Easter Treats and Eggscitement

Has spring really sprung?  From where I am sat, it hasn't.  Admittedly, it is warmer than it was, but looking out of my kitchen window I see nothing but grey skies and rain.  Nevertheless, Easter is nearly here and that means eggs, flowers, lambs and rabbits are all the rage at the moment.  You can barely get into my local supermarket for all the Easter eggs on display.  To mitigate this though, they do have huge boxes of daffodils which are always good for adding a bit of sunshine to your life.  Frankly I need these at the moment as our offer on the house we loved was rejected (despite being the higher offer?!?!), so we are back to square one and pestering the poor estate agents like mad.

Easter themed baking also seems the thing to do at this time of year, and cupcakes seem to be the very thing for now as far as I am concerned.  Yes, yes, I know they are not the most traditional of spring bakes, but the ways in which you can decorate them is boundless.  (And there are some very good looking cupcakes out there on the www)

I don't know if you also made these at school, but in my childhood it was almost obligatory to make chocolate covered shredded wheat nests and fill them with mini-eggs.  I did this year after year after year.  So prominent it remains in my mind, that I decorated my cupcakes in a similar fashion - I couldn't possibly change the habit of a lifetime, could I?!

Chocolate Cupcakes with Easter Nests (makes 12)

120g caster sugar

120g softened butter

3 eggs

180g flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

75g melted dark chocolate

3 tbsp milk

To decorate

Dessicated Coconut

Mini eggs

Melted Chocolate

1) Preheat the oven to 180C and put 12 cases into a cupcake tin

2) Whisk together the butter and sugar until creamed

3) Add the eggs, flour, baking powder, and chocolate and whisk.  Add enough milk to make sure the mixtue is not too stiff

4) Divide the mix between the 12 cases, and put into the oven for 10-12 minutes until risen and a skewer comes out clean.

5) Whilst the cakes are cooling, toast the coconut in a dry frying pan.  It should start to smell nutty and will turn a toasty brown colour.  Tip into a bowl and cool.

6) Working one at a time, cover each cake in a little melted chocolate, and then sprinkle the toasted coconut round the edges.  Then perch 3 mini-eggs on top of each cake.

Et voila!  Nest-like cupcakes!  These are not at all fussy and I am sure kids will find them easy to manage.  In my humble opinion, they are better than shredded wheat nests, but alas, there's no wholegrain in these!

Waiting and Cooking in the Meantime

Mr B and I are still waiting to hear about the house we put an offer in on.  The tension is killing me!  I can't get my head around the fact it would take someone four days to decide whether your offer is acceptable or not... Instead of my normal thoughts revolving around food, my head is full of house house house.  Nevertheless, it was posh tea time last night, and I have to confess I pulled off a cracking three courses, which rarely seems to happen as I am so critical of what I cook.  The trouble with trying to blog about posh teas is that I am trying to get something to the table, so I can never quite get the photos done properly.  Plus I have normally had enough wine to make me sloppy at photographing.

Anyway we had: Miniature spinach and ricotta cannelloni

Roasted Rump of Lamb with Shallot Puree and (a variation of last week's) Bean Salad

Baked Chocolate Mousse with Caramelised Bananas and a warm chocolate sauce.

If I tried to write all of these recipes, you and I both would get total recipe fatigue, so I will stick with dessert for now!  (By the way, I am getting a recipe backlog at the moment, I can't blog fast enough)

Baked Chocolate Mousse with Caramelised Bananas and a Warm Chocolate Sauce (serves 4)
The ingredients for this are not complicated, but you will need some small ramekins or dariole moulds to cook the mousses in.  Alternatively, you could treble the quantities and make enough for a 20cm cake tin and make a whole cake of baked mousse...mmm.

50g butter (plus a bit more for greasing your tins)
100g good quality dark chocolate
2 eggs, separated
20g caster sugar
2 bananas
Icing sugar

For the Sauce
80g dark chocolate
knob of butter
dash of double cream

1) Preheat the oven to 180C and grease 4 dariole moulds or ramekins.
2) Melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of simmering water
3) Meanwhile, mix the yolks and 10g sugar together.
4) In a clean bowl, whisk the egg whites into stiff peaks and then add the remaining sugar and whisk until the whites are glossy.
5) When the chocolate and butter is completely melted, remove from the heat and add the egg yolks and sugar.
6) Slowly fold in the meringue.  To do this, I always add one smallish tablespoon full first to get the mix going, then I add the rest in two or three batches.  Make sure the egg whites are fully combined, but don't overfold or else you will lose all the air.
7) Divide the mousse between the four moulds and place in the oven for around 10-15 minutes.  Keep an eye on them.  They will puff up nicely almost like souffles, and when they are cooked they will be firm to the touch. 

