Dorothy Hartley's Toad in the Hole

extra fluffy olde english batter

A rather unfocussed and confused week of eating this week. After the excesses of last week's party food we opted for safety on Monday and made Gino's Bolognese, then on tuesday my wife made a jerk chicken from Jamie 30 mins which was really nice and on wednesday made the wonky summer pasta form the same book, which we'd had last week as well. Then I realised I had, in planning the week's meals, chosen two different pasta and pesto recipes - there's one in Gino that has a potato in it. So instead of that, on thursday, we had toad in the hole, but I thought I'd try out a different recipe. Dorothy Hartley's magnificent Food in England has a recipe for a batter that can be used for a variety of purposes, mainly for the making of fruit puddings, but can also be used for toad in the hole. The main difference from other batters is that it uses four egg yolks, while the whites are beaten to meringue consistency and folded in, with a slightly lower proportion of milk so you end up with quite a thick oozy batter. This is then used in the toad in the normal way (bake sausages for 10 mins or so in roasting tray with fat before adding batter then bake for another 30 mins.) The result was pleasing, and strangely it rose in the centre rather than round the edges, and the batter had a more cakey consistency, with a crisp crust and soft underneath. Sometimes this batter can rise to completely envelope the sausages so they are hidden inside what looks like a giant cake, but it didn't quite do that for us. So this was our DISH OF THE WEEK. The next day was due to eat Gino's pasta and pesto with a potato but just didn't fancy it, so made the kofta curry from Jamie 15 instead, which used up the last of the curry paste which has been sitting in the fridge for about a year (with no ill effects). This is one of the best recipes in that book - puy lentiles and beef mince mixed together and shaped into fingers fried with a curry sauce made from blended tomatoes, coriander stalks, coconut milk, curry paste, turmeric, honey and spring onions. On saturday we had baked potatoes which I love at the moment for their autumnal colours and smells, with cheese, bacon, tuna, salad etc, we bought giant potatoes from the farm shop. Not that popular with daughter though. Then on Sunday I made a beef stew that was cooked slowly while we all went to see Interstellar in the cinema for 3 hours. Wonderful stew from the 4 ways book, which improves with the adding of a tablespoon of flour. Unfortunately I ate too much of it and too late, and was kept awake the following night with acidity.

Apricot and Lavender Cake

Just to add to the last post (hey it's remembrance sunday so I can use that phrase), I forgot to mention we went to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford on Saturday, the day of the party with the cod and samphire buffet etc, and although we had not much time to look round (about fifteen minutes actually) we did have time to try the cafe in the basement where I discovered a rather delicious cake, an apricot and lavender cake, which was a nice dense puddingy cake, the lavender probably not a very prominent flavour but there were pretty scattering of purple flowerets on it, but it was very nice. My partner had a lemon drizzle cake. Mind you, perhaps it was the lavender cake the caused the tummy upset.

Gino's Meatballs

Things got off to a retro start on Saturday when I tried to retrieve the vestiges of summer eating by doing Jamie's wonky summer pasta from his 30 minute recipe book, basically a pasta with a home made pesto consisting of a lot of parmesan mixed with basil, lemon juice and olive oil and a few other bits and pieces but it was delicious. Then on Sunday had first culinary disaster for a long time, and it came from the National Trust cookery book I mentioned last week, and which I had high hopes for - a pork and apple kind of hot pot, slow cooked. Well, it said slice a kilo of potatoes and layer them on the top, and I did, and that was the problem, they didn't cook after a long spell in the oven on the lowest heat. Seeing they weren't cooking I turned it up but it was too late to save, the potatoes were thinly sliced but deeply layered, probably an inch deep in places, so basically we had a stew of pork and apples in a watery sauce with raw potatoes, which my wife tried to save by frying, but it didn't really work. Oh the joys of English cooking, flavourless food and raw spuds.
               Monday was a bit better with a risotto of Chorizo and peas. Then on Tuesday there wasn't time to cook anything so I bought ready made pizzas from Asda, a spicy meaty one and a spicy chicken one, and was surprised how good they were, in that doughy, chewy way that even thin-crust store-made pizzas have. Then in Wednesday I made meatballs from a recipe I hadn't tried before, Gino d'Campo's Italian Meatballs are big meatballs, mine were about he size of tennis balls, almost, a mixture of pork and lamb mixed with breadcrumbs, egg and pecorino cheese, baked in the oven for 20 mins then in the pot with passata for 30 mins, they were wonderful meatballs with lovely flavour and texture. Our dish of the week. On thursday had a slow cooked beef in red wine stew which my wife made while I was working, then on friday chicken pieces roasted with vegetables (courgette, peppers and aubergine). This takes us up to Saturday when we went to a party where the host laid on a catered buffet of such things as cod with samphire, duck with pomegranate, peppers with anchovy, roasted beetroot and many other lovely things. Strangely now, though, on Sunday, I have an upset stomach and am not sure what to eat today. If anything. Probably thanks to a late night more than food.

