions were missing, so after a consult with google I was pretty sure what needed to be done. I warmed the oven and stone together from cold, and after the mixing and proving of the dough were over I made my first attempt.

The first try was just extra virgin olive oil and sea salt.

Second was milanese salami, a good local goats cheese, tomato and onion/garlic passata for the base. Topped with basil.

The first came out gorgeous. The second was pretty edible too ;-)

I think next time I'll allow the stone to warm up again before I put the next pizza on. Plus, I'll need to come up with a better method of putting the pizza on the stone... it wasn't the most elegant of operations :-)

Cheesecake. A variation on my previous recipes, though still New York style. Here's the full recipe. My previous attempts did not use cocoa powder and chocolate (72%) in the base.

The soured cream was new (I'll try the mascarpone next time, I not sure how different they are). The recipe called for vanilla essence, I though it would be nice to use the real (expensive) version. The little black dots effect is cool :-)

The cooking strategy was different too, a high initial heat and a lower heat to follow to set it, along with leaving it in the oven without the heat on was supposed to prevent it from cracking the top. It didn't work, but at least it now has character... and bags full of taste!

Steak and... bread?

2006-03-25T00:04:00.000Z

If you're a regular reader (all two of you?!) you'll know I like my farmer's market. I bought a sirloin from one of the farmers today, hung for 20 days on the bone. The marbling was great. Fat is what makes the world turn round! Where do you think the taste comes from?!

With that I had English mustard (the man's mustard :-D) on the side with sun-dried tomato batard (french bread) diced and friend in olive oil with fried red onions.

Delish again. I amze myself sometimes ;-)

Now for the truffle oil

2006-03-24T23:59:00.000Z

The next night I mixed sun dried tomatoes, (dried) porcini mushrooms, red onions with olive oil, the juice from the soaked mushrooms and garlic to form the sauce for the (thin and thick [in the other dimension]) fettucini. Topped with parmeggiano reggiano and it's fit for a Mark... sorry king.

:-D

Porcini with fettucini

2006-03-22T18:24:00.000Z

Does what is says on the box. On my recent trip to Rome I had this wonderful pasta dish, so I decided to mimic it back home. I soaked my dried porcini (then squeezed them dry) and lightly warmed them through in olive oil with garlic. The dried pasta I brought back with me was nearly see-through, it cooked in no time at all. Then it was all about combining them. It was delish. I thought about adding truffle oil (again I picked it up in Rome), but thought I'd leave that to tonight :-)

Squid rings

2006-03-05T02:49:00.000Z

Yummy and quick, my kinda dish.

I sliced the squid into rings and tenticle bits, covered them in flour, paprika and salt 'n pepper. Fried quickly in olive oil, gorgeous. Chopitos anyone?

Yummy salad

2006-03-02T23:58:00.000Z

Celery, baby plum tomatoes, goats cheese, boiled egg, sun dried tomatoes, celery leaves (the yellow ones from the heart). Chopped, and mixed with paprika and olive oil.

French stick and red wine, wolfblass yellow.

Yummy

Irish Stew... kinda

2006-02-21T19:09:00.000Z

I'm sure I've posted this one already...

I bought some lovely belly pork strips (about 3cm thick) from the farmer's market a few weeks ago and decided to go down the Irish Stew route after seeing it being done on TV. It brough back memories of my Nan's place in Ireland :-)

I created a stock using onions, celery, leek, carrot, pork and lemon thyme (and seasoning). After an hour of that I took out most of the large pieces of veg and put in fresh pieces (the old ones have given all they had to the stock), along with potatoes. I removed the pork and cut it into chunks and replaced it into the pot.

One the potatoes were cooked I served it into a deep bowl, added fresh parsley, and mushed up the potatoes a little to thicken the stew.

I was happy, the Irish Stew police may not be :-)

Fish and Chi.. er sun-dried tomato bread

2006-02-06T21:06:00.000Z

I got a nice bit of plaice the other day, and a loaf of sun-dried tomato bread. my enormous brain must have been working overtime to come up with this recipe.