8) Just before you are about to serve, cut the banana into long slices. Place on a baking tray, dust liberally with icing sugar and using a blowtorch caramelise them until brown and bubbling. I think you could also do this under a hot grill, but the bananas may go a bit mushy with the heat...

9) For the chocolate sauce, melt the chocolate and then add the butter and cream. Stir well.
10) Remove the mousses from their moulds and plate up with the banana, and drizzle with the chocolate sauce. Enjoy!

This mousse is very rich and "grown up". It doesn't have oodles of sugar in it, so it's very intense, but offset with the sweet bananas. We loved it and Mr B has said I can definitely make it again!

In the meantime, I will keep on waiting to hear about the house....

An Alternative Use for Beer

Today I received a box of treasures from an online cookware store (http://www.cakescookiesandcraftshop.co.uk/ for those of you in the UK).  I went online to buy some Easter Egg moulds (results coming next week!) but faced with a whole universe of cookware it was impossible for me simply to buy a couple of things!  I came away with various chocolate moulds, new dariole moulds, tartlet tins, a new cooling rack, decorative cellophane bags, and and and... anyway, this was a great start to my day (small things, eh?!)

Another thing which cheered me was using my new traditional Mason Cash mixing bowl which was on our wedding list and John Lewis have only just deigned to deliver.  Don't get me wong, John Lewis are fab, but they were a bit slow on the missing things off our list (we got married in December, and now it's March?!) 

Ah, a big traditional mixing bowl.  It's first outing was to make honey beer bread as per gimmesomeoven's recipe.  I ate the first slice hot out of the oven and though it burnt my mouth I was that keen, it is awesome!  I have to confess, once I found this, I tried to find a British recipe to save me having to convert cups and fluid ounces, but I couldn't find one.  And this bread is also something I have never come across in the UK - peeps, I can only recommend it!!!

My rough conversions are based on a UK sized bottle of beer which isn't as large as a US one.

100g plain white bread flour
130g brown bread flour
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp honey
1 beer (275ml)
20g melted butter

It's a super easy recipe and doesn't need any time to rise.  Preheat the oven to 170C.
Mix together the dry ingredients.
Melt the honey in the microwave until it's really runny.  Stir the honey and beer into the dry ingredients (I mixed some beer with the honey first to make it more liquid)
Be careful not to over mix- this is a bit like a muffin mixture.
Transfer to a loaf tin and the drizzle with the melted butter
Cook for around 50 mins to 1 hr when a skewer comes out clean.

It's quite a sweet bread this, and very cakey and solid.  Mr B wanted to call it cead or bake (do you see what he did there?!)  It works fantastically with cheese and cold meats and Mr B and I scoffed nearly the whole thing in one go.  Greedy us!

A Cheating Cook

I am on tenterhooks as I write this, as Mr B and I are in the middle of negotiating to buy a house.  I'm blogging so I don't have to think about it too much and to prevent me from pacing the floor... Just imagine, soon I might have a shiny new kitchen to play in!  Oooooh! And it also means I can unpack all the fabulus kitchen things we were given by our lovely wedding guests as we don't have enough space in our current kitchen.  Added to that excitement is redecorating, picking furniture, discovering a new part of London.  Anyway, before I get carried away - back to food...

As the title of this post suggests, today's recipe includes a few cheats, and is probably not the most authentic Thai curry you'll ever eat, but by gum, it's tasty and hits all the right buttons when you need a bit of spice.

Red Prawn Thai Curry (serves 2)

200g cooked, peeled prawns

50g creamed coconut

1 heaped teaspoon of red Thai curry paste (or more if you fancy a bit more of a kick)

1 shallot, finely sliced

1 inch ginger, finely chopped or grated

1 red pepper

3/4 pint milk

1/4 pint water

Rice or noodles to serve

1) Add the creamed coconut to a pan on a medium heat and stir until melted and turning brown, then add the curry paste and stir for another couple of minutes until fragrant.

2) Add the ginger and shallots, and stir fry for a minute or so.  Then add the peppers.

3) After 3 minutes add the milk and water and leave to simmer softly for around 10 minutes.

4) Meanwhile, cook your rice or noodles according to the instructions

5) At the last minute, throw the prawns into the curry sauce.  You only need to heat them through - don't re-cook them or they will go horrible and rubbery.  You could always use fresh prawns, but this was a fast throw together meal for me and I didn't have them.

Serve with rice or noodles and eat whilst piping hot!

On The Origin of Posh Teas

Friday has become "posh tea" night in our house.  I grew up with the idea of posh teas because on a Saturday the strict rule of the whole family eating together was broken when my parents would give my sister and I an early dinner and shunt us off to watch typical Saturday night TV like Casualty and the Lottery whilst they cooked something special, got the nice plates and cutlery out and enjoyed a glass of wine or five.  When we were older my sister and I joined in this magical "posh tea" and the name has stuck with both of us.  Mr B was introduced to the concept almost as soon as I met him and because I don't work on Fridays I can spend the whole day planning and shopping for a nice meal! 

