Monthly Archives: May 2011

A cobbled together cobbler

30 Monday May 2011

Posted by in cobbler, plums

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For some reason i’ve recently had a bit of a craving for plums. I’ve been deliberating on how i want said plums for a while now but eventually came to the decision that i thought a cobbler was the way forward. This was helped by Hayley screaming out “cobbler!” when presented with the options before her but still, i was happy with the outcome of this decision. In case you’re not 100% sure, a cobbler is basically as crumble topping all bound together with some liquid (usually buttermilk, milk or yoghurt). I went for a combo of plain yoghurt and whole milk, partly because i felt like it and partly because i couldn’t find any buttermilk here. This is such a good dessert, it’s something you can just throw together, bung in the oven and 45 minutes later you’ll retrieve something jammy and sticky and crunchy and generally just scrumptious. I think plums are a really overlooked fruit as well, they’re often not thought of as a very inviting fruit, often being overlooked in favour of a juicy little berry of some kind but my god they’re good. Especially if you get them when they have the perfectly sweet, just yielding flesh against the contrast of the sour skin. I always prefer a slightly sour fruit to something that’s all sweetness, for instance my favourite fruit is a gooseberry. It’s an old english fruit that’s becoming increasingly difficult to find and usually culminates in a last minute panicked rush to my local fruit farm when i realise the season is approaching and i haven’t yet reserved any. As there’s not a huge demand any more, they don’t really get grown on a large scale so they’re pretty hard to find and sell out fast. This year i’ve had to dispatch my mum as i’m away but keep your eyes peeled for a lot of delicious ways to use them up once i’m back in the good old english counrtyside.
The other great thing about a dessert like this is how far you can stretch it, if you end up with far more people than you thought then you can just give them 1/2 a plum instead of a whole one and tah dah, double the servings. Very handy indeed.

So anyway, off we go
Plum Cobbler:

10 Plums, halved with the stones removed
1/4 cinammon stick
tbsp sugar
a good slosh of plum wine – roughly 4 tbsp

200g flour
100g butter
1tbsp sugar
75g yoghurt – i used low fat probiotic
50ml whole milk

Another good thing about this kind of dessert is that it doesn’t need a lot of refined sugar if you get good ripe plums, most of it is naturally occuring fruit sugars. And thats always a good thing isn’t it?

So, off we go. Place the plums, halved and stoned in an overproof dish in a single layer, they want to be kind of snug in there, grate over the cinnammon and sprinkle over the sugar and give it all a good toss around so that theres some on all the plums, slosh over the plum wine, or whatever you’re using and that’s it for the filling.
By the way, plum wine is available from most asian shops but if you can’t find any, or even if you can’t be bothered to go and look, you can use something else. Red wine, fruit juice or even water would work but obviously the plum wine’s going to be the best.

For the topping, rub the butter into the flour and sugar until it looks like wet sand, just like you would do for shortcrust pastry. Add the milk and yoghurt and stir it all up. Dollop a little on top of each plum half like this

and then bake in the oven at 180C/350F until the top is crunchy and golden, like this

And serve. Doesn’t that look good? I was origionally going to serve this with some homemade custard but i got distracted so ended up just going with ice cream and actually think it was better than the custard would have been. The ice cold creaminess was perfect with the sticky, jammy plums. We went with vanilla but cinnamon ice cream would be reeeally good too, maybe just leave it out of the filling (the cinnamon that is, not the ice cream).

For a cheeky tipple that night we decided it was about time we had some g&t’s, the first ones of the summer and very welcome they were too. For me it has to be Hendrick’s, an artisanal gin made in scotland, it’s truly delicious, dangerously so in fact, one just never seems enough. Luckily for us they had it in Nassau so i went for it, in an attempt to convert Hayley to it’s joys as much as anything else. I like mine with a slice of cucumber, something my grandad always did, back in the days when he still drank, so i suppose for me it also conjures up fond memories of gin and tonics on the patio in florida watching the sun go down. Any drink that can do that is fine in my book and as an added bonus, it tastes fantastic, the freshness of the cucumber cutting through the spicy richness of the gin. Yum yummy yum. I also believe that you should have gin and tonic in a short glass, i’m not entirely sure why, i just like it that way. Don’t forget, you need lots of ice, it’s not a drink that fares well at room temperature. I ususally go with about three slices of cucumber per glass, if you put it in the bottom of the glass and bash it a bit it’ll help let out the flavour a bit. Then add the ice, as much gin as takes your fancy at that particular moment and top up with tonic and you’re good to go. Now all you need is a patio and a sunset. Enjoy.

