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When I was a child one of my favourite foods was corned beef hash. I especially used to like it mixed up with mashed potato. I think I got this from my granddad who first came across the dish when he was growing up in Scotland and he brought the dish down south with him after the war. He always refers to it as "corned beef and tatties". It's a simple meal albeit very tasty.

The Sunday before last I decided to make a variation on it called corned beef hash. It had been a wet and windy morning that had followed a wet and windy, but extremely excellent, Saturday night sampling flavoursome Mexican food while wearing an oversize Sombrero all as part of a friend's birthday celebrations. If the corned beef hash that I was about to make was simple comfort food to take my mind off the damp Sunday morning weather then the album of choice to listen was simple comfort music. I chose Kiss' 1987 platinum blockbuster Crazy Nights, which despite being cheesier than a Welsh Rarebit has many catchy songs that are played by the band with a passion and power that firmly sticks one finger up to critics and musical snobs. It's therefore the perfect record for a rainy day and helped me get stuck in to the task of dicing a large white onion, cleaning, peeling and cubing three white potatoes.

I first fried the white onion pieces in some olive oil in a frying pan for around five minutes until they began to brown. At the same time I added a pinch of black pepper and a quarter of teaspoon of mustard which I mixed into the onions. In the brief period that the onions were cooking I cut three slices of corned beef into small squares and after the onions were ready I added the corned beef and the cubed potatoes to the frying pan and spread them out throughout the pan.

I turned up the heat on the hob and once the potatoes and corned beef began to hiss I used a wooden spatula to look underneath the pieces and when they had started to brown I turned them over to fry the other side. So as to stop the food burning I added some extra olive oil to the pan to keep it moist. Once the potato pieces were soft enough to be cut with the wooden spatula and had browned on both sides I finished it by placing some fresh parsley on top and then the dish was ready.

This was genuine comfort food; the fried potatoes and the corned beef gave the meal a taste that was like the smell of a well-kept chip shop at peak serving hour. It certainly helped fortify me after my soaking that morning while walking the dog. The richness of the red cabbage cooked in cider that I had made to compliment it lent the meal some sophistication. The red cabbage dish will be featured in the next blog entry so watch this space...

The fresh parsley from the garden was the perfect finish to this meal. 

Personal Gingery

To help provide some motivation for my colleagues at work I recently made some gingerbread to take in for them. I used to bring my cooking projects into work more regularly but the job has become busier and some of my other free time has been taken up by accepting two public appointments. Still I managed to get some time to make some Grantham Gingerbreads which differ from normal gingerbread in that each piece is cooked individually rather than in a large block that is then cut up after it cools down.

I made them by creaming together four ounces of margarine and three and a half ounces of caster sugar. I then added the yolk of an egg and four ounces of self-raising flour and stirred these ingredients thoroughly together until a soft paste was formed. I then added two teaspoons of powdered ginger and mixed them into the paste.

After greasing a baking tray with margarine I added individual blobs of the paste to the tray. The blobs were around two centimetres wide and one centimetre high. I cooked them in the oven at 130 degrees (140 for non-fan ovens) for forty-five minutes.

The results were a gingerbread that was soft, not too tough on my teeth and (as one of my work collleagues commented) flavoursome without being  too overpowering.

Soft but tasty: the gingerbread just before I took it to work.

Lemons, Leeks and apple in a risotto

Quite a while ago on this blog I made a soup with leeks, lemons and apples in the ingredients. Last Sunday I decided to revisit the idea with a twist; I would use the ingredients in a risotto. With thoughts of a challenging week ahead and the icy keyboard sounds of Rush's 1987 album Hold Your Fire playing out around me I diced a white onion and prepared a leek by removing its outer leaves and clearing the dirt clinging to it. I sliced the leek narrowly lengthways and then cut in half the thin slices so as they would cook more easily.

I warmed some olive oil on the hob in my Le Cresceut dish, sprinkled in some white pepper and added the onion and leeks. I then fried them carefully on the hob until the onion became translucent and the leeks began to brown slightly. This process took around 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes I added the unpeeled, cubed flesh of a Cox's apple to the dish and stewed it with the leeks and onion for 10 minutes. I then added the juice from half a lemon, ten ounces of risotto rice and half a pint of white wine. Now came the tricky bit; I stirred the mixture repeatedly on a medium heat until rice became slightly translucent. I needed to stir the mixture continuously because otherwise it would stick to the bottom of the Le Cresceut dish and burn. I then gradually added half a pint of vegetable stock until the rice became bloated and soft.