This week was a relatively simple affair of salmon en croute.  Simple perhaps, but effective on a plate, and the wrap of puff pastry is a flakey delight.  And to lighten the meal, I served it with a warm bean salad which also adds a fantastic splash of green on the plate.

Individual salmon, goats cheese and dill en croutes with a warm bean salad (serves 2)

The name of the en croute pretty much gives away the ingredients you will need: 

Two salmon fillets

75g soft goats cheese

handful of fresh dill

Half a block of puff pastry - I think this is around 200g

1 beaten egg

salt and pepper

                                               

1) In a small bowl mix together the goats cheese, dill and a bit of salt and pepper until combined.

2) Slice the salmon fillets in half and spread half the goats cheese on one half of each fillet.  Replace the top parts of the fillets.

3) Roll out the puff pastry (remember, it will probably need to sit at room temperature for 20 minutes before you do this).  It needs to be relatively thin or else you won't have enough to go round your salmon and it will be thick and stodgy when cooked.  Place a salmon fillet on the pastry and cut aound it, leaving an extra half inch of pastry all the way round.   You then need to roll out a piece of pastry for the top which is large enough to completely cover the salmon. 

4) Take your beaten egg and brush it round the edges of the bottom piece of pastry, then place the top piece of pastry over the salmon and press the edges onto the bottom pastry using a fork.  Slash the top with a sharp knife but be careul not to go all the way through the pastry.  Repeat with the second piece of salmon. You can leave these covered in the fridge for up to a day or rest them in the fridge whilst the oven is heating up to 180C. 

5) Before you put the en croutes in the oven, brush the tops with some of the remaining egg, so they turn a lovely golden colour when cooked.  Cook for 25 minutes until the pastry is puffed and golden.

The Warm Salad (serves 2)

100g mangetout (you could also use green beans or sugar snap peas)

100g broad beans (I used frozen ones)

6 spring onions, finely sliced

glug of olive oil

1) Bring a pan of salted water to the boil.

2) Add the frozen broad beans and cook for 3 minutes

3) Add the mangetout and cook for a further 2 minutes

4) Drain the beans and then return them to the pan with the olive oil and spring onion.  Cook on a slightly lower heat for a minute or so until the oil and spring onions are warm. You could also add some lemon juice at this point if you wished.

Serve the salmon and salad on warmed plates and enjoy your "posh (but simple) tea".  We had ours with tulips on the table and a bottle of cava.  Perfect :-)

Simple Soup for Supper

There is something about making soup which I find fantastically relaxing.  I don't know if it's all the dicing and then bubbling, or just the sheer satisfaction of making something so yummy in such a simple way.  I can't remember the last time I bought soup, and since meeting me, Mr B has had to put up with a great deal of soup eating on a cold Saturday lunchtime.  It warms the very cockles of your heart! :-)

The first soup I ever learnt to make (learnt?  Is this really the right word?!) was carrot and coriander.  It is still my fall back, and I always seem to have a hundred weight of carrots in my fridge for which I can simply find no other use!  Recently, I have adulterated the simple onion, carrot, stock, coriander recipe to include lentils and I pretty much always now start of by using bacon lardons for the extra flavour when I cook the onions.

Yesterday, there were no bacon lardons, but I did have a big pot of homemade chicken stock which I used instead (yes, yes, Oxo cubes are my mainstay when it comes to stock).  The stock had bags of flavour and when I first added it to the pan I got terribly worried in case it would be more of a chicken soup with carrots and lentils thrown in!  Well, the good news is that it didn't and I wound up with yet another lovely soup.  Served with a swirl of cream across the top and homemade bread it went down a storm...

Carrot and Lentil Soup (serves 4)
1 onion
150g dried red lentils
600g carrots
2 1/2 pints liquid (I made this up of one pint of (strong) chicken stock, and water for the rest)
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
salt and pepper
cream to serve

1) Dice your onion and add to a big pan with a glug of oil.  Cook on a medium heat with the lid on until translucent.
2) Whilst your onion is cooking peel and dice the carrots.  You want the pieces to be relatively small so that they both cook and blend quicker.  I know people who grate carrots for soup, but I hate clearing away bits of stra carrot afterwards, so chopping is the way forward for me!
3) Add the carrots and cumin to the pan.  Stir until mixed with the onion then replace the lid for a couple of minutes.
4)  Add the lentils and your stock (and water if using) then season and bring to a simmer.  Leave to cook for around 25 to 30 minutes, checking you still have enough water in the pan.
5) Once the carrots are soft, remove from the heat and use a blender or stick blender to liquidise the soup.  Make sure it is well whizzed, or else the heavy bits will sink and you end up with a layered soup!  You should end up with a relatively thick, hearty soup.  If it's too thick, simply add more liquid.