Bubble and Squeak Soup

Starting with the end of the week, on Friday we had bubble and squeak soup, the first recipe in a book we bought on the previous Sunday, when we went for a walk on Brean Down (more of that in a minute). The National Trust Compltete Country Book was reduced from £25 to £8, so couldn't resist snapping it up. On flicking through the first thing that strikes you is how brown all the recipes are, traditional British Food is brown, whereas Italian, which we have been eating mostly this last year, is bright yellows, greens, whites and reds, dazzling to the eye. But with autumn coming on, we are entering the brown time of year, and the need for warmth and hearty nourishment was quite strong. So, I made the first recipe on the book on friday, a nice country soup, utterly flavourless unless vast amounts of seasoning are added, without which it tastes just like what it is, water in which potatoes have been boiled. So this is what English food tastes like, I remembered. Actually, it turned out better than that, and was in fact quite delicious. Basically you fry some chopped bacon in butter, then remove it and fry an onion in the remaining fat, then add some chopped up potatoes and a litre of water (not stock, just water) let it simmer away until the potatoes are soft, when you mush them up and add some sliced cabbage, cook for another 7 mins, add soem cream,then serve, with the crispy bacon on top. Well, it's a bit like Saxe Coburg Soup (see earlier post) especially if you did as I did, and just throw the bacon into the soup at the end and stir it around. Also, we couldn't get a decent cabbage with lots of floppy green leaves, but just had a tight white ball of a cabbage, would have been a lot better with the green. Anyway I think it was our DISH OF THE WEEK.
                The rest of the weekdays were taken up with old favourites - sausage meatball papardelle using slightly unusual sausages (mozarella, tomato, basil and pork), spaghetti bolognese a la Gino but following him to the letter this time (though still not cooking it for three hours, just one hour, but we did use pasatta, which is better than tinned tomatoes - it's a great recipe), and chicken tagine, which I think the family might be getting a bit tired of now, so will give it a rest. On Sunday we had the most spectacular roast beef ever, following Jamie's recipe from Save, which we've done before, but this time with an enormous joint - I got a cheap Asda silverside joint and slow roasted it for over 5 hours, while we went for the walk at Brean. By the time we got back the joint was falling to pieces it was so tender, it was actually like an unravelled ball of string, the muscular tissue disintegrating into long strips of flesh. It had produced a superb gravy via the pot roasting method (it just appears from nowhere, mix it with jam (from same national trust shop we bought the book) and flour, it's brilliant with yorkshire puddings and roast pots. The follow up meal for monday was an excellent curry, beef rendang, using the left over beef (there was a lot left over) and a tin of coconut milk.
         
 Places I ate out this week - the cafe at Brean was overwhelmed with a pony club meeting and wasn't doing food apart from pasties and cakes. the pasties were the usual flaky pastry and meat mush things, but cake (Victoria Sponge) was excellent. The restaurant and attached shop are very unlike a National Trust Place, until you realise the quality of everything is good, you think at first it's a cheap tat place, it's like a working class version of an NT place.
           On Friday, Halloween, had dinner with friend at Eastern Eye in Bath, the ballroom style Indian restaurant we often go to. I always have the Biryani there, which is very good.

