Roasted romanesco with chilli and soy

This makes a nice side dish, or can be served with rice for a quick mid-week supper. The vegetables take about 15 minutes to cook, which is just long enough to get some water on and cook the rice. The recipe (Annie O'Carroll's Roast Calabrese with Chilli and Soy) appears in the Riverford Farm Cook Book and works equally well with romanesco.

Cut the romanesco (or broccoli) into florets, toss in olive oil, and roast in a 200℃ oven. After 10 minutes, add 2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced, a hot red chilli, finely chopped, and a teaspoon of sesame seeds. Roast for a further 5 minutes, remove from the oven, season generously with soy sauce, and serve immediately.

I find this works best with smaller florets (so you get more crunchy bits). If the vegetables aren't cooked enough for your taste, you could increase the initial cooking time to 12-15 minutes, but don't cook for more than 5 minutes after the garlic has been added as it will burn and become bitter.

Book review: Cooking for Geeks

My shelves are groaning under the weight of cookery books, but there aren't many I've read from cover to cover. "Cooking for Geeks" is one of those gems that is both an excellent reference manual and a good read. While this book does contain some recipes (100 or so), it's not the one to buy if you're looking for a recipe book. Recipes give you quantities of ingredients and step by step instructions for transforming those ingredients into great meals. This book goes some way to explaining the whys and wherefores of each of those steps. Once you have an understanding of the processes involved in cooking and preparing food - and the science behind them - you can start adapting recipes and inventing new ones. You'll know when an ingredient can be substituted, and what with. You'll know when a step in a recipe can be skipped. You'll start to spot - and correct for - mistakes in published recipes.

The book encourages us to treat our kitchens as our own personal chemistry lab, and it builds the confidence we need to start experimenting.  Most important of all, it encourages us to have fun with our cooking. A geeky humour runs throughout the book, with the title of the first chapter, "Hello, kitchen," setting the tone. Of course there’s some serious stuff in here too, including an essential section on food safety and foodborne illness.

I'm surprised at just how much information has been packed into the 400 pages of this book. Want to know how to pasteurize an egg? The temperature collagen starts to break down when you cook meat? Where to find enzymes that will do the same job? It’s all in here. (See http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596805890/ for the full table of contents.)

There are also plenty of helpful tips along the way. I now cook pancakes without any fat in the pan. You need a good non-stick pan to do this, but they cook more evenly this way. And on the gadget front, I’m looking out for a compressed gas cream whipper so I can try foamed scrambled eggs and instant chocolate mousse.

As expected, the chemicals used to make the foams, spheres, and heat-stable gels of molecular gastronomy make an appearance, and the book gives a good introduction to sous vide cooking. This is where food is vacuum-sealed in a plastic bag (the "sous vide" part) and cooked in a temperature-controlled water bath, a method of cooking used extensively in top restaurants where consistency is key. Sous vide is gaining popularity in domestic kitchens, with the first water bath aimed at the domestic consumer arriving on the European market just a couple of months ago. My friends thought I was crazy when I spent almost a month’s salary on a water bath and vacuum packing machine earlier this year, but once you’ve tried fillet steak cooked sous vide (a perfect medium rare throughout) and confit pork cheeks (cooked gently in goose fat for 36 hours), there’s no turning back.

If you’re really interested in the science of cooking, you’ll want Harold McGee’s “On Food and Cooking” on your shelves and perhaps “The Science of Cooking” by Peter Barham. But you can’t have too many cookery books, and “Cooking for Geeks” is a very readable introduction to the subject with plenty of light-hearted diversions to keep it from getting too dry.  I particularly enjoyed the interviews and guest appearances by some of my favourite food bloggers -  it was like having old friends around.

The author sums up my feelings brilliantly in the afterword:

"Curiosity and the joy of discovering how something works are two of a geek's defining characteristics. I can think of very few other things that have brought me as much joy as learning to cook and providing for others. It scratches the same neurons that solving a puzzle or producing a brilliant piece of code does, but tastes better and often takes less time - not to mention that you can do it for other people and make them happy too!"

Some of my geek friends might find a copy in their seasonal festive stockings this year. Now, back to the kitchen.

This review appeared in the December 2010 issue of news@uk, the newsletter of UKUUG, the UK's Unix and Open Systems User Group.

Venison ragù

This dish was inspired by one of the entries to November's "In the Bag" blogging challenge. Phil, over at As Strong as Soup, chose venison for the challenge and made a tasty-looking venison pasta sauce. You can see his recipe here. I adapted it slightly for the ingredients I had in the house (I had already drunk all the gin). It also gave me an excuse to try out my new toy: a mincer attachment for the Kenwood Chef.

I ordered a selection of venison from Riverford Organic back in the autumn (it's only available for a short season) and had some diced venison in the freezer. Once it had defrosted, I pushed it through the medium mincer blade of the Kenwood. It worked a treat, but you have to watch out for sinew that will clog it up. If you don't have a mincer, you could follow Phil's lead and simply chop the meat finely (you could use a food processor for this).

Start by making a boquet garni by tying up some crushed bay leaves, juniper berries and black peppercorns in muslin. Pour about 1/2 bottle of red wine over the minced (or chopped) venison, and tuck in your boquet garni. Leave in the fridge for a few hours, or overnight, then drain over a bowl, reserving the wine and boquet garn.

Heat some oil in a wide pan, and fry 4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon, cut into lardons, until it starts to render its fat. Next add the drained meat and cook over a medium heat until it takes on some colour. Add a medium onion, two sticks of celery, and a large carrot, all finely diced. Give it a good stir, then add 2 crushed garlic cloves and cook for 5-10 minutes more. Pour over the reserved wine, add the boquet garni, a tin of chopped plum tomatoes and 1/2 litre chicken stock. Once it comes up to a simmer, reduce the heat to low and cover the pan.

Let it cook gently for at least 2 hours, stirring occasionally, and adding more chicken stock or water if it looks too dry. I removed the boquet garni about halfway through, as I was worried that the juniper was getting too strong. The flavours will concentrate as the sauce cooks, so it's best to season at the end. I added salt, freshly ground black pepper, and a glug of Worcestershire sauce.