If the soup has cooled then return it to the heat, otherwise serve it.  You can make this in advance, and reheat when needed.  If there is any left over, just transfer it to the fridge and eat within a couple of days.

This is such a simple, simple recipe that it almost seems pointless writing it out but I thought I would share it!

Cooking for Colleagues

I work in a fab little office in central London with some people who are scarily knowledgeable about coins and medals.  Whenever I offer to bake, they respond enthusiastically and eat whatever I make with equal enthusiasm, something which is always good for a cook's ego!

Recently, my lovely colleagues have not been forced to sample my cooking endeavours, so I decided it was time to roll up my sleeves again and get baking for them.  Given the choice of fruit or chocolate, they, surprisingly, went for fruit (apparently it makes a change from the huge quantities of chocolate biscuits we devour between us)

I had three sad looking bananas in my fruit bowl, so it seemed only fair that they be whisked and cheered into something scrumptious.  Banana bread has a long standing place in my life: it's not something I ate often as a child and there was something amazing about a banana being turned into a soft, moist cake which I adored. 

When my mum used to make carrot cake, it would always have sultanas and chopped nuts in it, so I stole this idea and added it to the banana bread, plumping up the sultanas with brandy which makes them soft and smell luscious.

Banana Bread with sultanas, nuts and a cheeky drop of brandy
3 ripe bananas, mashed until smoothish
125g butter, melted
90g demarara sugar
70g dark brown sugar
2 eggs
100g sultanas
75ml brandy
40g chopped nuts
175g wholemeal/brown flour
1 tsp salt
1 tp bicarbonate of soda

Preheat the oven to 180C
1) Put the sultanas and brandy in a pan and bring to a boil; remove from the heat after around a minute and set aside. 
2) Mix together the sugars and the molten butter and then add in the eggs, followed by the mashed banana.  I did all this with an electric whisk.
3) Fold in the nuts, the sultanas (including any juice left over), followed by the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda.  Mix until you can no longer see any flour.
4) Tip the mixture into a lined loaf tin (mine is a fairly standard size and is around 6cmx10cmx22cm) and put in the oven for an hour, or until a skewer comes out clean.

This smells delicious when it's cooking and I have just returned to the house after going out earlier and the air is perfumed with a lovelly smell of warm banana bread, which is very inviting, even if  say so myself!

The poor cake has had to be cut in half so I could take a photo of the scrumptious inside, so I will have to apologise to the office!  I am just hoping the taste will compensate for a semi-ravaged loaf!

Jammy Dodgers, but much much better

I love visiting people - it gives me a reason to bake - if I baked everything I wanted all of the time, Mr B and I would be clinically obese.  This weekend we are visiting Mr B's mum in Somerset, and I decided to make her some biscuits.  I saw a lot of jam filled heart biscuits on other blogs over Valentines and used this as my inspiration.  To the Americans out there, I made what you call a sugar cookies, I am not sure what the Brits (including myself!) call these apart from a plain, sweet biscuits!

I used a couple of recipes to get the idea for the quantities I needed which is fairly typical of my way of working!

There is a lot of butter in these, which means they turn out wonderfully, but they must also be very for you - but then so are most things that taste nice :-)

Jam Filled Biscuits (makes 16)
250g plain flour
225g softened butter
200g sugar
1 egg
1 tsp salt
drop vanilla extract
Jam for filling

1) Cream together the butter and sugar, then mix in the flour, salt, vanilla and egg.  You should end up with a smooth dough which forms a ball, and isn't sticky.
2) Wrap the dough in clingfilm and put in the fridge for around 45 minutes, or until firm
3) Preheat the oven to 190C
4) Divide the dough into two.  Roll half out on a floured surface and using a cookie cutter of whichever shape you like stamp out 16 bottoms.
5)  Using the other half of the dough, roll and stamp out 16 tops.  I used a small cutter to make holes in the top, but you coul just as easily use a knife and put in freestyle shapes!
6) Bake the biscuits on baking sheets for around 10 minutes until they are turning golden.  I needed to do this in batches.  Remove from the tray and cool.  The biscuits maybe slightly soft when you first take them off the tray but they go hard quickly.
7)  Once the biscuits have cooled, put a small teaspoon of jam on each bottom half and spread it across the biscuit.
8)  Dust the tops with icing sugar and then carefully sandwich the halves together.

A note on jam
I had strawberries in my fridge, so I made myself a small batch of jam just to use in these biscuits.  I just chopped up the strawberries (quite small as I knew the jam had to spread easily), and added a good shake of caster sugar to them in a small pan.  I boiled it for about 20 minutes until the mixture had thickened.  To test whether it would set, I dropped some of the jam into a glass of cold water where it immediately formed into small balls which stuck together.  I then removed the jam from the heat and tipped it into a tupperware box.  I made this yesterday, so today it was in the fridge and ready to go.  I wouldn't even think about using this recipe for large batches of jam which you want to preserve, it's not designed for that!