A soup here, a pretzel there

19 Thursday May 2011

Posted by in onion, pretzels, soup

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So it’s been a while since i posted anything, i’ve been pretty damn slack recently, what with going off to harbour island for a few days and then the birthday extravaganza weekend, it’s been fairly hectic.
I was planning on catching up when i was in harbour island but the combination of there being no internet anywhere other than the bar (you can imagine how conducive that is to anything constructive) and the whole place just being relaxing beyond words all amounted to me lounging around reading cookbooks and not really doing much of anything, apart from maybe a walk along the beach. In short, utter bliss.
For a start we were staying the the quaintest little hotel, right on the beach, falling asleep to the sound of the sea, cliche maybe, but it’s idyllic for a reason. On top of that, when we arrived, one of the first things to grab my attention was the bookshelf entirely devoted to cookbooks, from huge tomes by Marco and Gordon to random tiny battered old books about sorbet. This was my kind of place. I have a fairly unhealthy obsession with cookbooks, often driving my mother to distraction by insisting that i need just one more, never mind the hundreds already lying around the house; or my boyfriend by the stacks that often litter our bedroom floor. Oh well, it’s better than drugs i guess (that’s my argument anyway, that and the fact that they will usually benefit this obsession by my instantaneous desire to test things out).

After that came the birthday weekend, obviously involving a fairly staggering amount of over-indulgence, be it booze or food. Ranging from mussamum curries and caramelised pear and chocolate mousse cake to spicy, creamy corn and fake american cake – something that is my serious guilty pleasure. Combine that with enough beer, wine and champagne to sink a battleship, sun and boats and you have a seriously good weekend on your hands. Not forgetting of course the fact that it was mine and Hayleys birthdays on the 12th. Anyway, with all of this drawing to a close, yesterday we got back down to some cooking.

As i’m leaving Nassau on Monday, Alex and I have been given a list of demands by our friends of what they want cooked before they once again have to fend for themsleves. With this in mind, yesterday was Tarquin’s choices, well some of them at least, namely french onion soup and pretzels. I’m not entirely sure where his sudden desperate urge for pretzels came from, all i know is i got a drunken message requesting some be made. So, off we went.

Lets start out with the french onion soup. I love this soup, it’s so comforting and hearty enough to make a full meal if you want it to. It’s also really easy and cheap to make so you really have no excuse. This one serves 8 as a starter or less as a main.

French Onion Soup:

Now you don’t have to use all these different types of onion but i like it as it gives a better depth of flavour. All in all you just want to make sure that you have about 1kg of onions.

200g red onion
500g white onion               
1 large leek
10 pearl onions
2-3 shallots
Tbsp sugar

100g unsalted butter
2 cloves of finely chopped garlic

200ml white wine
50g plain flour

2 litres beef stock – then better the stock, the better the soup
30g pancetta or smoked bacon, blanched for 5 mins. This just means, put in a pan of water, bring to the boil and boil for 5 mins.
1 bouquet garni (basically parsley stalks, thyme, bay leaf tied together)

Up to 100ml sherry

1/2 baguette
400g finely grated gruyere cheese

Finely slice all the onions, i know it’s a pain and i know your eyes will sting but it’ll be worth it, there’s no place for chunky bits of onion in this soup. A good tip is to chill your onions, if they’re really cold (from the fridge, don’t try and be clever and put them in the freezer) it slows the release of the chemical that stings your eyes so you won’t be sobbing all over the place.

Toss 1/3 the butter into a big saucepan with a little splash of oil and then add all the onions.

Cook them over a medium-low heat until they begin to take on some colour. You want them to start going golden but what ever you do don’t burn them, it’ll ruin the whole soup. Once they’re starting to colour, add another 1/3 butter and keep cooking them until they’re a deep caramely colour. Once they’re almost done, add the last 1/3 butter and crank up the heat. You want them to end up looking like this.