This made a delicious and tender pasta sauce. I served it with spaghetti, but it would also have been great in a lasagne.

Afterthoughts

I'm not sure it was necessary to marinate the meat before cooking. It makes it difficult to get the meat dry enough to brown when you fry it, and there's plenty of cooking time for the wine and bouquet garni to contribute their flavours to the sauce. I'll skip the marinade next time (but that will have to wait for next year's venison season).

A dinner party for vegetarians

A couple of months ago I bought Yotam Ottoletghi's "Plenty" with a view to broadening my vegetarian cooking repertoire. It came in handy last weekend when Eran and Melanie came to dinner. We started with a beetroot, goat's cheese, orange and watercress salad dressed with freshly squeezed orange juice and olive oil.

Next came roasted winter vegetable cous cous from the Ottolenghi book. There aren't many recipes in this book for which I have all the ingredients in the house. For this one, I had to buy preserved lemons and harissa paste (I know they could both have been made at home, but I had left it too late deciding on the menu). Carrots, parsnips, shallots, and squash are tossed in spices (cinnamon, star anise, bay, ginger, turmeric, paprika, and dried chilli flakes) and olive oil, and roasted. Then dried apricots, chick peas, and preserved lemons are stirred through. It's finished with a couple of spoons of harissa paste and topped with chopped fresh coriander. The spices give an interesting twist to what might otherwise be boring winter vegetables. It went down a treat with my guests.

To finish, I served chocolate fondants with parsnip ice cream.

The idea was that the parsnip ice cream would contrast with the bitter chocolate in the fondant. It didn't work for me and, although Eran liked it, I don't think I'll be making it again.

Bacon and goat's cheese pizza

I found myself in London a couple of weeks ago with a bit of time to kill. What better than a visit to Neal's Yard Dairy in Covent Garden? I was quite restrained, and came away with only two cheeses. One of them was the Childwickbury goat's cheese that found its way onto this pizza.

This cheese was recommended by the shop assistant for a goat's cheese custard I planned to cook for some friends who would be visiting the following weekend.  It's a lovely fresh, zesty, cheese that I'm sure would have worked wonderfully in the custard - if only cheese could last a whole week in my house. It worked brilliantly on the pizza, along with some bacon lardons, a basic tomato sauce, and a mix of grated mozzarella, cheddar and parmesan. The custard (which I planned to serve as a sauce for broccoli) will have to wait...

A partridge (but no pear tree)

I should have been visiting my friends Sébastien and Laurène in Toulouse at the weekend, but the weather here in the UK conspired against me and my flight was cancelled at the last minute. I was half-way to the airport when I learned about the cancellation, so found myself with some time to kill in central London.

This would have been the perfect excuse for another visit to St John, only they were fully booked that lunchtime. Fortunately there are plenty of good places to eat in London, and Corrigan's was happy to oblige with a table. Being in Mayfair, this is a bit more upmarket than St John, and the food a bit more dainty. It's more expensive, too, unless you go for the market menu, which is very tempting and excellent value for money at just £27 for three courses and a 250ml carafe (a.k.a. large glass) of wine.

The offerings on the à la carte menu were more tempting, though, and I opted for a partridge dish: roast breast and confit leg served with pumpkin ravioli. It was very good, but not quite perfect: one half of the breast was nicely cooked, but the other half a bit dry and tough, and the confit leg was extremely dry. Could I improve on this at home? I thought both breast and legs would benefit from sous vide cooking.

My local butcher (Barker Brothers in Great Shelford) had some nice looking partridges in the window, so I snapped one up for my experiment. Roasting a whole bird is always a challenge, as the time and temperature needed to cook the tougher leg meat will dry out the tender breasts - hence Corrigan's approach of cooking the two separately. Following his lead, I removed the legs and breasts from the carcass and prepared the legs for confit. (The breasts were simply brushed with olive oil, seasoned, vacuum packed, and put to one side in the fridge.)

To make the confit, start by salting the legs. About 1tbsp coarse salt and some crushed bay or thyme leaves will do, but I used some of the cure left over from my last batch of home-made bacon (a mix of salt, sugar, bay leaves, peppercorns and juniper). Toss the legs in the cure and set aside in the fridge for at least 12, but no more than 24, hours.

It would be a shame to waste that carcass, so it went into the pressure cooker with some roughly chopped onion, leeks, celery, carrots, parsley stalks, peppercorns and a litre of water. 30 minutes at high pressure and you have partridge stock. Strain, cool, and refrigerate until needed.

When they've had their time in the cure, remove the legs from the fridge, rinse off the cure, and dry thoroughly on kitchen towel. Vaccum pack with a good dollop of goose fat and transfer to a 68℃ water bath.

After 24 hours, reduce the temperature of the water bath to 62℃ (add some cold water to bring the temperature down), and add the breasts. They will be ready in an hour. To finish, drain and dry the legs and pan-fry to crisp the skin. Drain the breasts and pan-fry to colour, then rest for 10 minutes.

I served these with fondant potatoes (cooked in the partridge stock), creamed cabbage, and a white wine butter sauce (made with the partridge stock and cooking juices). It turned out to be quite easy to separate the cooking juices from the goose fat floating on top: simply snip a small corner off the sous vide pouch and let the juices run out, pinching it shut as soon as you get to the fat. The reserved juices can be added to the sauce.

Corrigan's win on presentation, but I think my partridge was better cooked: both the leg and breast were moist and tender. That was quite a lot of effort (2 1/2 days) for one meal, but I have some stock and a little meat left over, so dinner tomorrow will be a nice quick risotto.

In the Bag: game

Submissions for November's "In the Bag" are now in, and Scott has collated the entries here. Along with my rabbit pie, there are two other rabbit recipes, a hare ragu from Scott, two pheasant recipes, a venison pasta sauce, pressure-cooked quail, and peri peri ostrich.

The venison pasta sauce looks good, and I think I'll have a go at that. I've got some diced venison in the freezer, and it will make a change from another pie.