Pasta - my ultimate comfort food

Sometimes, nothing but a bowl of steaming pasta will do.  And it's not just simple "pasta" - I crave a shape - macaroni has a brilliant squidgy texture, whilst tagliatelle is a smooth ribbony dream; for me, each shape is completely different.  Recently, I bought some lumaconi, which translated means snail shell.  It has a fabulous shape, and fills with whichever sauce you put with it.  It was this that I wanted, so the next step was to raid my cupboards to see what I had to go with it.

In my fridge I had a butternut squash, bacon and ricotta.  A match made in heaven to my mind.  Plus pasta?  Wow, this is turning into a scrummy meal.

Lumaconi with Butternut Squash, Bacon and Ricotta  (serves 2)

Half a butternut squash - I used the narrow top part, and this was ample

4 or 5 rashers of bacon

Tablespoon of Ricotta

Pasta - I guess the amount depends on how hungry you are!

1) Put a large pan of salted water onto boil.
2) Cut the bacon and squash into bitesize pieces
3) Heat a frying pan and add the bacon, once it has started to brown, add the butternut squash, season with pepper and cook for 10 to 15 minutes until the squash is cooked and soft, but not soggy.
4) Meanwhile, cook your pasta according to the instructions on the packet.
5) Just before you drain the pasta, add the tablespoon of ricotta to the bacon and squash and stir until it starts to melt
6) Drain the pasta and mix together with the squash, bacon and ricotta.

I served this with plentiful amounts of shaved parmesan, and I gobbled the dish down shamefully fast.  Even Mr B was shocked!

I plan to roast the remaining butternut squash with some chicken another night.  Using my squash like this is quite unusual for me, I usually can't get past making butternut squash soup, which to my mind is liquid gold.  Another time...

Leftovers and Experimentation

I hate leftovers with a passion. I really dislike having to buy something for a recipe and then having tons left. I think part of this is need to use up leftovers is a deep-seated desire to experiment. (My dad will be pleased to see I have used the term “experiment”, as he always did think I should become a scientist!)

Recently I was left with rosemary and buttermilk from a couple of the recipes previously on the blog, and that of course means I have to use them. I stumbled across this recipe at tastespotting.com and adapted it to the quantities I had, and some very rough conversions of cups to grams, based on what it ‘felt’ like. Anyway, Camilla did a great job in creating these, so thanks to her for my Sunday morning inspiration.

Cheddar and Rosemary Scones (makes 6)

180g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
Large pinch salt
110 g butter
70g Cheddar (grated)
3 sticks fresh rosemary
150ml buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 180C

Prepare your rosemary first – I stripped the leaves and then placed them in my stick blender pot with a small handful of the cheese until the rosemary was in small pieces. I did try chopping the rosemary in there on its own, but it just span around without getting any smaller, hence adding the cheese.

Place the flour, salt, baking powder and bicarb in a large bowl and rub in the butter until it looks like breadcrumbs. Then tip in the grated cheese, cheese and rosemary and the buttermilk and fold together.

The mix is slightly sticky, so drop the mix onto a baking sheet in six blobs (with a bit of room for spreading) and bake them for around 15 minutes until they are golden and a skewer comes out clean.

Hubby and I ate one whilst it was still scorching fresh out of the oven and it was divine. We packed up some of the others for a picnic and ate them about 3 hours later and they were just as good. I ate mine plain and as they were, but Mr B, who has to have butter on everything, did just that.

These were super quick to whip up and had a wonderful taste and texture. You could sprinkle them with sea salt before they go in the oven (I forgot!) to give them an extra salty taste. You could also make miniature ones topped with soft cheese as a canapé. Mmmm.

Le Gavroche chez moi (part 2)

Following our excellent main course of veal (see below),  I was worried that dessert would be a let down.  Surely I couldn't pull off TWO Michel Roux recipes in one day?! 

Preparation for dessert had started much earlier that day.  It is made up of four separate parts: Rhubarb Compote, Orange sabayon, Strawberry cordial/syrup, and pepper tuiles.  The tuiles were a disaster though, so it became a dessert of three parts.  I should also add that the saboyon is kirsch flavoured in the book, but I chose to go crazy and change it to orange...

I started with the sabayon as this was the most complex part, and it also needed time to set.  For the sabayon, you will need:

1 egg

1 egg yolk

60g caster sugar

1 leaf gelatine

juice of one orange

300ml whipping cream

Start by cutting up your gelatine and soaking it in a couple of tablespoons of cold water.  Meanwhile, whisk up the eggs and sugar until they are pale and fluffy. (Michel Roux suggests this takes 10 minutes, but he must be thinking everyone whisks by hand - I do not: my best friend the electric whisk does this for me!)