Now i know that this takes a little while, and yes, technically you could just whack the heat up and do it faster, BUT, for one, the chance of burning them increases quite a lot and also, you just can’t get the same flavour, it takes time to ease out the sweetness, so just try and be patient.
Once the onions are done, add in the finely chopped garlic and after a couple of seconds, deglaze the pan with the wine. Basically that just means, throw in the wine and stir and scrape the bottom so that all of the delicious caramelised bits come unstuck as they’re full of flavour.
Once the wine has reduced down to almost nothing, stir in the flour. Add the beef stock, blanched pancetta and bouquet garni and simmer the whole lot together for 30 minutes.

The little thing you can see bobbing around there is a tea strainer/herb infuser. I love this thing, you can get them from most cook shops and they’re so useful as it saves you fishing around at the end trying to dig them out, you just put the herbs inside and plop it in.

Anyway, after it’s blipped away for a while, skim any scum off the top if any has formed and remove the bouquet garni and pancetta. Season with sherry, salt and pepper. You might not want all the sherry so maybe add half and taste it and then add the rest if you want it. I just plonked it all in and it was yummy but it’s up to you.

Then comes the best bit. Slice the baguette into slices about 1cm thick and toast in the oven until they’re golden. Plonk a few into your bowl of soup and then cover with grated gruyere, you want a decent amount (although i shouldn’t need to tell you that) and then place under a hot grill until the cheese is melted and bubbly. Now all that’s left to do is eat and enjoy. Which you will, i promise.

After this was made and sitting on the side, ready to be devoured later, we moved onto the pretzels

Soft American Pretzels:

360ml warm, not hot, water
1 tbsp sugar
2 teaspoons sea salt
7g dried yeast
625g plain flour
55g melted, unsalted butter

2.5 litres water
200g baking soda

1 egg yolk mixed with 1 tbsp water

I’d like to start off by saying that this will be 100 times easier if you have a KitchenAid or some other kind of stand mixer with a dough hook. If you don’t you can do it by hand, it will just take longer.

Put the sugar, salt and water in the mixer bowl and sprinkle over the yeast. Let them sit there for about 5 minutes until the yeast is making everything into a bit of a foam party and then add the flour and butter.

Mix the whole lot up together on a low speed and once it’s all incorporated, turn the heat up to medium until the dough is smooth and coming away from the sides of the bowl. If you’re doing this by hand then you need to just bring it it together and knead it until its smooth and no longer sticky.

Either way, you then want to form the dough into a ball, place it in an oiled bowl and let it nestle up somewhere warm until it’s doubled in size, that should take you about 50-60 minutes. Whack the oven on to 230C/450. Rub a smidge of oil on to whatever surface you’re planning on forming the pretzels on and tip the dough onto it. Cut the dough into 8 and roll each one into a long sausage. Mine were about twice the length of alex’s shoe but that probably doesn’t help much so i’ll show you. About this long:

After you’ve done that, make a U shape and then fold each end over to touch the bottom, then place them on a tray lined with either a silmat, or an oiled piece of parchment paper.

Now they may not look so sexy at this point but they’re going to puff right up so it doesn’t matter too much at this point. Next up, bring the 2.5 litres of water to a boil with the 200g baking soda, the water needs to be a big, fast, rolling boil, not just a couple of little blips. Pop each pretzel in the water for 30 seconds, i did it one by one but it’s up to you.

Place the pretzels back on the trays and brush with the egg/water mixture and sprinkle with sea salt. Now comes the fun bit, this is where you can get creative with toppings, just sprinkle them right over the top. We did a load of different ones- poppy seed, cheese, thyme, rosemary, ground cumin and coriander, ras el hanout, harissa. They were delicioso, however, there were some stand out favourites, namely the harissa, the thyme and the cheese, the consensus was also that combining the cheese and the thyme into one amazing pretzel would have taken the crown. Pop them in the oven for 12 minutes until they’re puffed and golden and you just can’t wait to rip into them. Transfer to a cooling rack.