I'm curious to know how the pressure-cooked quail turned out. It's quite a delicate meat and McGee, in his latest book "Keys to Good Cooking", tells us "...avoid pressure-cooking most meats. The high temperature does tenderize tough connective tissue, but also squeezes out the meat's moisture and leaves it dry and stringy." I'm quite a fan of pressure cooking and, if the quail isn't too dry after the pressure cooking, this would be a nice recipe to add to the repertoire.

Potato cakes

The recipe for these potato pancakes comes from Jane Grigson's "English Food". I cooked them on a cast iron skillet which, as you can see from the photo, does not heat evenly. I'll try a non-stick aluminium frying pan next time. That said, the dark crusty patches did not detract from the enjoyment.

For each 450g cooked potatoes, you will need 30g butter, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking powder, 125g flour and (optional) 1 beaten egg.

If you are using freshly cooked potatoes, mash them (or push them through a ricer) with the butter while they are still hot. If you're using leftovers, you'll have to melt the butter separately.  Combine all the ingredients and mix together quickly, adding more flour if necessary to make a soft - but not sticky - dough. Roll out about 5mm thick and cut into rounds. Fry on a greased skillet until nicely browned, turning over halfway through cooking. The total cooking time will be 10-15 minutes, but you'll have to lower the heat and cook a little longer if you make them thicker.

Grigson tells us "...eat immediately, rolling the cakes like pancakes round little sticks of salty butter." She knows what she's talking about.

Run rabbit, run!

November's "In the Bag" blogging challenge is hosted by Scott over at The Real Epicurean. The rules of the challenge are simple: cook something using the ingredients in the bag and write a blog post about it.

This month Scott has given us game. This gave me the perfect excuse to use my kitsch rabbit cutter for the first time and to dig out a recipe from one of my favourite chefs, Fergus Henderson.  The recipe, from Henderson's Beyond Nose to Tail, is one of several to use his trotter gear. This is a rich stock made from pig's trotters cooked in Madeira and chicken stock. It's easy to make (you can find a recipe here), but you will probably have to give your butcher a few days' notice to get hold of pig's trotters. If you're a regular customer, you might even get them for free. I tend to make a big batch of trotter gear a couple of times a year and keep it in handy-sized tubs in the freezer. I pulled out my last tub for this recipe.

The rabbits that found themselves in Andrew Northrop's butcher's shop on Cambridge's Mill Road - and thence my pie - hadn't run fast enough. The butcher offered to joint them for me, but I prefer to do this myself as I usually end up with fewer small fragments of bone to pick out. That said, rabbits have lots of tiny bones and I've yet to make a bone-free pie, so you need to be a little circumspect when eating.

To make the filling, brown the rabbit portions, a dozen peeled shallots, and a pound of diced smoked streaky bacon in goose fat. Add 1/2 bottle red wine, the trotter gear, and enough chicken stock to cover. I had some stock left over from cooking pork belly last week, so used this gelatinous goodness in place of the chicken stock. The pork belly had been brined before cooking which, along with the bacon, contributed enough salt that I didn't need to add any later.

Bring the liquid up to a simmer, then put a lid on the pan and transfer to a 160℃ oven for 2 hours. The meat should come away easily from the bones when it's done - if not, give it a bit longer in the oven. When it's cool enough to handle, pick the meat from the bones and tear it into bite-sized chunks. I usually find I have too much gravy at this stage, so I lifted out the meat with a slotted spoon and boiled the liquid to reduce it by about one third. Once you're happy with the proportion of meat to gravy, combine the lot, season to taste with salt and pepper, then cool and refrigerate overnight.

Transfer the filling to a large pie dish and cover with suet pastry -  made with fresh suet if you can get it. Brush with beaten egg and decorate liberally with pastry rabbits before baking in a 220℃ oven for 30-40 minutes. Made with two rabbits, this pie serves six.

Devilled kidneys

This little treat came about after some pressure selling at the Fowlmere farmers' market (2nd Saturday of the month in the village hall). I was actually shopping for mutton neck to make some broth, but someone had beaten me to it. As I was turning to leave the stall, the farmer asked "Would you like some lamb kidneys?" I hadn't made devilled kidneys for an age,  so snapped them up for £1.

The "devil" in the kidneys comes from mustard and cayenne pepper, and is mellowed a little by a splash of cream to finish the sauce. I served them with creamy mashed potatoes, cavolo nero, and swede, but they take just 5 minutes to cook so could be served with fried bread or toast for a quick snack. The following recipe is from The River Cottage Meat Book and serves 2:

• 4 lamb's kidneys, white core removed
• fat or oil for frying
• small glass sherry
• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar
• Worcestershire sauce
• large pinch cayenne pepper
• 1 tbsp hot English mustard
• 1 tbsp double cream
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cut the kidneys into quarters and fry in a little hot fat for a minute or so to brown them. Add the sherry, then a splash of wine vinegar, the Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper and mustard, salt and black pepper. Give it a good stir, and let it bubble and reduce until syrupy. Add the cream and reduce a minute or two more. The total cooking time should be around 4-5 minutes. Check the seasoning, adding more mustard or cayenne if you think it needs it. Serve right away.

Nigel Slater's beetroot poppy seed cake

...so good I made it twice. The recipe is included in Slater's Tender: v. 1, but it also appeared in the Guardian in 2007 and can be found online here.

It is a pretty good cake, but the other reason I made it a second time was to try out a simplification of the recipe. Slater calls for the eggs to be separated and the whites whipped until almost stiff, then folded into the other ingredients at the end. This seemed quite a faff (not to mention I now had three bowls to wash up). So second time around, I tried whisking up the (whole) eggs with the sugar until they reached ribbon stage, then gradually adding the oil with the mixer going. Once the oil is incorporated, the beetroot can be grated in directly, and the dry ingredients weighed straight into the wet and folded through: only one bowl to wash.

The texture and lightness of the cake didn't suffer noticeably for this economy, but the mixture was a bit wetter, perhaps causing the beetroot to migrate towards the bottom. There's nothing for it but to try the original method one more time to see if stiff whites prevent this.

