A Grand Celebration!

Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of my only sister's death from stomach cancer.  A sad day but also one for remembering happy times. It also happened to be that I had just got to the point of being about to make the long-awaited one thousandth new recipe since my New Year's resolution of 2008.  I think that was karma.  So I started thinking about what to make.  It had to be special and it had to reflect her.  She was a massive fan of eating and drinking, like me, and even though in the final fortnight of her life when she was in a local hospice and was surviving on little more than ice lollies, she still had tea and cake when people visited, just to be sociable, even though she only managed a few crumbs and sips.

One thing she was famous for was her tiramisu.  Even bona fide Italians raved about it!  I didn't make tiramisu for several years after she died because it wouldn't be as good as hers, but eventually I did make it, and also a Bailey's version. It WAS good, but not as good as hers.  So the 1000th recipe couldn't be that as I had already made it. I always have at least one friend round on her anniversary, to drink bubbly and eat cake, so I thought about doing a gateau, in the gateau chapter of my favourite cake book was.... a tiramisu gateau! Decision made.

Several adaptations later (using a normal sponge instead of a genoese sponge as I've found the latter to be a bit unreliable) and dark chocolate kitkats around the edge instead of chocolate cigarillo biscuits, all was planned.  Two Victoria sponges were cut in half to make a four layer cake. Each layer was drizzled with a syrup made from instant espresso powder, water, sugar and Tia Maria.  I was worried that there was too much syrup and that it would be too wet but in hindsight I could have added more.  In the end I put the extra syrup in a jug and it got poured over the slices of cake as it was eaten, depending on your preference for sogginess of cake and intensity of coffee and liqueur. The layers were sandwiched together with mascarpone cream (egg yolks and sugar whisked together over simmering water, then mixed with the cheese and double cream) and the whole thing was then refrigerated.  It didn't look all that impressive at this stage:

However, that all changed with the assembly.  A final layer of mascarpone cream was spread on the top and sides of the cake and cocoa powder dredged over the top. I used 22 two-finger dark chocolate kitkats around the edge and finished with a gold ribbon that my daughter had bought in her lunch break from college in Stamford.

Shared with friends, it was a great success, in fact my son actually gave it ten out of five!!  I think a fitting tribute to happy memories of an amazing person.  I still miss Friday "wine and crisp" nights with my sister, and often wish I'd been able to share my new recipe adventures with her.

The rest of the gateau was taken into work today and happily polished off by my two assistants, the IT team and several other highly deserving NHS workers in need of sugar and caffeine.  I'm not going to stop at a thousand recipes, even if my Jamie Oliver notebook which contains the list of recipes get full.  There's still so much inspiration out there.. so many recipes, so little time.  I really want to live to be 100 and see how many I've got to by then.

Thank you for reading,

Caroline x

Recipe Gin-spiration!

Gin drinking has suddenly gone all trendy, but I have always loved it. It may have started when when I was small, and came downstairs after bedtime once on my parents' wedding anniversary.  They were drinking gin and tonic and having smoked salmon sandwiches, and I interrupted their post-children-in-bed celebration, but they didn't mind!  It was such a glamourous and grown-up thing, and something I aspired to do when I was a grown up. When eventually I was allowed to try it I really liked the botanical flavours. Over the years I have learned a lot more about the history of gin drinking, the distilling process and the differences between the many types of gins on the market, and I've got a small gin cupboard with my favourite four (as below, plus my new bottle of my newest favourite the beautiful Brockmans), quality rather than quantity being all important.  I've also had a go at using it as an ingredient, and have found loads of gin-spiration for the future, such as using it when curing salmon.  In the past I've cured salmon with vodka and beetroot, but I discovered an amazing recipe for gravlax using a blackberry and sloe gin cure - I HAVE to try that soon.  

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fish-recipes/sloe-gin-gravlax/ 

It's also great in desserts, I've made a gin and tonic granita with apple caramel drizzled over, which balanced the gin flavour really well.  This was a Tom Kerridge recipe, it's like a sort of grown-up slush puppie!!  Obviously you can make it look more sophisticated with the presentation.

Some gin-loving friends came for dinner last weekend, and they suggested a cherry and gin shortbread ripple ice cream recipe for the dessert.  I've been put off ice cream making in the past due to not having an ice cream maker but have recently discovered the amazing thing that is NO CHURN ice cream.  Basically it's just double cream, condensed milk and flavourings. Whisk together, adding flavourings before or after depending on if you want them broken up or in chunks, and freeze!  You need to let it warm up slightly before serving though. The aforementioned cherry and gin ice cream turned out fabulously, with maraschino cherries and shortbread biscuits in (see photo - not my image but mine did look the same), and I have since experimented with a vanilla bean paste flavoured raspberry and blackcurrant jam doughnut ice cream which got top marks from my son. He assured me that it really did taste exactly like jam doughnuts - probably because they were simply chopped up and stirred in...