Cod Fritatta

Cod, Potato, Chorizo and Pea Fritatta (8 eggs)
- our dish of the week

With daughter in Berlin it was an excuse to eat some fish this week (forgetting that son isn't that keen either), so we started things off with fried whole mackerel on a bed of quinoa and tomatoes. The mackerel were 82p each in Asda, but they weren't as flavourful as the last time we tried mackerel, which were from Sainsbury's. Couldn't help feeling a twinge when I decapitated them, as decapitations are rather in the news at the moment. The fish stayed much more together this time, and I think the whole thing was quite well cooked, though son only ate half his fish. The next day I made a cheap version of Paella, with chicken, chorizo, peas and prawns, and a lot of paella rice, it was another Jamie effort, from the Save book I think. Really nice. On wednesday had more fish, this time a cod and potato frittata, to which I added some left over chorizo and peas from the paella, and I think they added a great deal of flavour to the dish which might have been a bit bland otherwise (it was a Gino D'Campo recipe). Very pleased with how it turned out, visually (see right). I think it was our dish of the week. Then on thursday with daughter back from Berlin and long trip to airport we had trash food, McDonalds and KFC for four, (not a very nice 3 piece KFC for meal, despite friendly server in shop who claimed she could read my mind and predict what I wanted - she was right about the Pepsi but wrong about the hot wings). On Friday we had Toad in the Hole. Made the batter a bit thicker this time, it worked really well. The key thing with the batter is lots of eggs and extra egg whites to ensure plump risingness.

slightly flavourless 82p Asda mackerel

Luxury Shepherd's Pie

What we ate this weekend  - it was the second weekend of our odyssey through Jamie Oliver's Comfort Food, and so it was a shepherd's pie weekend. Jamie's version uses a slow roasted shoulder of lamb, so went out on saturday morning to our darling butchers to buy one of these. The butcher didn't have any on display so had to retrieve an entire lamb from the fridge, and listened to him hammering and sawing away to produce the required joint. I put it in the oven and went out for the day, leaving it to slow roast for five hours. On returning (after a few anxious phone calls to my son who was at home,

Jamie said eat with lots of condiments

to check up on it) I found the most beautifully cooked piece of lamb I had ever seen, seemed almost a waste to put it in the SP. Still, this is what I did, after stewing it with vegetables for another hour or so, and then baking the completed pie for another hour, it was 8pm before we had dinner. But it was a deliciously special thing. Jamie insists on making it a 3D pie, so there is mash lining the tin as well as on top, an all-surrounding mash, which does make a difference, and was extremely comforting.
             Our meal on sunday was a pea risotto using left over peas, and with a strange side dish of reheated SP, which went surprisingly well with it.

Colonna and Small's

Colonna and Smalls is a little independent coffee shop in Bath where they take coffee very seriously. They have a changing menu of beans, divided between espresso and filter, with three bean types each. I went for a filter coffee, and was recommended a Rwandan Red Bourbon, washed (not sure what that means), but was also recommended that I didn't put milk in it, or sugar. C and M like to sell coffee according to the season, and Rwandan coffee season is apparently just coming to an end, so last chance to try this amazing coffee, until next year. It was also recommended I take it without sugar. I am someone who normally drinks milky sweet coffee, though I have recently got fed up with all the frilly frothy Starbucks caramel laced cream-topped coffees that have taken over our coffee culture, and like my coffee now to at least fill most of the cup, so was keen to try this spartan approach to coffee. The idea is that the coffee has nowhere to hide, and that the flavour speaks for itself with its own natural sweetness. It was quite a thrill to drink this cup of black coffee, "the flavour intensifies as it cools down' the waitress said. The taste was somehow more like a rooibos strong tea, with hints of apple or other fruit, no bitterness or acidity, very easy, palatable, and yes, a hint of sweetness. C and M's, despite being serious about coffee, is a friendly, relaxed place, with wooden benches and tables, spaces outside at the back, and a small array of cakes (had nice lemon cupcake), and about as far from the overkill of Cafe Nero as you could get.