Venison steak, beetroot and potato cake, cavolo nero

All this needed to finish it off was a nice red wine sauce, but I wasn't really in the mood for cooking this evening so made do without. The venison steak was cooked sous vide (30 minutes at 52℃) then finished on a ridged cast iron griddle. The 52℃ water bath ensures the meat is cooked nicely, just on the rare side of medium. The griddle is just for visual appeal and to get some nice Maillard flavours: get the griddle smoking hot then give the steaks about 10 seconds each side, rotate through 90° and repeat to get the cross-hatch pattern. Rest for 10 minutes before serving.

The beetroot potato cakes are based on an idea from the Riverford Farm Recipe Book. The recipe calls for equal quantities of potatoes and beetroot, a small onion, wine vinegar, soured cream, horseradish cream, salt and pepper. Luckily it's quite forgiving so I got away with using half a leek instead of the onion and double cream with a splash of lemon juice instead of soured cream.

To make: boil the potatoes, drain, and allow to steam dry. Meanwhile, finely chop the onion and peel and grate the beetroot. Melt some butter in a shallow pan, add the onion, and fry gently for a couple of minutes. Add the grated beetroot, a splash of wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Cook over a gentle heat, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes. You want to keep a bit of a bite to the beetroot.

Mash the potatoes or push them through a ricer, add the beetroot and horseradish (1-2 tsp to start with), and fold it all together with enough cream to bind. Check the seasoning - add a little lemon juice if you think it needs it, and more horseradish if you like it hot. I added a dollop of hot English mustard for good measure. Form into little cakes and dust with flour. Finally fry in hot butter until browned and crisp on both sides. These were delicious and would make a great light supper on their own.

Baked eggs with spinach

One of the pleasures of receiving a weekly organic box delivery is that you never know what you're going to get. You know it will be seasonal, you know it will have been farmed sustainably, and you know you can depend on the quality, but you're never sure just what will be in the box. This week a there was a little card telling me "We've had to replace the chard with spinach."

"Well," I thought, "that will make a nice little lunch." And it did, as you can see above.

Heat the oven to 170℃, then prepare the spinach. Wash well, remove the thick stems, then drop the leaves into a saucepan with just the water that clings to them. Place over a medium heat and give it a good stir so that all the leaves come into contact with the heat and begin to wilt. Put on a lid and leave to steam gently for 2-3 minutes. Drain in a colander, pressing out as much water as you can, then chop roughly. Melt a good knob of butter in the pan, add a splash of double cream and the spinach; season with salt, pepper and a little grated nutmeg, and give it a good stir to coat in the cream. A 500g pack of spinach looks a lot, but you'll find it's about right for two portions once it's cooked.

Lightly butter two ramekins. Spoon half the spinach into each ramekin and make an indentation with the back of the spoon. Crack in an egg, then drizzle about a tablespoon of double cream over each egg white (try to leave the yolks exposed). Place in a shallow oven tray and pour around enough boiling water to come about halfway up the ramekins. Transfer to the preheated oven and cook for 10-12 minutes: you're looking for a runny yolk and just-set white.

Add a final seasoning of salt and pepper, some crusty bread, and lunch is ready.

Pumpkin pie

Happy Halloween!

Pearl barley "risotto", cavolo nero, tangy goat's cheese

This is a tasty dish using cavolo nero (black kale) from Riverford, and tangy goat's cheese I picked up yesterday at Great Shelford farmers' market. It is made just like a risotto, with pearl barley taking the place of the rice. The barley should be rinsed in a couple of changes of cold water and soaked for an hour or so before cooking.


The following quantities will make one generous portion:

• 1/2 cup pearl barley, rinsed and soaked for 1 hour
• splash olive oil
• 30g butter
• 1 small onion or shallot, finely chopped
• 1/2 glass white wine
• 400ml vegetable stock
• 4-6 leaves cavolo nero, shredded
• goat's or ewe's milk cheese
• salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste

Heat the vegetable stock to simmering point. In a separate pan, warm a splash of olive oil with half the butter. Add the chopped onion with a good pinch of salt and cook gently, without colouring, until the onion is soft.

Drain the barley and add to the pan with the onion. Stir well to coat with the buttery juices. Cook for a minute or two, then add the wine, increase the heat, and cook until the wine is almost gone. Now add a ladle of the hot stock and cook, stirring frequently, until the stock has been absorbed. Keep adding the stock, a ladleful at a time, until the grains are almost cooked - you want to keep a bit of a bite to them. When you judge they are almost there, add a final ladle of stock and the cavolo nero, put a lid on the pan, and allow the greens to steam for 3 minutes.

Remove the lid and give it a good stir; if there's too much liquid for your liking, turn up the heat and quickly boil off the excess. Now beat in the rest of the butter and check the seasoning. It will need salt, plenty of freshly ground black pepper, and perhaps a squeeze of lemon. Serve right away with some tangy goat's or sheep's cheese crumbled on top.

This is great served with a peppery salad (watercress or rocket) and a crisp, dry white wine.

Apple Sauce Cake

...so good I baked it twice! Well, I have a lot of apples to get through, and I did take the first cake into the office to share.

I've been a fan of The Waltons since it was broadcast on British TV in the early 1980's, and one of the Walton children's favourite cakes was Olivia's apple sauce cake. So when I got home with my haul of windfall apples, I picked up  Leiths Baking Bible to see if they had a recipe. They do - along with recipes for 11 other apple cakes.

My windfall apples were sweeter than the cooking apples called for by Leith's, so I reduced the sugar by 50g and added the juice of half a lemon to sharpen it up a bit. First time around, I followed the recipe and added chopped, dried apricots to the mix, but I found their flavour a bit too dominant (perhaps because I used unsulphured apricots, which have a stronger, almost toffee-like flavour). For cake #2 I used raisins instead.

To make the apple sauce, wash and core (but do not peel) the apples, then roughly chop. Put into a pan with 1tbsp water, cover, and cook gently until pulpy. Stir occasionally while they cook, and make sure they don't dry out too much. I had to add a couple more good splashes of water while they cooked to stop them from catching on the bottom of the pan. Second time around, I made the apple sauce in a pressure cooker. To do this, place the chopped apples in the pressure cooker with the lemon juice and 280ml water, secure the lid, bring up to pressure and cook at high pressure for 4 minutes. Release the pressure, then strain the apples to remove the excess water. Whichever method you use, push the cooked apple pulp through a sieve to produce a smooth purée (the peel will be left behind).