The great thing about these is that you can totally tailor them to suit your own tastes, herbs, spices, cheese, you could add some chopped up ham if you want. It’s a great thing to do if you have people over as well as everyone can just add whatever they feel like and then it’s only a 12 minute wait.

Roasted vegetable and goats cheese quiche

05 Thursday May 2011

Posted by in asparagus, broccoli, cheese, chilli, cream, egg, garlic, leek, pastry, pepper, tart, tomato

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I was pretty tired on Monday evening and all i wanted to do was curl up in front of a movie with a big creamy bowl of pasta. Sadly, this was not to be. After an extended and heavenly break from the gym whilst we were in Boston and then over the weekend, me and Hayls were finally dragging ourselves back to the gym. As we always get back just before dinner, i needed something that i could prep mostly in advance and then just get Alex to finish off. Quiche is what popped into my mind, namely a roasted vegetable and goats cheese quiche. It’s something that feels indulgent and comforting but when you pack it full of veggies and have it with salad it’s actually not too bad. And it tastes good, which is what we’re really after.It’s also light enough for spring, as much as I love hearty, rich dishes that make you dream of curling up by the fire, it’s no longer so appealing once it’s hitting 90 degrees so we have to go for something that still gives you the comfort level, just minus the stodge. The other great thing about a quiche is that you can really put absolutely anything in it. It’s a good way to use up scraps of whatever’s knocking around your fridge looking lonely and a bit neglected, you just swathe it in a coat of cream, egg and cheese, and there you go, you’ve made something pretty damn luxurious.
Having said that, you do still have to think of what will taste good together, i wouldn’t recommend hurling in absolutely everything that’s hanging around the veg drawer and hoping for the best as you might just end up ruining it.

This will feed 4-6 as a starter or light dinner

For the pastry:
200g plain flour
5g salt
100g cold cubed butter
up to 60ml water (although i often find you only need about half that)

Combine the flour and salt in a bowl and rub in the butter until it looks like wet sand. Add enough water so that the dough forms a ball, then flatten out into a disc, cling film and put in the fridge to chill for about 30 minutes (or longer if you need to). Everyone usually says to put it into the fridge in a ball but it chills much faster and more evenly if you flatten it.

When it’s ready, preheat the oven to 180C/350F. then roll out the pastry and line your tart case. Prick the base all over with a fork and then put it back in the fridge for 10 minutes.

Once it’s chilled out in the fridge again, line with parchment paper and fill with baking beans or rice, anything that will weight it down basically. I am aware that i’ve used tin foil here but we’d run out of parchment so i had to make do with this. The point of pricking the base and then weighting it down is to stop the pastry shrinking down the sides of the tin, which it just loves to do. This is called blind baking and if you skip this step you’ll just end up with a sad, heavy lump of pastry in the bottom of the tart tin and there’ll be nowhere for the filling to go. That doesn’t sound so tempting does it?

Blind bake it for about 20 minutes until the sides feel like they’ve set and are starting to lightly colour – about 20 minutes

Then pop it back in for 5-10 minutes until the bottom isn’t looking doughy anymore. And that’s the pastry done, not so difficult. Shortcrust pastry is the easiest one to make as it’s the most forgiving. If your pastry tears as you’re rolling it out or filling the tart tin, it doesn’t matter. Simply rip a bit off from somewhere else and patch it, it’ll forgive you and, once the filling is in, no one will even be able to tell. Alex had to do it on this tart when he rolled the pastry out for me as the dough had been in the fridge for quite a while and was really cold when it came out. Although the crust is all uneven, as you can see, it doesn’t matter, it’ll still taste delicious and it proves that it’s homemade. Throw the word rustic around a little bit and no one can say a word about what it looks like. Anyway, on to the filling….

Filling:
4 tomatoes, cut into quarters
1 red pepper cut into chunks
Half a big red onion in chunks
1 leek, chunked again
8 spears of asparagus
3/4 head broccoli, broken into florets and boiled for about 6 minutes
250ml double cream
1 egg
70g soft goats cheese

3 fresh red chillis
4 cloves of garlic.