Plaice (filleted and trimmed) with salt/pepper, butter, touch of parsley, lemon juice and a hint of garlic. Stick it under the grill.

Bread, sliced, toasted and rubbed with garlic and drizzled in EV olive oil.

Chestnut mushrooms, sliced and fried in olive oil, later added spring onions (US: scallions?) and a more garlic. Hmm that'll help keep the girls away! Pan fried.

Ok, time to "plate the dish" *cringe*: bread, mushrooms/onions, fish.

Went down well :-)

Prawn wonton

2006-01-29T22:42:00.000Z

You may remember a few blogs back that I mentioned I had a hankerin' for some dim sum. The day after I bought some wonton pastry squares.

My filling consisted of raw tiger prawns, garlic and ginger. A few bread crumbs and a little coriander were added for texture and flavour respectively. Egg white was added to bind it all together and I left it for 30 minutes to rest before filling the little squares.

They came out like little X's on top, with each corner brought together at the top, with as much air pushed out as possible.

I boiled a couple and deep fried the rest. I liked the fried ones more, but you already knew that!

4x8, ta for this Mona :-)

2006-01-28T22:13:00.000Z

Four Jobs I've Had in My Life:
Civil Servant
Bank clerk (temp)
Gas supplier clerk (temp)
That's all, professional student before then!

Four Movies I Could (and I do) Watch Over and Over
Shawshank Redemption
Star Wars (All 6 :-P)
Matrix (No. 1)
Dumb & Dumber (At least they're the 4 that I'd watch again now, it changes)

Four Places I've Lived
Peru
Manchester, UK
Quorndon, Leics, UK
And various other places in the UK

Four TV Shows I Love to Watch (at the moment)
Star Trek (all series)
Battlestar Galactica (both series)
Smallville
Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis

Four Places I Have Been on Vacation
Ireland (kinda second home)
Cuba
France
Valencia, Spain

Four Websites I Visit Daily
BBC
Guardian
Catesa's food blog
Mona's apple food(ish) blog

Four of My Favorite Foods
Chips (UK style)
Pasta (I use a type of pasta 5 times a week usually, and make up some kind of sauce to go with it)
Steak
Sausages (advantage of living abroad, you get to appreciate the small things in life/home)

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now
If I wanted it I'd be there. If I'm not there, I don't want it enough, so why worry about it?

Hmm, so I'm going nowhere, while eating fatty stuff with no view to using my various degrees at any point. That puts things in perspective! Anyone fancy a drink?

Dim sum and Chorizo surprise!

2006-01-18T23:22:00.000Z

I went to celebrate a colleagues' Bday in China Town yesterday, I got a hankerin' for some dim sum, so I went back today (about 1 min from my work) and bought some frozen prawn dumpling. 2 mins in my steamer (bamboo wok thing) and hey presto, a starter!

I nicked Chorizo recipe from Nigella Lawson (yummy). It's fantastically intricate and messy involving millions of bowls and pans etc... OK OK you need an oven dish. That's it!

I chunky cut some new potatoes and added them to the dish with chunks of chorizo. You could stop their but I added crushed garlic, a couple of mushrooms I had left over and a small onions (sliced). Salt, pepper and add boiling water to cover. Violá, done!

200C in the oven, 1hr give or take.

Pork loin with thyme and sage

2006-01-15T23:45:00.000Z

Well... there's not much to that really. As you know I bought some thyme the other day, so I mixed it with some dried oregano I had and chopped it nice and fine and sprinkled it over the pork loin along with salt and pepper.

I put it in the oven until it had cooked (50 mins?), anyway the juices ran clear. I think the Thai 7 spice that was used in the roasting tin the night before (I lent it to a housemate for his (bland) chicken), kinda rubbed off on the pork while it cooked. Mental note, don't drop Thai 7 spice on your t-shirt, you'll never get it out!