Here's the recipe; if you're using sweet dessert apples, you can reduce the sugar by 50g.

Apple Sauce Cake

• 340g cooking apples
• juice of 1/2 lemon (optional, not in original recipe)
• 115g butter
• 225g caster sugar
• 225g plain flour
• 1 tsp ground mixed spice
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 175g raisins or chopped dried apricots
• 1 tbsp demerara sugar 

1. Make the apple purée as described above, and set aside to cool.
2. Preheat the oven to 180℃; grease and line a 17cm round cake tin.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
4. Sift in the flour, mixed spice, and bicarbonate of soda. Add the cooled apple purée and stir until well combined. Pour into the prepared tin.
5. Bake for 1 1/2 hours, until the cake is firm to the touch and a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. N.B. my cake was done after about an hour: keep an eye on yours as it bakes and test after an hour; the time it takes will depend on your oven and the size of the tin. Ten minutes before the end of cooking, sprinkle over the demerara sugar.
6. Cool in the tin for at least 10 minutes before turning out to cool on a wire rack.

This is a simple recipe that makes a moist cake that will keep well. The taste is good, but the apple flavour doesn't come through as much as I expected.

If you're a real Walton's devotee, you might want to try Olivia's recipe - that whiskey frosting can only be an improvement, but you'll have to track down the Baldwin sisters for some moonshine.

Squash soup

This soup is based on a recipe from jamie Oliver's TV series Jamie at Home, and makes good use of the pressure cooker to cook the soup quickly. It can also be made in an open pan on the stovetop, but you will have to increase the cooking time to around 40 minutes. This soup is great made with a sweet squash like butternut; the Parmesan cheese is optional, but I think it adds a nice depth of flavour. The crisp sage leaves used to garnish are made by frying fresh sage leaves for 2-3 minutes in olive oil then draining on kitchen paper. Press play below for the photo recipe.

In the bag: stuffed roasted squash, tomato sauce

Here's my contribution to this month's In the Bag food blogging challenge, hosted by Julia over at A Slice of Cherry Pie. The idea is to cook something using the ingredients "in the bag" - and any others you care to add. This month's ingredients are:

• mushrooms
• herbs
• nuts

My first thought was to make a nut roast with a layer of mushrooms running through the middle, served with a creamy mushroom sauce. But then I thought I should strive for something more original: how about a marrow stuffed with mushrooms and nuts, served with a vibrant tomato sauce? The only problem was, I didn't have a marrow to hand, but I did have plenty of squash. So here we have it: roasted squash stuffed with mushrooms, cashews, and fresh herbs, served with a quick tomato sauce.

To prepare the squash, peel and cut horizontally into generous 2.5cm slices; scoop out the seeds and any stringy bits with a spoon. If you're using a small round squash, you might just want to cut it in half horizontally and trim the ends (for stability). The idea is to put the stuffing in the space you make by scooping out the innards.

The squash takes longer to cook than the stuffing, so it is roasted for 20 minutes or so to part cook it before the stuffing is added.  Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle over some salt and pepper, and roast in a 190℃ oven, turning over half way through cooking. You can get on with the stuffing while the squash roasts.



For the stuffing

• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
• olive oil
• 100g chestnut mushrooms, diced
• 150g cashew nuts, roughly chopped
• 30g fresh white breadcrumbs
• 1 tsp finely chopped fresh sage
• 1 tbsp finely chopped fresh parsley
• 1 egg, beaten
• salt and pepper to taste

Gently cook the onion in the olive oil without colouring. After 3-4 minutes, add the garlic and cook for another couple of minutes. Put the onions to one side, wipe out the pan, and add some fresh oil. Bring to a high heat, add the mushrooms, and sautée until nicely coloured. Allow to cool slightly before mixing together with the other ingredients. Add enough egg just to bind the lot together, and season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. You might want to fry off a spoonful of the mixture to check the seasoning.

Remove the squash from the oven, spoon the stuffing into the cavity, then return to the oven to finish cooking (another 15 minutes or so).

For the tomato sauce

• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic finely chopped
• olive oil
• 450g fresh tomatoes, peeled
• OR 1 400g tin plum tomatoes
• 280ml vegetable stock or water
• pinch dried thyme
• bay leaf
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• salt and pepper to taste

This sauce is made in a pressure cooker, and takes only 5 minutes to cook once it comes up to pressure. It can be made in an ordinary saucepan on the hob, but you'll have to add an hour or so to the cooking time.

Warm the oil in the base of the pressure cooker, and cook the onion gently, without colouring. After 3-4 minutes, add the garlic and cook for another couple of minutes. Add the remaining ingredients, put on the lid, and bring quickly to high pressure. Cook for 5 minutes at high pressure, then remove from the heat and let the pressure drop slowly at room temperature. Carefully remove the lid, take out the bay leaf, then blitz the sauce with a hand blender until smooth. Pass through a sieve into a clean pan. Check the seasoning, and reheat to serving temperature.

To finish the dish, spoon a ladle of tomato sauce into the centre of a warm plate, and carefully place the cooked, stuffed squash on top. If you like, garnish with some sliced sautéed mushrooms and crispy sage leaves. The quantities given here will make about 4 portions.

The verdict

The mushrooms, cashews, and sage are a great combination, and would stand on their own as a nut roast. They went well with the tomato sauce, as did the roasted squash, but there was something jarring about all three on the plate. I think the sweetness of the sqaush was just too much: the blander-tasting marrow would have worked much better, perhaps with some thyme or tarragon in place of the sage.

The tomato sauce is a handy recipe to have up your sleeve: it can be served with other vegetables, with pasta, or used as a pizza topping - and the pressure cooker makes it a really quick.

Thank you, Julia, for the inspiration; I had a lot of fun cooking for this challenge.

Windfall

There was an apple tree in the garden of the house where I lived in Oxford. It produced more apples than I knew what to do with and it's something I miss at this time of year, when the English apple season is in full swing. I'm kicking myself now for buying apples to make chutney: for the last few weeks, I have been cycling past trees laden with apples ripe for the picking.