I also want to try gin and tonic cupcakes - I'll keep you posted.  Don't forget to drink (and eat!) responsibly.

Thank you for reading,

Caroline.

The ultimate sandwich (and a festive picnic).

When looking at the festive issues of the foodie magazines this year, one recipe jumped out at me - and believe it or not it was a sandwich!  This wasn't just any old sandwich, but rather "The King Of Toasties", the ham, cheese and chilli beetroot chutney toastie.  Upon reading the recipe it wasn't even toasted, but fried and baked and contained an estimated 577 calories.  And I HAD to make it.

Sandwiches are named after John Montague, 4th Earl of Sandwich, an 18th century English aristocrat.  He apparently wanted to eat whilst playing cards without getting the cards greasy, so he ordered his valet to put meat between two slices of bread.  The sandwich can be a humble thing, or a culinary extravaganza, and are also very good for using up leftovers at this time of the year (cheese?  gammon? turkey? even roast potatoes and bread sauce has been known in our house).  In fact, you can make any meal into a sandwich, and any sandwich into a meal! Although it's not all that easy with spaghetti bolognese.  I speak from experience. Also I remember once at work we all tried to describe our lunchtime sandwich in the most "Marks-and-Spencer-like" way to make each one sound more grand than it actually was.

Anyway, back to toastie making.  My daughter makes great toasties, often involving ham, cheese and pesto, which I love, and she does them under the grill, but clearly the making of this particular toastie was not going to be a straightforward affair.  I started by making the beetroot and chilli chutney. This involved grating raw beetroot and cooking it in red wine vinegar with chillies, sugar, black mustard seeds, cumin seeds, salt, garlic and shallots until reduced and syrupy.  I did the chutney part a few days before and kept it in the fridge.

When it came to the assembly, I used chunky slices of "tin bread" from the supermarket and buttered them.  My daughter and I had a toastie each so two slices were placed in a hot frying pan butter side down and topped with chutney, ham and grated cheddar cheese.  I also added dolcelatte to mine as I happened to have some in the house, but my daughter doesn't like blue cheese so we left it out of hers. The other two slices of bread were put on top, butter side up.  After frying for 5 minutes each side while squashing with a fish slice to get them good and brown, the finishing touch of grated parmesan was added and a further flip and fry to crisp the cheese was had before they went in the oven for 5 minutes to properly melt the cheese inside.  And so the best "toasted" sandwich was enjoyed...

This year we didn't have a conventional Christmas dinner, but instead a relaxed "family living room picnic for eleven", enjoyed with assorted relations at my parent's house. It did include pigs in blankets though, as my daughter insisted it wouldn't be Christmas without pigs in blankets.  She was also handed the family sausage roll baton by my Mum, who was not up to cooking as she is recovering from surgery. All involved families contributed to the feast, including me, though only one new recipe was forthcoming this year, the red velvet and chocolate layer cake.  It was layers of red velvet sponge and chocolate sponge sandwiched (tenuous link anyone?!) together with cream cheese icing and topped with raspberries, pistachios and a flourish of glitter and gold.

Not having a roast or too many timings to worry about was great, we cooked the pigs in blankets, warmed up the sausage rolls and baked a camembert, and had the sprouts on boxing day.  It was a triumph! And there was a lot of left over cheese for more sandwiches, though the gammon seemed to have disappeared...

Wishing my readers every happiness for 2017.  I didn't get to 1000 new recipes since 2008, I've been busy having other adventures out of the kitchen, but I'll get there eventually.

Caroline x

Ready? Get set... go!

This weekend I made mango and lime panna cotta, and when I bought the gelatine leaves the checkout assistant at the supermarket said she didn't get on with gelatine and asked me for advice.  She'd had a problem that I'd experienced in the past with undissolved gelatine lumps in her finished Bailey's cheesecake which were a bit weird and put her off using gelatine again.  I told her the way to avoid this (having been there!) was to make sure the gelatine was properly dissolved in the mixture.  This is even more important if you're using gelatine powder, in which case you can put the dissolved gelatine/water through a tea strainer before adding to the mixture.  I find leaves do give a better result though.

This got me thinking, why not write a post on all things that need setting - and having been inspired with the genius title, here we are!  As well as cheesecake, which has already had an entire post devoted to it, I've used gelatine in mousses, fools, jellies (on their own and in trifle), and in other panna cotta recipes including a green tea one which went with my tuile biscuits (they also had their own blog post).