Drain the gelatine and add a little of the orange juice in place of the water.  As with the mango bavarois recipe a couple of weeks ago, I put the bowl over a pan of simmering water to heat and melt the gelatine. 

Mix the gelatine into the whisked egg and sugar; then add the remaining orange juice and whisk for in.

Finally, lightly whip the cream and fold in.

I used a small square dish to refrigerate the sabyon which measures about 14cm x 14cm x 4cm, and it was surprisingly quick to set.  Maybe just over an hour or so.

Rhubarb Compote

This is effectively stewed rhubarb, but you use a sweet white wine such as Sauternes to cook the rhubarb in.  For two people, I used 300g of rhubarb, which sounds a lot, but you lose a lot of liquid when the rhubarb is drained.

Heat up 250ml of sweet white wine with 75g of caster sugar and a drop of vanilla extract.  Meanwhile cut the rhubarb into 4cm sections.  Once the sugar has dissolved add the rhubarb and cook at a simmer for 3 to 5 minutes.  You want the rhubarb to be soft, but still have some form left.  Drain the rhubarb - you can save the liquid as a fruit cordial to mix with lemonade, sparkling water, or wine.

Once the rhubarb had cooled, I got my serving plates out and filled up small rings with the rhubarb.  I then put these into the fridge (with the rings still around them)

Strawberry Cordial/Syrup

I ended up making this a completely different way to suggested as the method in the cookbook didn't really give me the results I wanted.

I hulled and quarted 200g strawberries and then put them into a small saucepan with a drizzle of water and 50g of caster sugar.   I then covered them and cooked them on a very low heat until the strawberries were soft and I had a good amount of liquid in the pan.  I drained the liquid through a sieve and to get the most out of the strawberries, I left them in the sieve with a piece of clingfilm over the top and stood a jar on them.

Putting the whole thing together

Everything is stacked together just as you are about to serve.  Remove the plated rhubarb from the fridge and take off the moulds.  Then quenelle some of the sabayon using two dessertspoons and place on top of the rhubarb.  Spoon round the cordial.  As mentioned, I was missing the pepper tuiles, so I lightly lightly toasted some almonds and put those on top instead.

The Bastin Verdict

I couldn't believe how well this went down with Mr B.  He thinks the only desserts in the world which should exist are those containing chocolate, or those which are served with huge amounts of custard.  It was a light dessert, and the sabayon was to die for.  Really.  It was smooth and fluffy and held the air in it so well.  The rhubarb was sweet with the right amount of tartness.  And finally, when plated, everything was brightly coloured and spring-like!

After reading this cookbook and being so inspired (and in awe!) I suggested to Mr B that it would be nice to go to the restaurant in question.  Low and behold, we now have a table booked for my birthday at the end of May.  I thought this was very keen booking from Mr B, but it turns out that we couldn't get a table for the Saturday night we wanted, even though it is three months away!  Yikes.  This is a popular restaurant.  And I can't wait!  Never have I wanted to be a year older so much!

Le Gavroche chez moi (part 1)

A couple of days ago, I borrowed the Le Gavroche cookbook from the library.  It's a heavenly book packed with lovely pictures and stunning food.  So, feeling brave, I attempted to cook two courses from it for last nights dinner.  I am certainly no Michel Roux Jr, but I am still feeling pretty smug about the results!

Our main course was Rib of veal with a herb crust, a tomato sauce and roasted potatoes and dessert was a delightful Rhubarb Compote with orange sabayon and strawberry syrup. Alas, the dessert was supposed to be served with pepper tuiles, but these turned into a disaster and I had to ask Daring Bakers for help!  A lovely blogger helped me out and you can find info on his tuiles here http://audaxartifex.blogspot.com/2009/01/tuiles-thin-crisp-and-tasty.html 

Anyway, I have to confess, I didn't follow M. Roux's recipes to a T, but they were roughly in line with what he did.  I topped the veal with a herb crust based on his which comprised of:

A big handful of parsley, of chives, and the leaves of 3 rosemary "twigs"
2 handfuls of breadcrumbs
50g of strong, mature cheese (I used cheddar)
50g butter
drizzle of olive oil

I whizzed all these together with a small stick blender.  I had to add the olive oil to get everything going; also, make sure your butter is soft - mine wasn't soft enough and took much longer to whizz than it should have done.

You then wrap up the herb paste in a tube of cling film, wrapping it tightly into a sausage shape.  You can fridge this until it's needed. 

