Baked cheese cake

Straight out of Leiths Cookery Bible, this is really easy to make.   Tasty too.

The base is just crushed digestives bound with melted butter. I whisked up the filling (cream cheese, double cream, eggs, vanilla, sugar) in the Kenwood, but really it was hardly worth the washing up. Topped with soured cream and ground cinnamon.

Salmon fillet, hollandaise sauce

Salmon fillet cooked sous vide (30 minutes at 48℃) and served with hollandaise sauce. Unfortunately I let the hollandaise  get too cold so it started to split when it hit the hot plate - mostly a cosmetic problem, as it tasted fantastic.

There's a bit of a back-story here too: I split the sauce completely first time round, but managed to rescue it by starting with a fresh egg yolk and whisking in the split sauce. While I was rescuing the sauce, I let the broccoli overcook slightly (you can tell from the colour). The salmon took no harm with an extra 5 minutes in the water bath. Meat is very forgiving when cooked sous vide, and can be held for an hour or more; with fish you have about 10 minutes leeway, giving you just enough time to rescue a split sauce.

It's great to see the start of the English purple sprouting broccoli season, and the carrots from Riverford are still very tasty. The new potatoes are from France, a variety called exquisa, and are delicious simply steamed. I didn't put any butter on the vegetables here: the hollandaise is almost 70% butter, after all, and is perfect for dipping your potatoes.

Pigeon Wellington

This is something that appears on the menu at The Kingham Plough from time to time. Emily's version is better than mine, so I mustn't have been paying enough attention when she was making it. Still, the home-made version was very tasty.

Here it is served with sautéed spinach, glazed carrots, and steamed Exquisa potatoes:

The pigeon breasts were cooked sous vide (25 minutes at 54.5℃) then fried for 10 seconds each side in a smoking-hot pan. The cooked breasts were then encased in puff pastry layered with blanched spinach and duxelle mushrooms. This was a very flavoursome dish, and the buttery puff pastry complemented the pigeon well. The only downside was that the pigeon was slightly overcooked when it came out of the oven - a shame given that they were a perfect medium rare after cooking sous vide. Next time I'll stop there.

Carrot and Parsnip Loaf

If, like me, you get a weekly vegbox delivery, you might be looking for innovative ways to use up root vegetables. Right now, I have a surplus of parsnips in the bottom of the fridge. Rachael's birthday gave me an excuse to bake another cake last week, and a footnote in Leiths Baking Bible suggested a use for parsnips that hadn't previously occurred to me: replace half of the carrots in a carrot cake recipe with parsnips.

Although it sounds an odd combination, cinnamon is the dominant flavour and there is plenty of sweetness from the sugar and the vegetables. It went down well with everyone in the lab, even those who claimed not to like parsnips.

The quantities here are from the Baking Bible, but I have adapted the method to make use of my otherwise underused Magimix.

Carrot and Parsnip Loaf

• 225g butter
• 115g carrots, washed and peeled
• 115g parsnips, washed and peeled
• 3 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 225g caster sugar
• 285g plain flour
• 2tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 2tsp ground cinnamon
• pinch salt

Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin. Pre-heat the oven to 170℃. Melt the butter and put to one side to cool.

Grate the carrots and parsnips into the medium bowl of the Magimix.

With the dough hook in the large bowl, break in the eggs, add the vanilla essence, and whizz together. With the motor running, slowly pour in the cooled melted butter. Stop the motor and sift in the caster sugar, flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt, and ground cinnamon; pulse a few times until combined. Add the grated carrots and parsnip, and give it a final whizz.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, level the top, and bake until firm, 1½ to 2 hours. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.

I served this dusted with icing sugar, but it would also be nice topped with cream cheese icing.

Shiny, shiny!

These shiny saucepans are currently on sale at John Lewis - usually £125, if you're quick you can catch their 20% discount offer and snap up the set of three for only £100. The Cambridge store sold out yesterday, but they still have a few in stock online. I placed my order this morning and will be taking a trip into Trumpington next week to collect them.

Winter Vegetable Crumble

This is based on a recipe I found in an anonymous vegetarian cookery book; I have been making it for more than a decade. The original recipe calls for carrots, parsnips, celery, onion, tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, and black-eye beans. Don't worry if you don't have all the ingredients (or don't like some of them), the recipe works well with most root vegetables. You can omit the cauliflower or broccoli or - as I did today - substitute romanesco. Diced turnips or swede work well, and fennel adds an interesting twist.