To add an extra richness to the meal I melted two ounces of Parmesan into the mixture and once the melting was complete it was ready to serve. Like the leek, lemon and apple soup I made, on paper you would think these ingredients would not go together but they certainly did on this occasion to provide a filling and enjoyable risotto.

This risotto certainly tastes better than you'd think.

Sprouts In October?

When I was at school I remember watching cult T.V comedy series Bottom which starred Rik Mayall as Richie and Adrian Edmondson as his housemate Eddie. One of my favourite episodes was set at Halloween and included Rik Mayall's character making Mexican flavoured sprouts. Adrian Edmondson's character questioned this move as it was only October. His character's questioning does have some grounding in traditional best practice however; my gran once told me that sprouts should only be eaten after the first frosts arrive. The reason for this is that the frost makes them sweeter. Although this was historically true advances in farming and harvesting of fruit and vegetables have meant that these days you can have sprouts before the first frosts as they will still taste as sweet.

With this in mind I set about making a sprout and sausage soup last Saturday, despite the weather continuing to be mild. I needed something substantial and warming to help me recover from the effects of consuming some seven per cent anchor steam beer the night before. The soundtrack for preparation of the soup was Rush's excellent 1976 breakthrough album '2112' which is a concept album about mind control. However beyond the weighty subject matter, which makes the album sound like it should only be listened to by professional train spotters with long beards and few social skills, are some extremely catchy melodies, superb playing and a real drive that makes the record accessible for a wide-range of listeners without the need to appreciate to story line.

I first fried a diced white onion with two vegetarian sausages until the onion became translucent and the sausages became a nut brown colour. I then cut one of the sausages in half and kept one half on the side while returning the other to the Le Cresceut dish in which I had been frying it with the other sausage and the onion. I left the onion and sausage on a low light and began to prepare the sprouts. The trick with the sprouts is to peel the first few layers off them so that all the bad bits are removed. Then it is necessary to tail them and cut a cross mark across the bases of each sprout.

Once the sprouts were ready I added them to the onions and sausage together with a pint and a half of chicken stock. I then simmered the contents of the dish for half an hour until the sprouts were soft and added a little black pepper to the mixture while it simmered. I then took the dish off the heat and left it to cool for half an hour.

After half an hour had passed I blended the ingredients, returned them to the Le Cresceut and added three tablespoons of plain, unsweetened soya milk. Some variants on this recipe use sour cream instead of soya milk and chorizo instead of vegetarian sausages however my recipe does ensure that you have a tasty, flavoursome soup that is healthy as well.

After I had warmed the soup through it was ready to serve and I garnished it with some slices of the pre-cooked vegetarian sausage and fresh parsley. The taste was very earthy and the soup was certainly very full-bodied; perfect early Autumn food.

Fresh Parsley on top of the soup helps give a freshness to the otherwise earthy taste. 

Parmesan Party Bread

The week leading up to the penultimate Saturday in September had been a tiring one as I had fallen ill after becoming worn down by lots of nonetheless enjoyable meetings during the week to do with work, family and friends. On the Saturday itself I had been invited to the housewarming party of one my best friends at his new girlfriend's house. After taking copious amounts of Beechams I headed to the top of the nearest hill to get some fresh air and when I returned home I set about making some bread for my friend, his girlfriend and their guests to enjoy.

I decided to make a variation on a bread I had taken to previous party that some of the guests of tonight's party had also attended and enjoyed. I started by mixing together in a bowl seven ounces of strong white bread flour and five ounces of wholemeal bread flour with a sachet of yeast. After stirring these ingredients together I added a beaten egg, that I had first let warm to room temperature, and a quarter of a pint of milk. I stirred the egg and milk into the flours and yeast to create a soft paste into which I kneaded two further ounces of wholemeal bread flour so as to make the dough pliable but dry enough not to stick to the bowl. I then left the dough on my windowsill in the late September sunshine to rise for half an hour.

While the dough was rising I fried a diced red onion and a diced white onion with a pinch of white pepper for twenty minutes until the onions became golden. When the bread had risen I rolled it out flat and spread the onions out evenly over the surface. I then grate an ounce of Parmesan Cheese over the onions and took the corners of the bread and folded them together to form a parcel of pastry.

I brushed the top of the bread with milk and then cooked it in the oven for twenty-five minutes at 190 degrees (200 if it was a non-fan oven). After leaving the bread to cool I wrapped it in foil and headed out to the party. It proved to be a hit as the guests took just half an hour to devour the whole loaf at what was a memorable and entertaining evening.

Get it while you can: the bread shortly before it was finished off.