To feed two people, I used 2 x 250 veal chops.  This is a pretty large hunk of meat, but trust me, you won't be able to stop eating!  Trim the veal and then seal in a hot frying pan; transfer to the oven (180C) for around 10 minutes, turning over the meat half way through.  At this point you need to be patient - I could hve happily eaten my rib right there and then, but patience is required as you rest the meat for around 10 minutes. 

Whilst the meat is resting, cut two 1/2 cm pieces of the solid herb paste and roll them out between two pieces of cling film until they are the size of the veal ribs.  Then heat your grill.

Top the rested veal with the rolled out herb paste, trimming it to fit the shape exactly.  Then pop underneath the grill until the herb paste is bubbling and starting to brown.

Serve immediately, and watch the eaters look like they have died and gone to heaven!

I still have some of the herb paste left, so I have frozen it.  It's incredible deep flavour would work really well with other white meats, and I am going to try it with pork next time.  It's certainly something I will be doing for my next dinner party as it can be prepared in advance, allowing me more cocktail drinking time with my guests!

Blueberry and Orange muffins (with a honey and orange glaze)

I made these muffins just so I could test out my new camera lens, and I am pretty pleased with both the lens and the muffins!   The orange in the muffin adds that wee bit extra to them in a way I can't really describe, other than delightful!

When I first attempted muffins a few years ago, they were an utter disaster.  Since then, I have sought out different recipes and nuances and finally come up with something I am really pleased with.  The proof will be in the pudding though when I deliver them to my sister and her lovely housemates later.

Blueberry and Orange Muffins (makes 12)
110g softened butter
100g caster sugar
150g demerara (brown) sugar
1/2 tsp salt
100 ml buttermilk
juice and zest of 1 orange
125g self raising flour
125g wholewheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
150g blueberries (fresh or frozen)

Preheat the oven to 180C and put muffin cases into a 12 muffin tray.
Whisk up the butter, sugars and eggs until there are no lumps of butter left.  Add the zest and juice of the orange and the buttermilk and fold in.  Tip in the flour, baking powder and blueberries and fold in.  I think I did 8 folds to get the mixture combined but still lumpy as it should be in a muffin recipe.
Divide into the muffin cases and bake for around 25 mins when they are golden brown and a skewer comes out clean.

I put a glaze/syrup on top of the muffins as soon as they came out of the oven.  I'm sorry to say I didn't measure quantities here, but I would guess I used a heaped tsp set honey, and maybe 20ml fresh orange juice.  I had to quickly zap the mix in the microwave as thehoney was to solid to mix, but i you're using runny honey this shouldn't be required.  Once it's combined, simply brush generously over the hot muffins.

Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes as they are quite delicate when hot, and then move onto a cooling rack.  Do I really need to mention that these gorgeous muffins are best eaten warm?!?

Chicken Tetrazzini

This used to be my ultimate meal when I was a kid (thanks mum and dad!) but since then, I have kind of lost sight of it. So last night I tried to recreate my childhood teatime apart from this time it was me doing the cooking!

Traditionally I think chicken tetrazzini is made with mushrooms, but at the last minute I realised I didn't have any so I had to use broccoli as a substitute. This turned out to be a pretty good alternative (literally, as it looked much more colourful on the plate) and Mr B was chuffed to have broccoli on his plate.

Also, I was very disciplined and used my scales so that I could give accurate quantities!


Chicken Tetrazzini (serves 4)
250g spaghetti
6 chicken drumsticks/thighs
250g broccoli cut into bitesize florets (this weight is about 1 large "tree")
50g butter
40g flour
1/3 pint chicken stock
1/3 pint double cream
breadcrumbs and parmesan to top


1. Cook your chicken - you can do this however you wish. I poached mine last night - it takes about 20-25 mins at a bare simmer for chicken on the bone. Then remove the meat from the bones and shred into bitesize pieces. Preheat the oven to 175C

2. Put a pan of salted water onto boil, then add the spaghetti and cook according to instructions. In the last 3 or 4 minutes of the cooking add the broccoli to the pan.

3. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a small saucepan and then add the flour to make a roux - cook over a medium heat for a couple of minutes. Slowly add the cream stirring all the time and then add the stock. You should end up with a creamy sauce. Season as required.

4. Drain the pasta and broccoli, add the chicken and sauce and mix well. Tip into an ovenproof dish and top with breadcrumbs and parmesan. Put into the oven for 15-20 minutes until bubbling and browning on top.



Other notes

You can use the bones from the chicken to make your own stock. Ok, you won't get pints and pints of the stuff, but homemade is so much more satisfying than an Oxo! Add the bones to 1 1/2 pints water, a chopped onion, chopped celery stick, chopped carrot; also stick in a bay leaf, thyme, parsely and a couple of peppercorns and simmer for at least an hour. The longer the better! You can freeze this until it's needed.

I also always keep breadcrumbs in the freezer in a couple of small bags. Just whizz up the ends of any left over bread and then you have a handy stash of breadcrumbs when ever you need them. Genius, even if I say so myself!