The vegetables are cooked in cider and the cooking liquor thickened with a roux to make a sauce. Chopped fresh parsley and chopped tomatoes (fresh or tinned will do) are stirred through, then the lot is topped with a cheesy, oaty crumble and baked in the oven.

The crumble can be served on its own, with a green salad on the side, or - for a hearty supper - with roast potatoes and a steamed leafy green. It makes a great vegetarian main course, and is a fantastic way to use up any vegbox leftovers.

Beef Brisket

This is an inexpensive cut of beef that needs long, slow cooking to tenderize. It is usually brined and cooked in chicken stock to make corned beef, or braised with vegetables and served as a pot roast. Somewhat counter-intuitively,  braising (cooking in liquid) can result in dry meat, especially if the temperature gets too high (at temperatures above 60-65℃, juices are lost from the muscle fibres). Although the braised meat can end up dry and stringy, this is compensated for by serving the meat in the flavoursome, gelatinous cooking liquor.

Another approach is to counteract this drying by cooking the meat at a lower temperature. Douglas Baldwin, in A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking suggests brining for 2-3 hours then cooking at 80℃ for 24-36 hours. He mentions that the French Laundry cooks their brisket at 64℃ for 48 hours. I decided to try the French Laundry method.  McGee notes that collagen doesn't dissolve into gelatin until 70-80℃, so the higher temperature suggested by Baldwin might be better: something to try next time.

My local butcher only had rolled brisket, so I bought a 1.3kg piece and undid his rolling. I cut it into two pieces and placed them in a 5% brine, where they stayed for 48 hours. After brining, I dried them off and browned the outside with a blow torch before cooling and vacuum packing. Then it was time for the water bath.

I took out one piece after 48 hours and used it to make a big batch of hash, following a recipe from Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking. There's not much to it really: cook some sliced onions in butter, add tinned plum tomatoes and cook off some of the liquid, then stir through some cooked mashed potatoes and the shredded salt beef; you only need to cook it until the meat and potatoes are warmed through, but I like to leave it until it forms a golden crust on one side, then turn it over and cook until the other side is nicely crusted too.

The hash was great, but the meat was not as tender as I expected. The same cannot be said of the 60-hour batch - it was melt-in-the-mouth tender. Both batches had plenty of natural gelatin, so this would also be a good way to cook brisket for corned beef: just shred the cooked beef, and set in a terrine with the gelatinous liquid that collects in the vacuum bag during cooking.

Fruit Tea Loaf

This is an old favourite of mine, something Gran used to make for tea on a Saturday. I love fruit cake, and finished the last of the Christmas cake just a couple of weeks ago. I was missing my supper-time treat.

Here, the dried fruit is soaked overnight in cold tea so it plumps up and keeps the cake moist, at the same time giving it a distinctive flavour. I used Ceylon Orange Pekoe; you can use something different if you prefer, but don't let the tea stew or it will be too bitter. The following is based on a recipe from Leiths Baking Bible

Fruit Tea Loaf

• 115g sultanas
• 115g raisins
• 115g currants
• grated zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange
• 115g dark brown sugar
• 290ml cold tea
• 225g plain flour
• 1 rounded tsp baking powder
• 1 egg, beaten

Mix together the dried fruit, zest and sugar. Pour over the cold tea, give it a stir, and leave to soak overnight. Mix in the beaten egg, sift in the flour and baking powder, and stir well to combine. Pour into a greased 2lb loaf tin and bake for 1¼ hours in an oven pre-heated to 170℃. Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out.

The Baking Bible also includes recipes for Lemon Tea Loaf, Cinnamon and Apple Tea Loaf, Berry Tea Loaf, and Sherry, Date and Walnut Tea loaf - so there's plenty of room for some experimentation.

Chocolate Beetroot Cake

I mentioned in last week's post about beetroot that my next beetroot exploit would be chocolate beetroot cake. Here it is, in all its moist, chocolatey glory. A Google search turns up dozens of recipes, but in the end I opted for Nigel Slater's recipe from Tender: v. 1: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch.

I'm quite a fan of Slater, and this recipe is heavy on chocolate, using both melted chocolate and cocoa powder. This could could only be good. I also had a lot of eggs to use up; most of the recipes use only 3 eggs, but this one called for 5.