Ok, first things first, preheat the oven to 160C/320F. Snap the ends off the asparagus- grab hold of each end and bend, the asparagus will snap naturally where the sugars have built up and therefore just leave you with the good bit. Then chuck the tomato, pepper, leek, onion and asparagus into a roasting tin, add a glug of olive, some salt and pepper and give it all a good shake about. Bung it in the oven for about 30 minutes until everything is just beginning to caramelise.

Next up, deseed your chillis and slice them, and, whilst you’re at it, slice the garlic too, then fry it all in a pan until the garlic is very lightly golden.

Next, whisk together the egg and double cream, and now, i think we’re ready to put this bad boy together.
Put the roasted veg mix, the chilli, garlic and broccoli into the tart case. Make sure you get a spatula and scrape out the roasting tin as there’s lots of yumminess to be had in there. Pour over the egg/cream mix and give the whole lot a little stir around so everything’s nicely coated. Press it all down so you have a fairly even layer and then dot over the goats cheese so it ends up looking like this.

Pop it in your still hot oven for about 30-40 minutes until the filling is set and the top is golden, if it starts to colour too much on the top, whack a bit of tin foil over it. Hopefully, it’ll end up looking something like this.

Cool on a wire rack for 10 mins and then transfer onto a board or plate to serve.I like to just plonk this down on the table with a big green salad and a bottle of wine and just let everyone help themselves. This isn’t supposed to be anything snazzy, just relaxed and tasty, which is just how it ended up. It’s also such a nice way to eat if you’re just with a group of friends, there’s nothing worse than having to have a big formal meal when you’re just feeling tired and lazy and it also gets everyone talking. In short, it’s a bit of midweek perfection. So if you fancy a change one night then give it a whirl.

And we’re back to cooking

04 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by in bread, crumble, custard, mozzarella, quiche, tomato

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So as great as it was having endless great meals in Boston, i was getting serious withdrawals from cooking. This quite often happens if I’ve been away for a while, it starts like a little itch and seems to grow until i’m fidgety and desperate to cook something, anything in fact. Well unfortunately (or fortunately given that his food is delicious) Alex has the same reaction to being out of the kitchen for extended periods of time and he tends to win so my cooking has been a little thin on the ground since our return. There have been a few dabbles however.

Firstly, a couple of days ago the weather was gorgeous so I decided to make the most of it and slap together a quick alfresco lunch. There’s something about warm weather that makes me desperate to eat outside. I think it probably has to do with growing up in England, a country not exactly blessed with an abundance of warm days. Whenever it was warm enough we’d eat outside, salads, sandwiches, a roast, we weren’t fussy, we’d gather it up and head into the garden and somehow it made the whole affair more special, more of an occasion. In the evenings this was usually accompanied by candlelight, little tealights flickering in jam jars and big citronella candles to keep away the bugs. Now granted, there’s a pretty high percentage of warm days here but it doesn’t seem to stop me.

I wasn’t in the mood for anything too complex, just something quick and fresh. so finding asparagus in the fridge was a dream. Now i must admit, i have a fairly ridiculous fixation with asparagus, i eat it almost every day when it’s in season so i wanted it fairly simple for my first run at it. For me there are very few better things to do with it than to quickly cook it – in this case i simply boiled it – before tossing it in some good olive oil, a little balsamic vinegar and sprinkling with sea salt and pepper. I decided to make it even better and top it with some slivers of delicate Pecorino that our amazing friend Andrea brought us back from Italy. Lets be honest, what isn’t better when topped with cheese? Very little.

To accompany this I added some fennel salami which Alex found in the local supermarket. Given that the salami section had replaced a pretty unappealing cold cut counter, i was excited to test it out. I must say i was impressed, although it didn’t have the strongest taste of fennel, it was nevertheless yummy. It has to be sliced super thin for me though, i’ve never been a fan of it when it’s thickly sliced, the texture’s just too chewy.

This piled on a plate with some pitta bread and hummus seemed like a pretty good starting block.

I wanted something salady too though so I went for the classic Caprese- mozzarella, tomato (in this case Black Russian heirloom ones) and basil. I usually add either spring onions or chives for a slight oniony flavour but i hadn’t been food shopping so that was a no go. As it’s such a simple salad, everything in it has to be great quality. Another good tip is to place the chopped tomatoes into a colander in the sink and sprinkle them liberally with salt. This ensures that some of the moisture is drawn out and the flavour of the tomato is concentrated, making the whole salad taste better.

