Yoghurt Tops

It was Friday, I had a day off work, the weather was bright and I took the opportunity to step out of character from the day job and take dog a long, relaxing walk. It was also a day to cook. I had managed to lay my hands on some Rhubarb a few days earlier and put it to good use by instead, as might normally be the case sticking it in a crumble I added it into a cake.

The type of cake I decided to cook is what is often known as a Rhubarb and Yoghurt Cake. The first step was to thoroughly wash five sticks of Rhubarb, top and tail the Rhubarb and then cut it into small one centimetre long slices. The trick to getting good quality Rhubarb pieces to put into the cake is if any of the stringy magenta skin is hanging off the flesh as you cut it you need to pull it off and discard it. When removed the skin of the Rhubarb looks like long pieces of ribbon or red tape and like the Thatcher Administration alleged they would do in 1980s you need to get rid of as much red tape as possible.

When the slices of Rhubarb are ready they can be poured into a mixing bowl with eleven ounces of self-raising flour and five ounces of caster sugar. As I stirred the ingredients carefully together the opening bars of Tom Sawyer from arguably Rush's best album Moving Pictures stomped out of the stereo into the kitchen.

Once these dry ingredients were combined I added two beaten eggs, two teaspoons of vanilla essence, four and a half ounces of margarine and four and a half ounces of plain Greek Yoghurt. Using a metal tablespoon I mixed these items with the dry ingredients; it was tough going at first but gradually I was able to form them into a thick, sweet paste filled with pieces of Rhubarb.

When the paste became sufficiently easy to push the spoon through I realised it was ready. I dolloped the mixture gradually into a ten centimetre deep and twenty centimetre wide cake tin that I had greased with margarine and dusted with flour. I made sure the surface of the mixture in the tin was leveled off and flat by using a butter knife to spread it out.

I cooked the cake at 170 degrees (180 degrees for non-fan ovens) for one hour. I used two key tests to ensure it was ready; first I put a meat skewer through the middle of the cake and pulled it out to find that it was clean and secondly I pressed my hand onto the cake and it sprung back at me like a mattress after getting up off it.

Side on view- cooling down on a wire rack prior to serving. 

Taking a slice- ready to eat once a bit of Yoghurt is added. 

After I had let the cake cool on a wire rack I removed it from the tin and served it with some of the remaining Greek Yoghurt not previously used in the cake. The vanilla gave the cake a strong, sweet taste as did the sugar, however for those who like to diet or haven't a very sweet tooth this cake is still for you as the yoghurt is both low fat and stops it from becoming over rich. If you fancy using Rhubarb in something other than crumble this is the place to start.

Fifty shades of the colour purple

In preparation for a sober night on the town in the lingering snow of the last Saturday in January I made a Beetroot Risotto. It's fair to say that Beetroot is a vegetable more often used as a side dish to a main course rather than being the central of it.

With the Moody Blues' excellent mellotron drenched 1970 offering "A Question of Balance" on the CD player I first diced two red onions, half a ginger root and three cloves of garlic. Next I took five medium sized beetroots, topped and tailed them and then cut them into cubes. I saved one the beetroots for later and fried the rest on a low light on the hob in my Le Cresceut dish with some olive oil. When the beetroot began to soften I added the garlic, ginger and onions as well as around half a tablespoon of white pepper. There was enough juice generated by the beetroot to allow the ingredients in the dish to cook without them drying.

While the contents of the Le Cresceut cooked steadily on the hob I boiled eight ounces of long grain rice in a pan with the spare pieces of beetroot. I used enough water to cover the rice and beetroot and once the rice began to show signs of boiling dry I added it to the Le Cresceut dish. The rice by this time had turned a pale orange colour.

In total I cooked the rice for around twenty minutes on a high heat in the pan before adding it to the Le Cresceut dish and in total I cooked the contents of the Le Cresceut dish for around forty minutes always making sure to add a little water if there was a danger of the dish drying up.

I poked the vegetables and the rice with a fork to be sure they were cooked and then served the food. The beetroot itself had a very earthy taste which was prevented from being too bland by the sharpness of the ginger and garlic while the rice added enough body to the meal to make it worthwhile as a stand alone main course.

At the end of cooking and ready to serve. 

The risotto glowing on a plate

The mean street posset

The pack of spices that a friend of mine gave me as a present for my birthday has featured a lot in my cooking over the last year. The main use of the spices has been in savoury main courses and soups so for a change on the first Sunday in January I decided to use some of the spices in a sweet dish that could be eaten as a pudding.

The friend who gave me the spices now lives in the Manchester Area so the appropriate record for the preparation of the dish was the Smiths' final album Strangeways Here We Come a record that is equally as good as its predecessor the much more well-known the Queen is Dead.