I diverged from the recipe slightly by adding more chocolate in the form of a ganache spread liberally over the top of the cake (I used chocolate with 70% cocoa solids, so there was no worry that the ganache would make it sickly sweet). I did take Slater's advice, however, and serve it with soured cream and poppy seeds. Delicious!

The recipe is also available online if you want to try it yourself. (Don't be misled by the photograph: for some reason they have printed a photograph of Slater's Beetroot Seed Cake from the same book, but the recipe is for the chocolate cake.)

Cocoa Brownies

I picked up a great recipe for chocolate brownies from Ashburton Cookery School, which we made on their Diploma Course. These brownies went down a treat with the class, and have been popular with the friends and colleagues I have baked them for since. Serve them warm with crѐme Anglaise and vanilla ice cream, and you have a delicious dessert.

Most brownie recipes I have seen include melted chocolate in the list of ingredients, so I was intrigued by this recipe on the Smitten Kitchen blog, which uses only cocoa powder. I bookmarked the recipe thinking that I would try it next time I made brownies. Today was the day, and they did not disappoint. I was worried that they might be dry, but they were deliciously moist and fudgy, just like a brownie should be. These will certainly be added to my repertoire.

Beetroot

If you get a weekly delivery from an organic vegbox scheme, you will probably have seen beetroot on your doorstep over the winter. Beetroot is harevested between July and November but, if kept at the right temperature, can be stored until April - so we might see more before the season is out.

I love the colour and the sweet, earthy flavour of beetroot. Beetroot can be eaten raw, grated into salads, but for an interesting twist try Hot Raw Beetroot: peel and coarsely grate the beetroot; melt some butter in a shallow pan, then toss the beetroot in the hot butter for 2 minutes, until it is hot; season with salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice (from Leiths Cookery Bible). Here it is pictured accompanying smoked trout.

Beetroot should not be peeled before cooking - just rinse in warm water, and try to avoid damaging the skin and thin root. It can be boiled in a large pan of salted water for 1-2 hours, but if you're short of time 10 minutes in the pressure cooker is long enough for small beetroot, 20-25 minutes for large. Recently I have taken to baking beetroot, which gives it a sweeter, more intense flavour: simply wrap the washed beetroot in tin foil and bake for 3-4 hours in a 140℃ oven. The beetroot is cooked when the skin near the root wrinkles and comes away easily. Wait until the beetroot is cool enough to handle, then peel by rubbing gently.

The cooked beetroot can now be used in a number of dishes. There is the classic beetroot and orange salad, but Jane Grigson, in her Vegetable Book also has recipes for beetroot and potato salad, beetroot and apple salad, beetroot salad with anchovy dressing, Italian beetroot salad (onions and herbs), and Scandinavian beetroot and herring salad. It also goes very well with goats cheese and peppery leaves like watercress and rocket.

Beetroot gratin

If you prefer your beetroot hot, cut the cooked beetroot into cubes and layer it in an ovenproof dish with some grated cheese (a mixture of Gruyère and Parmesan works well, but any piquant cheese will do); pour over fresh double cream, and top with more cheese and breadcrumbs. Bake in a 190℃ oven until the cream is bubbling and the top nicely browned.

Beetroot risotto

For a colourful risotto, add diced beetroot for the last 2 minutes of cooking (just long enough to warm through), and top with a slow-cooked egg.

Of course, there is always Borscht; Grigson gives two recipes in her vegetable book, but I usually make this quick, vegetarian version from  Cranks Recipe Book:

Cranks Russian Borscht

• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 small potato, peeled and diced
• 450g raw beetroot, peeled and diced
• 25g butter
• 1.2lt vegetable stock
• 1tsp yeast extract
• 45ml cider vinegar
• salt, pepper and grated nutmeg to taste
• soured cream and chopped parsley to garnish

Melt the butter and cook the onion, without colouring, until soft. Add the potato, beetroot and stock, bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer gently, with a lid on the pan, for 1/2 hour. Blend in a liquidizer until smooth, add the cider vinegar and yeast extract, and season to taste with salt, pepper and nutmeg. This soup can be served hot or chilled. Garnish with a dollop of soured cream and some chopped fresh parsley.

Riverford Organic have more beetroot recipe ideas, but I think I'll be trying something sweet next time beetroot appears in my vegbox: beetroot chocolate cake.