What I ate this week

apologies, these are not my meatballs

What I ate this week. Well, the week ended with my own recipe sausage meatball papardelle, but instead of papardelle, which I can't get in Asdas, I used linguine. It's a recipe I've been using since we came back from Florence in August, and is so simple I have cooked it every week since then. Basically you get some nice italian or italian style sausages, extract the meat and roll into balls, say three per suasage, then you fry these for 20 mins or so, then you add a pint of pasatta, and a little cream, then you mix it with some linguine, mix it all through, and there you have it, sprinkle a bit of parmesan over the top, it's delish, and madly simple. Note I don't add any seasoning - that's because the italian sausages have all the flavour and seasoning you need, you don't need to add anything, though I suppose a few fennel seeds wouldn't go amiss.
           The night before I did another almost weekly favourite, which is a chicken tagine, taken from that book called every recipe you'll ever need, 4 ways to cook everything, I can't remember who it's by, but it's a great recipe - it's not actually in that book, this came from one of his Sunday Times (or is it saturday Times?) pages. It's another stunningly simple but brilliantly flavourful dish, you just fry some sliced onion and garlic for ten mins, add the special tagine spice mix ras-al-hanout, plus some ground ginger, add some chicken thigh fillets, just 200 mls of chicken stock, a handful of green olives, cover and simmer for an hour. You don't of course, have to use a tagine. In fact I never have. But in this the trick seems to be to use this small amount of liquid, and keep the lid on, because the end result has just the right amount of thick sauce, the thickening seeming to come from the spices themselves, and no reduction is necessary. But it's delish with some pomegranate-sprinkled couscous and a crunchy salad.
           Then on Wednesday I had another weekly standard (it's all been old-reliables this week, I don't know why, had a sudden panic when doing the weekly list) spag bol, but using Gino de Campo's recipe, he says its his grandad's, and it worked very well, the secret being to add milk to the usual ingredients, and to have it with taglietelli instead of spaghetti, which holds the sauce better. Probably agree. But the one trick I thought was very valuable was to break up the mince with your fingers before adding to the pan, that way you get a nice fine granular texture to the meat, rather than the worms or strings that minced meat often retains in cooking. His version was close to the famous 3 hour butter ragu in Hazan's essentials of italian cooking. Gino also said to cook for 3 hours, but I only managed 1. Still, the longer you can keep it on the stove, the better. What else - my wife cooked our other two meals this week - a fabulous minestrone which lasted for two subsequent lunches, and an aubergine and spaghetti thing, which seemed to remind the children that they don't like that particular vegetable.  

Chicken Tikka Massala

So Jamie Oliver has a new book out, Comfort Food, and I was lucky enough to have a wife who wanted a copy for her recent birthday. It was big thick comfortable book loaded with recipes, very much in the Jamie style, tearing and sharing, sploshing and splashing and chucking everything in. Some photographs just appear to show a complete mess eg the lobster macaroni cheese, or the hot chocolate, which shows a mug of the stuff amid a chocolate bomb site. We tried our first recipe on saturday, when we did feel the need of some comfort eating, and as always with new recipe books, chose to cook the first one in the book, with the plan of going through the whole volume in order, as far as we can. This was chicken Tikka Massala, which Jamie recommends you cook over a fire pit in your garden. Or, like us, you can grill it. Basically it is a marinated chicken skewered and chargrilled. The pieces then dropped into a sauce you have made (a load of spices, tins of coconut milk, plum tomatoes, yoghurt etc). The revelation for me was the ground almonds in the curry, which were, it seemed, the main thickening agent. My wife doesn't usually like almonds in any form but she loved this dish. We also had a go at making the paratha breads - which didn't turn out too bad. They are like little danish pastries, rolled and coiled then rolled again and fried. The key is to coil them quite tightly, otherwise when you roll them the spiral just comes apart. So it was a great start to the Jamie Comfort Food journey, though they are not daily meals, being mostly quite extravagant, so we'll be cooking only one or so a week. But will definitely try the CTM again. I had to admit it to myself, this probably tasted better than almost anything we've ever had in an Indian restaurant.

Florentine Food

A week in Florence (this was the view from our kitchen) entailed a number of interesting food experiences, which I will describe in more detail soon. The highlights were a tuscan beef stew with black peppercorns, osso bucco, wild boar papardelle, amazing focaccias, angry wafflemen, free limoncello shots, Grom gelati, prosciuto and olive bread and tomatoes from the market. Individual entries on all of these and more soon. And apologies for any terrible spelling mistakes in the above.