Until next time!

The Unsearchable Mango Bavarois

Mangoes. Don't you just love them? Bright yellow, juicy, fragrant...mmm. Despite this, I very rarely buy them, but last week they were on offer in Waitrose, so I had to get one. Yes, I could have just cut it up and served it as is, but as soon as it was in my shopping bag my mind was racing as to what to do with my ripe friend.

I came up with the idea of doing a trio of mango desserts. Even though I have never attempted a trio of desserts before, I wasn't going to let complexity hold me back. Oh no. For one of these I decided to do set mango bavarois, or bavarian cream. Off I trot to trusty old google to find a recipe. None there. No recipes for a mango bavarois?! Not one like I wanted to make anyway (some would say I'm just too fussy)

Anyway, after much searching for how to make a generic fruit bavarois and manic flicking through my cookbooks I used the Leiths recipe for an almond bavarois as a starting point and changed it to suit my own needs.

This is a little late in the post, but for those who don't know what a bavarois is (Mr B didn't either!) it's a foamy kind of custard which is set with gelatine and can be unmoulded onto a plate. Swish.

Mango Bavarois with Mango Jelly (serves 2)

1/4 pint of warm milk

1 egg, separated

1oz caste sugar

2 tablespoons water

2 1/2 sheets of gelatine

75ml double cream

1/2 ripe mango

1. Lightly oil some ramekins or miniature loaf tins. I used loaf tins and they measured 10cm x 5cm x 3cm and I had some mixture left over.

2. Stone and peel your mango. No need for good looking bits on this, hack away if needs be. Then put your mango into a blender and whizz until smooth. You may need to add a drop of water or orange juice to get it started. You want to make sure this really is very smooth as it might ruin the light texture of the bavarois if you have fibrey bits floating around.

3. Next get your gelatine started for the jelly. I am using sheets at the moment which need to be chopped up (use scissors!) and then placed in cold water before it can be heated. For the jelly use one sheet and around a tbsp of water. I made up mine in a cereal bowl which I then placed over a small pan of simmering water to melt the gelatine until it was clear.

4. For the jelly, take around 1/3 of the whizzed mango and mix with the melted gelatine and pour a layer about 1/2cm thick into the bottom of each ramekin or loaf tin and place in the fridge to set.

5. Beat the egg yolk and sugar together in a pan (off the heat at this point!) until pale-ish. Now move your pan onto a medium heat and slowly add the warm milk. Stir all the time and don't let the custard boil. Once it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon remove it from the heat.

6. You now need to make up the next gelatine mix with the remaining 1 1/2 sheets.

5. Stir the gelatine into the custard mix. I then placed the still warm pan into a sink of cold water to help it set. You need the mixture to start to set - stir it occassionally though.

8. Whilst your custard is cooling, whisk up an egg white in one bowl and the double cream in another. The egg should be shiny and form soft peaks, and the cream should be whipped until it just holds its shape.

9. Hopefully your mix is now cool enough and has started to set. Fold in the remaining mango, followed by the cream and finally the egg white.

10. Tip the mixture on top of the mango jelly and place in the fridge to set. I tapped mine lightly before putting them in the fridge to make sure there were no air bubbles and the tops were smooth.

11. To serve, dip the cases/ramekins into warm water for a few seconds and then turn onto a plate. I promise you people will be impressed when you turn something out that is not only neat, but also layered!!

Wow, this has turned into a more substantial set of steps than I had imagined! But then I guess it's a recipe with many many stages for something which appears on the surface to be so simple!

That's my first recipe post done! I have dozens of other ideas waiting to be put down so stay tuned!

Hello and Welcome!

I've never blogged before, so this is all rather nerve-wracking, what with the potential that people are going to be reading this!

I've heard that men think about sex every 7 seconds, I can't judge this for myself being a girl, but what I do know is that 7 seconds is about the frequency that I think about food, cooking, baking, mixing, whizzing and any other food related adjective. In short, I am food obsessed. My poor Mr B is my main guinea pig/tester - so far he has remained alive and well, and indeed looks much better nourished than when I first met him a couple of years ago, so I must be doing something right...

Because it is also Mr B who has to put up with all my thoughts about what to cook next, how to improve things and general cooking waffle, I thought I would turn my attention to the great inter-web and try waffling at some other people to. Having just completed a Masters in Literature and also doing lots of photography, I thought there could be no better way of combining writing, photos and food than on a blog (well, apart from putting together a cookbook!)

One final thing before I bore you all to tears, this will be a departure for me too - I am not used to weighing, measuring and being overly accurate when I cook - I tend to go on look and feel. But written recipes don't work like that, so for you, I will be dusting off the scales and digging out the measuring spoons to make sure what I write works in your kitchen!