Served with boiled baby new potatoes, onions/garlic/mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.

Poussin

2006-01-14T18:30:00.000Z

Or baby chicken to you and me :-)

For this little baby I created a marinade of lemon zest, thyme and olive oil. I pounding the lemon and thyme in a pestle and mortar then added a little olive oil, when it came to cook the chicken I squeezed the lemon/thyme mixture over it, then seasoned in and covered the whole thing in parma ham. I baked it in the oven for 50 mins, while occasionally basting it, I also took off the parma ham when it was crispy and allowed the poussin to brown for the last 20 minutes.

I served it with boiled new potatoes and a buttery, thymey, lemony, olive oily and white whiney sauce. :-)

Chicken Fajitas (with yogurt and lemongrass)

2006-01-10T00:06:00.000Z

I started by butterflying a chicken breast and marinading it in a mixture of fresh coriander, chilli, bruised and finely chopped lemongrass, seasoning and yogurt. I left it for a 30 mins (I was rushing to get out to a movie). I warmed up my griddle pan and scrapped most of the marinade off the chicken and grilled it. It came of lovely and juicy.

In a seperate pan I fried half and onions and warmed through some cherry tomatoes. Then added the rest of the marinade to cook through.

Put into tortillas and it was a fine messy dinner :-D

Another Tomato Sauce

2006-01-07T11:31:00.000Z

Finally got organised yesterday and cooked something for myself rather than cheating and buying in!

I fried off little cudes of pancetta in a saucepan in their own fat, then added finely chopped onions to soak up the fat. I added a little olive oil soon after, then added a couple of cloves are chopped garlic and stirred. Once that had had time to soften I added a bit of paprika and let that cook out before adding some red wine, not much, say half a glass, then in went a can of plum tomatoes and it's juice (I mashed the tomatoes up a bit in the pan).
Dried oregano and basil were added along with salt and pepper and I let that cook for about 20 mins. Then in went a few flageolet beans to warm through while the pasta was cooking. Bit of parmesan and you have the perfect meal to get you back on track after all the excess over the last few weeks! :-)

Duck!

2005-12-25T22:22:00.000Z

Happy Xmas all who read this... all 3 of you :-)

I roasted a nice free range organic duck this year. Salt and peppered the skin, with garlic, salt and a wedge of onion in the cavity. All nice and simple as always (I used as a guide Jamie Oliver's book from his Italy programme {I didn't see the programme] but the recipes rock).

I kept the fat from the duck to roast my potatoes in, they came out really crisp and gorgeous (after being par boiled) :-D

The brussel sprouts I par boiled, chilled in ice-water then fried in butter to warm them up.

I also made my own "stuffing", bread crumbs, onion and sage. Left to marinade in themselves for a while then panfried in butter (I could have put some garlic in, I can't remember!).

All in all a good feast... now for the leftover recipes!

Variety

2005-12-22T23:27:00.000Z

I've been quite lazy in blogging, haven't done much "new" stuff lately, just perfecting my classics :-) Good old steaks with cream sauces, bruschetta with different toppings (traditional and blasphemous I imagine) and .

Xmas is only a few days away, and it's the first time I get to go solo, just cooking for myself so I can cook it myself. I saw Rick Stein's (probably my fav chef) Food Heroes Christmas special the other day and now have an interest in duck or goose. I've had goose before at my Nans place in Ireland, but never cooked it before myself. Hopefully it will make my roast spuds just that little bit more scrumptious!

However, it's now Thursday and Xmas day is Saturday so I'm gonna have to gamble on what I can find in the shops and markets. I'll adapt, if it all goes wrong there's always the local pizza place!

Bangers and mash

2005-12-13T23:11:00.000Z

Can't beat the classics!