The dish to be made was Posset shortbread. I first mixed together together around a hundred grams of margarine with one hundred and fifty grams of caster sugar until the margarine took an almost hairy appearance due to the sugar being mixed well into it.

The next step was to add one hundred and twenty grams of plain flour, some posset shortbread spices, to the margarine and sugar which I then stirred thoroughly into the margarine and sugar. I knew I had stirred the spices and flour properly into the margarine and sugar as it created a dough that was very pliable as well as being smooth to the touch and shiny to look at.

I spread some plain flour onto my work surface and put the dough on top of it. I then rolled out the dough with a rolling pin, after first putting some plain flour on the pin, to stop the dough sticking to it. I rolled the dough out to form a large circle and then cut it into pieces that were about five centimetres across.

I put the pieces on a greased baking tray and cooked them in the oven for fifteen minutes at one hundred and seventy degrees (one hundred and eighty degrees for non-fan ovens). I knew the shortbread was done because its edges had become brown and when I put a meat skewer through it came out clean.

While the shortbread was cooling down on a wire rack I made my own version of lemon posset by filling a milk pan three quarters of the way to the top with plain Greek Yoghurt and the juice from two lemons. I heated the mixture on the hob until it was warmed through and then served it in a bowl into which I dipped the shortbread when it was time to eat it. I find that some recipes use double cream instead of Greek Yoghurt but the Greek has the advantage in that it is healthier for you than double cream and prevents the dish from being too rich for its own good.

The results of the cooking produced shortbread with a sweet taste, as you would expect with shortbread, that was offset against the strong almost aniseed like taste of the spices. The lemon posset however provided a refreshing contrast to the spices and took the edge off them.

The Lemon Posset cooking on the hob. A healthier option without the cream.

The shortbread cooling on a wire rack after it had been cooked. 

Shortbread dipped in posset to stop the spices being too overpowering. 

Pizza payday

The father of a very good friend of mine has a rare talent for making his own pizzas from scratch. He reckons when he retires he'll sell the recipe and make some money out of it. Having sampled one of his pizzas over the Christmas Holiday I could readily agree with the reasoning behind his tasty pension plan.

With these quality pizzas to live up to I decided to have a got my own homemade pizza during the damp early days of January. As I began to make the dough the sounds of a much maligned act found their way onto my CD player in the shape of Jethro Tull's 1974 album Warchild. Often dismissed by those not in the know as a pompous prog rock act listened to only by sad anoraks and country yokels  the subject matter of the band's songs which cover such topics as the pitfalls of celebrity and environmental concerns are as relevant today as they were when originally released in the seventies. Plus the band boasts one of the best guitarists in rock who has almost as many memorable riffs at his disposal as Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi or the Stones' Keith Richards.

To make the dough I put eight ounces of strong white bread flour into a mixing bowl with one sachet of yeast, two tablespoons of milk, two tablespoons of warm water, three tablespoons of olive oil and a beaten egg. I then used a metal table spoon to mix these ingredients together until I had a soft, slightly damp dough. In order to make it dry enough to roll out I added some extra flour which I kneaded into the dough and then exercised my limited upper body strength to punch the air from the dough and make it pliable enough to roll out.

I rolled the dough out after first having left on the window sill of the warmest place in the house to rise for an hour. The dough was rolled out until it was a twenty-five centimetres wide circle and to stop the topping of the pizza falling off when cooking it I made a centimetre high lip around the outer circumference of the dough. I put the dough on a greased baking tray and left it to one side as it was time to make the topping.

In a wide frying pan I lightly fried one diced red pepper, five finely sliced cloves of garlic, two carefully sliced large red onions and a teaspoon of oregano. Once the onions began to turn translucent and the pepper began to soften I added a can of tinned tomatoes and a half-sized can of tomato puree and let the contents of the pan cook for another five minutes. After cooking for the five minute period I found I had a rich topping which I poured into the pizza base and spread evenly over it. I then added thirteen stoneless black olives to the topping and arranged them in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

I cooked the pizza for fifteen minutes in the oven at 210 degrees (more like 218 degrees if you don't have a fan oven) and then turned down the oven to 165 degrees (175 degrees for non-fan ovens) and cooked it for another fifteen minutes. I knew the pizza was ready as the edges of the dough had begun to turn a deep chestnut brown.

For a first effort I was reasonably pleased with the pizza as the dough provided plenty of protein and the oregano helped give the topping a distinctive taste to complement the substantial fruit and vegetables contained in it. Next time however I'll put cheese in the pizza as that will give it more taste and texture and the chance to match my friend's dad as premier pizza maker in the area.

The final product with a rich topping and plenty of olives.