Don't ask me how I didn't notice them until now: there were apples all over the grass verge, overflowing onto the road itself. Today I stopped to look more closely and noticed that the windfall was not too badly damaged, so I picked up as many as I could carry. There are three different varieties, all sweet eating apples rather than cookers.

Leith's Baking Bible has recipes for twelve different apple cakes, and some of tonight's haul have already been turned into an apple sauce cake to take into the office tomorrow. Most of the rest are destined for chutney or apple jelly. There are plenty more where these came from, so I might get to try some of the other Leith's recipes before the season is out.

Pigeon

I don't remember what it was I went into the butcher's for, but I came out with a couple of pigeons. I thought they would make a nice autumn supper, along with some roasted beetroot from the veg box.

To cook the pigeon, I removed the breasts, vacuum packed them with a drizzle of olive oil and a grind of salt and pepper, then dropped them into a 58℃ water bath where they spent about half an hour. [Edit: I cooked the breasts from the second pigeon at 54℃; these were much more succulent, so I'll stick with the lower temperature from now on.] After drying them on some kitchen towel and flash-frying a few seconds each side in a really hot pan, they were set aside to rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Meanwhile, I chopped up the carcases and roasted them in a hot oven to give them some colour, then made a quick stock in the pressure cooker. In went the carcases along with a roughly chopped onion, carrot, celery stick, some leek tops, a bay leaf, black peppercorns, and a couple of crushed juniper berries. Enough chicken stock to cover, then on with the lid and slowly up to high pressure. After 30 minutes at high pressure the stock was ready for straining.

The rich sauce you see was made by gently frying a finely chopped shallot in some butter, then adding a glass of red wine and reducing until syrupy. Next a couple of ladlefuls of the hot stock, reducing some more, then straining. Finally, a teaspoon or so of finely grated Venezuelan Black 100% pure cacao and some seasoning.  Not bad for a Monday evening.

As an added bonus, the leftover stock and meat picked from the bones will make a delicious broth for lunch.

Squash

Where did September go? I managed to let a whole month go by without a blog post. I blame my friends for being born too close together: I've been to two 50th, a 40th and a 36th birthday get-together in the last month. We'll keep the karaoke quiet, as I'm sure that's what anyone within earshot was wishing for. On the food front, I was delighted to be invited to King's College for a great vegetarian meal to celebrate Ben's birthday, and yesterday I made my third visit to St John for a very carnivorous meal with Aaron.

Things have settled down a bit now and I hope to have a bit more time to keep you up to date with what's happening in my kitchen this month. Autumn is here, along with these wonderful squash from Riverford. I'm looking forward to cooking them over the coming weeks; there'll be some roast squash in there, a risotto, and a batch of Fergus Henderson's pumpkin and bacon soup. Speaking of which, I need to get my hands on some pork belly to start curing the bacon.

Pikelets

Pikelets are traditional English pancakes made with a yeasted batter. They are similar to crumpets, the main difference being that crumpets are cooked by pouring the batter into a ring to keep it from spreading, so they tend to be smaller in diameter but a lot thicker.

Elizabeth David, in English Bread and Yeast Cookery, recommends a batter made by increasing the milk in her crumpet batter from 550ml to 700ml (for 450g flour). Many recipes for crumpets call for bicarbonate of soda, dissolved in a little warm water, to be whisked through the batter about 30 minutes before cooking. This reacts with the acidic batter to act as an additional leavening agent, helping to give crumpets their distinctive honeycombed texture. David suggests omitting this step when making pikelets. Andrew Whitley, in Bread Matters, goes further and recommends against bicarbonate of soda even in crumpet batter, saying "...it is unnecessary and can give a slightly soapy flavour to the product." Whitley's recipe uses his ciabatta dough made with 50g extra water. Both he and David recommend a 50/50 mix of strong white flour and plain flour, as strong American wheat will produce too strong a gluten network, giving "...a tight, bound result with the texture of carpet underlay" (Whitley).

The following recipe is based on one we used at Ashburton Cookery School, which is basically a half quantity of the recipe from English Bread and Yeast Cookery. You might want to add 1 to 2 tsp sugar for a slightly faster rise and, if you follow Whitley's advice, omit the bicarbonate of soda.

Pikelets (makes at least a dozen)

• 115g strong white flour
• 110g plain flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp oil
• 300ml milk
• 10g fresh yeast or 1/4 tsp fast-action dried yeast
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 60ml warm water

1. Whisk together the milk, oil and salt. Sift the flours on top and sprinkle over the dried yeast, or gently rub in the fresh. Whisk until well combined.
2. Cover with cling film and leave to rest for 1 to 2 hours. (If you want them for breakfast, you can make the batter the night before and refrigerate at this stage.)
3. [Optional] Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the warm water and whisk into the batter. Leave to prove for a further 30 minutes.
4. Warm a non-stick pan over a medium heat. Spoon in a ladelful of batter and cook gently until it forms a skin with lots of little holes. Turn over and cook the other side until lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack while you cook the rest of the batch.
5. Serve warm with a generous knob of butter.

Great British Waste Menu

In an interesting twist on the Great British Menu, four of the country's top chefs compete to cook food that would normally be thrown away. This program does a great job of showing just how much food we waste in this country: vegetables ploughed back into the ground because they don't meet supermarket standards; fruit and vegetables fed to pigs because of minor blemishes; unfashionable offal sent to the dog food factory; perfectly good food that has past its sell-by date salvaged from supermarket bins and the back our own fridges.

Angela Hartnett, Richard Corrigan, Matt Tebbutt and Simon Rimmer turn this 'waste' food into a fantastic banquet for 60 VIP guests. Although it's a competition and somebody has to lose,  not one of them turns out a dud dish.  See for yourself what they came up with and get some ideas on how to use up your own food leftovers - available on BBC iPlayer until September 1st.