My finest jelly moment was a Pimm's jelly:

The jelly itself was made with leaf gelatine, water, sugar, orange and lemon juices and obviously Pimms; and strawberries and other fruit plus cucumber in it. It looks like it's levitating in the photo but it's a glass cake stand. Another example pictured below is a strawberry and lemon mousse cake:

We also love mousses, sometimes served in a teacup for a different presentation. My daughter's favourite is white chocolate and mint (a Nigella recipe) and mine is Nigel Slater's white chocolate and cardamom.

Today's panna cotta was on the whole a success, and consisted of a mango puree layer using tinned mango slices, and a cream, sugar and lime zest layer. There WAS a small blip in the proceedings when I was trying to turn them out.  I dipped one of the dariole moulds in a dish of boiling water to loosen, but the water was so deep couldn't pick it out again so tried using tongs.  It slipped and went upside down in the water!  I did manage to rescue it though and put it back in the fridge.  Note to self,more oil in the moulds next time. 

Of course, you don't need gelatine to set things, and it isn't suitable for vegetarians either, being made out of "various animal raw materials" as Wikipedia delicately puts it! You can use agar, whisked egg whites and lemon juice can also be used to stiffen mixtures, such as in some cheesecakes and a raspberry and rose tart I once made.

Worst case scenario if things don't set, you can always change the serving presentation and pretend it was meant to be "deconstructed"!

Thank you for reading, more soon I hope.

Caroline x

Era Squisito! A taste of Italy...

Sorry I haven't posted for months, it's been a busy year one way and another.  

I recently braved my first single parent holiday abroad; and it was pretty much a success, especially with regard to the food, and has given me ideas for my own home cooking. We chose Lake Garda in Italy, partly because of my son having been learning all about Italy for a recent school topic, and partly because of the promise of authentic pizza, pasta and ice cream.  We weren't disappointed!

"Era Squisito" means "That was delicious" in Italian, and it trips off the tongue beautifully, much like the food we experienced. The hotel we stayed in was only 3 star, and we stayed half board, but there was a good choice of delicious menu options - and the children were very impressed at having a three course (and on the last night four course) meal every evening. I have been ordered to up my game a bit now we're home again.  Bearing this in mind, I'm attempting to do three courses on Sundays. Also, they had the most delicious lemonade we had ever tasted, and a choice of half bottles of wine for the single parent traveller, including Bardolino (from the next town - we walked there to find ice cream parlour - of more later).

We had countless varieties of pasta with all kinds of sauces, from seafood linguine to small ravioli filled with pears and cheese in a sage butter sauce.  We had the best spaghetti bolognese ever. We had scorpionfish, and Italian style cold roast beef with lemon and olive oil. Plus there was pizza.It was all good, but here are two extremes, the street food option (in this case with tuna, anchovies and olives) and the posher restaurant version with breasola, black truffle, raw fennel shavings and parmesan.

As aforementioned, one day we walked to the next town, Bardolino, to find the renowned Cristallo Gelateria, which sold over 50 varieties of ice cream, even Pokemon flavour! Mine is pictured below, a scoop each of amaretti and pistachio. It was divine!

I also discovered the delights of the Aperol spritz, a low alcohol cocktail perfect for drinking before dinner, the "aperitivo" which is a mixture of bitter orange, rhubarb and some secret ingredients - is mixed with part soda water and part prosecco and served with plenty of ice. My daughter said "Mum, why have you got Irn Bru with a green straw?" I've had it at home since, I didn't have enough Euro to buy a bottle at the airport but it was actually cheaper on Amazon than from the duty free so I bought it on my phone while waiting at the departure gate.

On the final night, there was a gala dinner outside with four courses and live entertainment, and I moved on to more than one bottle of prosecco for the single parent traveller:

Also, I didn't drink tea for an entire week!  Those who know me may find this hard to believe, but I embraced coffee for the whole holiday, even though the local bus station put a sign out every morning advertising "Real English Tea"!  I found that even the coffee from vending machines was pretty good.

One thing we didn't have in Italy was Tiramisu. Next time. I have made it at home though, in memory of my late sister, who made the best tiramisu ever.  I've also made a slightly less glamourous version using sweet sherry instead of marsala wine - and ginger nut biscuits instead of sponge fingers, with stem ginger in syrup in and on the top. I also didn't manage to have a Bellini, even though we did go to Venice and see Harry's bar (where it was invented) from the outside...

I'll sign off with my favourite Italian proverb: "Anni e bicchieri di vino non si contano mai" - "Age and glasses of wine should never be counted".

Thank you for reading.  The new recipes have slowed down, and it is seeming unlikely that I will get to 1000 by the end of the year, but you never know.

Caroline :-) 

Hey Pesto!