To finish it all off we had some fresh baked french bread and some cheese, for no other reason than we wanted some, nothing else. All in all it was pretty satisfying, lots of different things going on, and when coupled with being able to sit outside in the breeze, it was lovely.

Later that day, the bug still not satisfied, i decided to bake some bread. This is something i love to do, it’s so therapeutic. Plus, there are few better smells than that of baking bread, it’s so comforting. It’s also far more simple than most people think, once you’ve mastered the basic loaf there are so many things you can add to it – cheese, seeds, nuts, spices – whatever you feel like. Best to start out with the basics though.
I felt like brown bread that day so i grabbed my scale and got started. It’s important to use 50/50 white and wholemeal flour as the texture will be far too dense if you use all wholemeal. If you can get hold of fresh yeast then use that (you can get it behind the bakery counter in Sainsburys if you’re in the UK and it’s super cheap). If not, dried is fine.

For one loaf you’ll need:

250g wholemeal flour
250g white flour
30g melted unsalted butter
10g salt
20g fresh yeast or 7g dried yeast
300ml lukewarm water
20g sugar

Put the sugar, salt and flours into a bowl, don’t sieve the wholemeal flour as you’ll separate the husk which you want, and add the yeast.

Melt the butter in a saucepan and add it, along with the water to the dry ingredients

Mix together until it has formed a ball and then tip out onto a worktop and begin to knead

Knead the dough until it’s smooth, then put it into a bowl,

cover with cling film and leave somewhere warm and cosy until it’s doubled in size about an hour, then punch it (seriously) to knock all the air out and form it into a ball again, this time on a floured tray and put it back in that same place until it’s doubled in size again, about 45 mins. It should be pretty comfortable there by now. Once it’s looking like it’s nearly done, preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

If you want to, i did, you can make some cuts in the top and then dust it with flour just before you put it in the oven. Cook it for about 30 mins, until the outside is crisp and sounds hollow when you tap it. Leave to cool on a wire rack and then tuck in.

The weekend passed pretty uneventfully on the food front so come monday morning i was back on the baking wagon. To start out with, i decided to make a crumble. We had people coming over for lunch and i was given a 30 minute dessert warning, somehow i didn’t do what i usually do and panic and crumble popped into my head. Once you have a basic crumble topping down, you can pretty much go anywhere with it, you can change up the fruit, add spices, nuts, whatever. For this one I just went simple as i was limited on time.
This will serve 4 greedy people:

1 punnet strawberries
2 punnets blueberries
zest 1 lemon
1tsp caster sugar
175g flour
75g butter
75g sugar ( i used demerera for this one)

Firstly, preheat the oven to 200C/400F. Chop the strawberries into small chunks, so they’re not much bigger than the blueberries and sprinkle over the zest of a lemon and 1tsp caster sugar. put into an ovenproof dish.

Next make the crumble topping, rub the butter into the flour until it looks like wet sand

Stir through the sugar and sprinkle the topping over the fruit.

Pop into the oven for about 30 minutes and take it out once the top is getting crispy and the fruit is jammy and bubbling up the sides. This one’s such a crowd pleaser and it’s so easy to do. You can either just serve this with a scoop of shop-bought ice cream or you can go the extra mile and make some creme anglaise (custard) to go with it. This takes seconds but it’ll impress everyone so if you can be bothered, i’d recommend it.

250ml cream
60g caster sugar
60g egg yolk
vanilla pod/ vanilla extract

Put the cream in a saucepan and heat until it just starts to bubble round the edges then add the vanilla and remove from the heat. In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until pale and creamy looking.

Pour half the hot cream onto the egg mixture and whisk before adding the whole lot back into the pan and stir over a low heat until it reaches coating consistency. This means that if you draw a line though the mixture on the back of a spoon, it holds, like this

That’s it. you’re done, all you need to do now is either serve it straight away and gobble it all up or, if you’re not eating it straight away, pour it into a jug and put a piece of cling film directly onto the surface to prevent a skin forming.