Pancakes, bacon, maple syrup

The bread won't be ready for the oven until this evening, giving me the perfect excuse to make pancakes for breakfast. These pancakes are based on a recipe from Michael Ruhlman's "Ratio", a book that focuses on the fundamental ratios of cooking. The ratio for pancakes is 2 parts liquid : 1 part egg : 1/2 part butter : 2 parts flour. The great thing about working with ratios is that you can vary the recipe to suit your taste. Ruhlman suggests replacing half of the liquid with buttermilk or home-made yoghurt, or replacing part of the flour with ground cereals or grains for a different texture. I kept things simple, using milk and plain white flour. A raising agent (baking powder) makes for lighter pancakes, and I added sugar and vanilla for flavour. A medium egg weighs about 55g, which gives the following recipe:

Breakfast pancakes

• 1 medium egg
• 110g milk
• 28g butter
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 110g plain flour
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch salt

Melt the butter and whisk together with the milk, egg, and vanilla extract. Sift in the dry ingredients and whisk until just combined. Heat a shallow pan over medium heat, and spoon a ladleful of the mixture into the centre (the above recipe makes 4 good-sized pancakes). Turn the pancake when bubbles start to appear on the surface and cook the other side until evenly browned. Transfer to a warm oven while you cook the rest of the batch.

I used to cook pancakes on a cast-iron griddle smeared lightly with butter or lard, but I've found I get better results cooking in a non-stick aluminium pan with no fat. There's an interesting article over at Cooking Issues comparing the conductivity of cast iron with aluminium pans, where they demonstrate that an aluminium pan heats more evenly, with fewer hot spots. The idea for cooking without fat came from O'Reilly's "Cooking for Geeks": if you have too much fat in the pan, the pools of fat will keep the pancakes from contacting the hot surface and browning evenly. With a good non-stick pan, you can get by with no fat at all - I tried it this morning and this worked a treat.

Beetroot curry

Not the first thing you'd think of doing with beetroot, but tasty all the same: Riverford's beetroot curry. I deviated from the recipe a bit, bulking it out with some potatoes, using tinned tomatoes rather than fresh, lemon juice rather than lime, and 400ml coconut milk (what else do you do with the other 300ml from the can?). I added the coconut milk at the same time as the tomatoes and let it reduce gently while the vegetables cooked, making for a much richer sauce than the original recipe. The beetroot gives this curry a sweet edge, so it needs the acid from the citrus to compensate. I tasted the fresh chilli before adding it to the pan: it almost blew my head off, so I just put in one. But it reduced in potency as it cooked, so I ended up adding the other one and some hot chilli powder before I was done. Acidity and heat are very much personal tastes, so best to add a little at a time and taste as you go.

Courgette tart

The first of the season's leeks arrived in the Riverford box this week, and I planned to make a leek tart. I even ordered cream and eggs with this is mind, but thinking about cream and eggs gave me a craving for crème brulée. We're also right in the middle of the English courgette season, and I was looking for something different to do with this week's courgettes. Leiths Baking Bible came to the rescue with this courgette tart.

The filling is made from a roux-based cheese sauce enriched with an egg yolk and lightened with the stiffly beaten white - a denser than usual cheese souflée. This is topped with sliced courgettes sautéed in butter with garlic and lemon zest, then breadcrumbs and grated cheese before being baked in the oven. It looks a bit untidy, but tastes great. Better still, it left me with the cream and plenty of eggs to make crème brulée, which has just come out of the oven.

Confit chicken pasty

I managed to stretch a single confit chicken leg and thigh to three meals by making these pasties. The filling is made from lightly sautéed onions, garlic, and courgettes, chopped tomatoes, and shredded confit chicken. The pastry is a basic shortcrust made with a mixture of butter and lard. Delicious served hot or at room temperature.

Gooseberry ice cream

There's no food colouring in here, this ice cream was made with red gooseberries and all natural ingredients:

• 500g gooseberries, topped, tailed, and halved
• 150g sugar
• 30g water
• 250g double cream

Put the Gooseberries, water and sugar in a pan. Heat gently, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has melted, then increase the heat and simmer for 4-5 minutes. Whizz up in a liquidizer and pass through a sieve while still hot. Allow to cool completely, then refrigerate for a couple of hours before whisking into the cream - just until combined. Churn in an ice cream machine for 10-15 minutes, then transfer to a freezer and freeze for at least one  hour before serving. Recipe from Ices: The Definitive Guide.

Pea and mint arancini

I hadn't gotten round to downloading the photos from my camera when I made the last blog post. Here are the pea and mint arancini I mentioned:

and here's what they looked like inside:

These are quite easy to make. If you leave leftover risotto in the fridge overnight, it will congeal and look quite unappetising, but this makes it very easy to handle. Take a small handful of the rice and form into a ball around a nugget of mozzarella, then roll gently between your hands to shape. Toss in flour, then beaten egg, finally breadcrumbs. Once you've assembled your arancini, deep-fry in batches in a neutral oil: 6-7 minutes at 180℃ will do nicely.

Small arancini make a great appetizer, but there's something especially satisfying about deep-fried food that makes it almost worthwhile making too much risotto with an eye on tomorrow's snacks.

What's cooking...

It's been a while since my last post, so I thought I'd give a quick round-up of what's been cooking over the past week. Drop me a line if something takes your fancy and you'd like a more detailed recipe.

Sous vide hand of pork
Riverford sell hand of pork (the lower part of the shoulder) with a fennel, garlic and chilli rub as a porchetta roast. They suggest roasting for 8 hours at 95℃, so I thought I'd try it sous vide and gave it 12 hours at 80℃. The meat was very tender, but a bit dry for my taste. Next time I'll try vacuum packing it with some lard, and maybe reduce the cooking time.

Gooseberry ice cream
A delightful, refreshing ice cream from Ices: The Definitive Guide. A really simple recipe, lightly cooked gooseberries, puréed and sieved, then whisked into some cream when cool and churned in the ice cream machine.

Gooseberry fool
I tried a custard-based fool for a change. It was disappointing, I'll keep it simple and use just cream next time.

Swiss chard lasagne
I thought it was spinach in the veg box until I looked more closely. Still, the chard worked very well in a lasagne, and this is something I'll definitely be making again.

Cannelleni beans, char-grilled courgettes and tomatoes
The beans cook in just 20 minutes in the pressure cooker. Drain, and toss together with char-grilled courgettes, tomatoes, and a dressing of your choice (olive oil and lemon would work well). To cook the courgettes, slice thinly along their length, salt for 30 minutes, rinse, brush with olive oil, and cook on a ridged griddle pan until just tender.