Green is my favourite colour.  It's the colour of spring, grass, leaves and all things fresh and new. And I have always loved pesto ever since I discovered it. I don't remember exactly when that was, but it was after I had left home so I would be in my twenties at least... Ready made pesto is good (especially rocket pesto) but home made is a completely different thing entirely, and there is so much scope for experimentation.

Tonight I made sprouting broccoli and pea pesto to have with gnocchi (little potato dumplings).  I have made gnocchi before, basically they are just mashed potato and flour shaped into little mini-egg sized ovals and texturised with a fork so they hold the sauce better. But that's not a weeknight thing, so tonight we used ready made gnocchi. I got inspired by the photo in a foodie magazine, and my son was a willing helper, maybe because Italy is his school topic this term, so we gave it a go.  The reason why this particular pesto tasted so fresh is that the ingredients are hardly cooked.  Sprouting broccoli and frozen peas were blanched in a bowl of boiling water for a couple of minutes and then whizzed to a rough paste in the processor with a big bunch of basil, a big bunch of flat-leaf parsley, olive oil, seasoning, grated parmesan, a few anchovy fillets, the zest and juice of a lemon and a couple of cloves of garlic:

Then all we had to do was cook the gnocchi for a couple of minutes until they rose to the surface of the water, drain them, mix with the pesto, top with parmesan shavings (tip - use a potato peeler) and voila! Or whatever the Italian is for voila!!  I thought afterwards it might have been improved by pine nuts sprinkled on top, but my daughter isn't keen on nuts.  

In the past I've made pea pesto and used it to stuff chicken breast fillets or spread on top of salmon before oven baking.  I've also made the traditional basil and pine nut version; and an amazing hazelnut pesto that I drizzled on top of a caramelised carrot risotto.  You can vary the herbs, nuts and the level of garlic and lemon to suit your personal taste. It is much easier with a food processor.  Sometimes I use the mini bowl if I'm only making a small quantity.  You can also do it with a stick blender, but I've found a "goblet" style blender doesn't work very well unless you keep stopping it and shoving the herbs down with the end of a wooden spoon...

I do get the feeling there is more experimenting to do before I find pesto perfection!

Thank you for reading,

Caroline x

Made from Girders?

I'm not scared of much (I have children!) But one of the few things I really don't like is strong winds.  And to take my mind of the stormy weather recently, what better than a bit of therapeutic baking?  My daughter is a big fan of Irn Bru, and I have drunk it now and again since my childhood, when my Grandma used to have it delivered by the "Pop Man" in returnable bottles. In fact, along with prunes, it was a pregnancy craving both times I was pregnant! Anyway, when I saw a recipe for Irn Bru cupcakes, I decided to have a go.

To start with, you have a reduce the Irn Bru to make syrup, and a lot, 500ml of Irn Bru makes 50ml of syrup.  Basically you just put it in a pan and half an hour or so of boiling later, you get this, half a litre reduced to less than a shot glass full, and it got thicker as it cooled:

To make the cake mixture, mix 120g plain flour, 100g caster sugar and 1 and a half teaspoons of baking powder, add 40g room temperature butter and mix with electric mixer (the trusty kitchenaid) until resembling sand.  Gradually add 50ml milk; then whisk another 50ml milk with a large egg and half the Irn Bru syrup and beat into the mixture. Divide between cupcake cases (handy tip, use an ice cream scoop) - don't fill more than half full - I had an overflow situation going on with some of the batch later - and bake at 170 degrees C for 20 minutes. There was enough mixture to make eight rather than the quoted six.

Here's where I deviated from the recipe.  In the past I have used a sugar (or lemon) syrup to pour over the cooked cakes before icing, to keep them moist, as there is NOTHING worse than a dry cupcake. So I had the genius idea of pouring some (non-reduced) Irn Bru - only a wee bit - over the cooked cakes.  I made holes in them with a skewer first so it could get in properly.

After cooling, they were iced with butter icing (50g of butter to 200g icing sugar) with the rest of the Irn Bru syrup added. You could add orange food colouring if you wanted a deeper colour but I quite liked the pale orange you got with just the colour from the syrup.  The icing was a bit stiff so I added one tablespoon of the non-reduced Irn Bru to loosen it a bit. Finishing touch was the blue decorations to reflect the blue on the bottle label.

I was pretty pleased with the result, you can definitely taste the Irn Bru, but maybe next time I'll double the syrup and put extra colouring in the icing, and I might use blue sugar crystals for decoration.  A definite 4 out of 5 though.

My son liked them, but he is more of a Mountain Dew fan, and has asked me to invent Mountain Dew cupcakes next...

I'll keep you posted.

Thank you for reading,

Caroline :-)