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.