Confit chicken legs, sous vide
I didn't have any goose fat to hand, so used lard, with some garlic and lemon thyme for flavour. I chilled these down and put them in the fridge, so I'm not sure how they've come out.

Macaroni cheese with carrots, courgettes and French beans
Using up the ends of the veg box and the excess cheese sauce left over from the lasagne.

Chocolate beetroot brownies
I had some cooked beetroot in the fridge - it was intended for a risotto, but my guest turned up their nose at the idea, so it found its way into this recipe from Riverford instead. They were good, but not as nice as the chocolate beetroot cake I made earlier in the year.

Pea and mint risotto
Fresh peas from Riverford, mint from the herb garden (aka pots by the back door).

Arancini
Balls of risotto wrapped around a nugget of mozzarella, coated in bread crumbs, and deep-fried. Is there a more delicious way to use up leftover risotto?

Cranks banana and apple bread
A yeasted banana bread. This contains no eggs or butter and, being the Cranks, is made with 100% wholemeal flour. Great with a cup of tea. Recipe from The Cranks Recipe Book.

Bruschetta

Traditionally, bruschetta is just char-grilled stale bread rubbed with tomato and garlic and drizzled with olive oil. This is a jazzed-up version: we have the char-grilled stale bread, but it's topped with tomatoes, basil and mozzarella, dressed with olive oil and a pinch of finely chopped garlic. There are two stars of the show here. The first is the olive oil, Merula, from Spain (perhaps I should be using Italian olive oil, but I'm not claiming this is an authentic bruschetta). This is a light and fruity olive oil, slightly peppery but not at all bitter. It's good enough to drink straight from the can. And you'll find it in Waitrose. The second star is the mozzarella, a buffalo mozzarella from Laverstoke Park Farm. Wow! This is smooth and rich, slightly salty, and so soft. It's a new discovery for me, appearing only recently on the Riverford extras list. Madalene over at The British Larder posted recently about the same thing, only she goes on to tell you how to make fresh buffalo curd - something for another day.

Gooseberry Pound Cake

Gooseberries are one of the first fruits of the year, usually coming into season before the strawberries. This year, they both appeared at about the same time. I used to buy gooseberries from the farmers' market in Oxford, but out here in the middle of nowhere it's more convenient to have them delivered by Riverford. They appear on the extras list throughout July and - you know me - I couldn't resist ordering some as soon as they showed up on the web site. 

I was going to make a gooseberry pie, but the 300g punnet wasn't enough to fill my pie dish (three punnets would about do it, I think). Instead I made the moist, rich, pound cake pictured above. This needed only 100g of fruit, leaving me enough to put aside for a fool. The pound cake was inspired by Monsieur Audot's Gooseberrry Cake, the recipe for which appears in Jane Grigson's Fruit Book. If the cake is to be eaten cold, Grigson recommends following a pound cake recipe instead. I took her advice, adding M. Audot's flavourings for good measure.

Pound cake takes its name from the quantity of the ingredients: 1lb each of flour, butter, sugar and eggs. Hannah Glasse, writing in 1747, gives the following recipe (excerpt courtesy of Google Books):

 

As you can see, it's quite a labour intensive task. Harold McGee, in On Food and Cooking, quotes a Miss Leslie who in 1857 described a technique for beating eggs "for an hour without fatigue"; he notes that she goes on to say "But to stir in butter and sugar is the hardest part of cake making. Have this done by a manservant."

Coincidentally, Ruth asked me last week if I had any references on the science of baking, in particular the importance of mixing ingredients in the right order when making a sponge cake with the creaming method. Ruth's manservant was convinced you could add the ingredients in any order, and he succeeded only in making a treat for the birds (which reminds me of an advert for Bero flour involving sinking ducks, but let's not get distracted).

As usual, McGee tells us what we need to know: "In cake making, the mixing step doesn't just combine the ingredients into a homogeneous batter: it has the critical purpose of incorporating air bubbles into the batter, and thereby strongly influencing the final texture of the cake. [...] The fine solid particles carry tiny air pockets on their surfaces, and the particles and beating utensils carry those pockets into the fat or liquid. Flour is often added only after the foam is formed, and then by gently folding it in, not beating, to avoid popping a large fraction of the bubbles, and to avoid developing gluten."

McGee also explains how modern hydrogenated fats and chlorinated flours can help make sweet, tender, moist, light cakes, but he notes that the flavour they impart is not to everyone's taste.

For a pound cake these days, we usually reduce the ingredients to 4oz each (making 1lb in total) and can cheat by using artificial leavening (self-raising flour and/or baking powder), and a machine to do the mixing. Grigson (this time writing in English Food)  says "Thanks to self-raising flour and baking powder, the ingredients can be flung together in no particular order, producing a dough that will rise as it should, in seconds if you use an electric beater, or in three minutes if you have to make do with your hands or a wooden spoon." (Ruth, is your husband reading this?)

The recipe that follows is a simple pound cake recipe, with ground almonds added on Grigson's advice ("to improve the texture") and orange flower water and nutmeg added at M. Audot's behest.

Gooseberry Pound Cake Recipe

• 125g butter, softened
• 125g vanilla sugar
• 125g plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 large eggs
• 20g ground almonds
• 1 1/2 tsp orange flower water
• 1/3 nutmeg, grated
• pinch salt
• 100g gooseberries, topped and tailed

Pre-heat the oven to 180℃. Grease and line a 1lb loaf tin. Place all the ingredients   except the gooseberries in the bowl of a Kenwood chef, and give them 3-4 minutes on medium speed with the K-beater. Gently fold in the gooseberries, then spoon the mixture into the prepared tin. Bake for about an hour (test with a skewer). Allow to cool in the tin for 15 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

The verdict

The texture is good, and the sharpness of the gooseberries adds a nice balance to the rich, sweet sponge. Definitely one to make again. The throw-it-all-together method worked fine, but it would be interesting to try this recipe without the baking powder, using the traditional creaming method instead.