I used one venison and red wine sausage (farmers' market) and two Toulouse sausages from the supermarket. Fried them up nice and hot to begin with, then added onions to the frying pan and turned the heat down. Once the sausages had cooked I removed them from the pan, added chopped garlic and cooked the onions off until caramelised. Then in went some Wolf Blass red wine and a little beef stock. Onion gravy, that easy :-)

At the same time I boiled up some potatoes (removing half when par boiled for tomorrow's excursions), the rest I cooked until my fork would pierce them quite easily. I drained them, and into the same saucepan went butter and milk to warm up. Once they were warmed I put more garlic in and fresh parsley. Stirred it all up, let the garlic poach a little and then added the potatoes back into the pan for mashing.

Bit of seasoning and there you have it.

Turkey pie (well it is Christmas)

2005-12-12T00:19:00.000Z

Went a bit festive today, I decided to make a pie; and like all my recipes there was no real plan, it just came together. While wandering around my local supermarket I picked up smoked rindless bacon, chestnut mushrooms, double cream and pastry (shortcrust). I buy pastry, I can't be bothered making it just yet, I find the fillings more more interesting when making pies.

So, in butter and a little olive oil, fry, separately, the bacon, mushrooms, onions & garlic and turkey pieces (breast). Then once they'd all browned off, I added a little white wine vinegar to deglaze the pan, then added it all back into the pan pan and poured in the cream. Once I gave that a little stir, I added heaps of nice fresh flat-leaf parsley.

Blind back the pastry base leaving the excess overflowing the edge, this is so you can cut it off after it comes out of the oven (it'll shrink when cooking). Then in went the filling, more pastry on top (I'd filled in the cracks in the base with bits of uncooked pastry) and sealed it with a little beaten egg.

Once it had browned off (the leaves I cut out and placed on top were browning beautifully) it was ready to eat.

Another yummy weekend!

Pizza + Calzone

2005-12-06T18:44:00.000Z

Good old Giorgio Locatelli. I used his recipe to make the base, using type "OO" flour of course.
I made enough for 4 pizzas. I used sun dried tomato paste, garlic and ketchup for the sauce.

So I got a few mates round on the Saturday to watch the footy (come on you reds!), have a few beers and a few slices of pizza.

The first I split into two sides, in order to cater for the vegies (I asked if it was ok to put meat on my side, they said yes) I heaped on the shelled tiger prawns, anchovy stuffed green olives, shredded belly of pork, (and for the vegies) fresh pineapple, tomato, chestnut mushrooms, mozzarella and Gruyere. Once it came out of the oven I tore up some fresh basil and sprinkled it on top. Probably a bit too much topping really, pretty messy :-)

The second was all meat, same toppings.

On Sunday, with half the dough still left I thought about making a calzone. I used the same sauce for the base, but this time I fried off the mushrooms and a few sliced onions before it went into the calzone. When I'd added the rest of the filling, I folded the edges into the middle and turned it upside down. I sliced a few holes into the top then sprinkled a little Gruyere on top and slapped it the oven on full whack til it had crisped up. It was sweet :-)

Scraps from here are there

2005-11-29T00:18:00.000Z

Ok, didn't do much shopping lately. And after the Chinese buffet at the weekend I didn't feel like food this morning (a first). All I had were some red onions. Luckily, my brother was getting rid of his leftovers, bacon and mushroom, since he's leaving for South America tomorrow (I see the world in how it affects my dinner). In exchange I cooked gluten free and shared it.

I fried the bacon in olive oil, then added the sliced onions. Then in went chunky cut mushrooms and chunky cut anchovy stuffed green olives (I always have a few tins in reserve). Then came the two cloves of sliced garlic. Then some dried herbs, oregano, sage and basil, with paprika and white wine vinegar. Then I added the basmati rice (I was gonna cook pasta, penne, seperately... but changed the recipe last minute to accomodate the bro), stirred it into the ingredients already in the saucepan to coat the grains in the oils and flavours. Then I added passata and chicken buillon(sp?) and left to simmer with the lid on for 20 mins.

Not bad for mainly cupboard items :-)