Morale Boosting Mince Pies

It was the Sunday before the last working week prior to the Christmas Holiday and I was slowly starting to feel festive despite the damp weather. I decided therefore to make some Mince Pies. The soundtrack of choice for cooking was the Stone Roses Compilation The Complete Stone Roses which is an excellent overview of their work for the Silvertone Record Label and contains everything from early rather primitive efforts like 1985's 'So Young' through to more familiar, sophisticated works like 'Fools Gold', 'Mersey Paradise' and 'What the World is Waiting For'.

I found a cake tin with twelve spaces in it and greased each space with margarine as well as a sprinkling of plain flour in each. I then made some shortcrust pastry by kneading eight ounces of plain flour with four ounces of margarine until they formed a breadcrumb-like consistency and bound the crumbs together into one mass of pastry with around two tablespoons of soya milk. I then rolled out the pastry as flatly as possible   and one by one cut circles with a diameter of around six centimetres from the pastry.

I then formed them into cup shapes and added one to each of the twelve spaces in the cake tin. When I did this I pressed them against the sides of each cake tin so that the top part of the pastry cups was slightly above the top of the spaces of the cake tin.

I filled each pastry cup with enough mincemeat to reach the top of the cups while still leaving the tops of the cups exposed. In order to give an extra taste to the pies I added an eighth of a teaspoonful of dark navy rum to the mincemeat in each cup.

I took the rest of the pastry and cut out lids from it that were about five centimetres in diameter and joined the edges of the lids with the pastry edges at the top of the cups to form the pies. As I only make mince pies at this time of year the skill of successfully joining the pie lids to the pastry cups is one that is usually forgotten by the end of January and has to be re-learned the following Christmas.

Once I had manipulated the pie lids onto the top of the cups to form proper mince pies I baked in them in the fan oven at 220 degrees, 230 for non-fan ovens, for fifteen minutes after which time the pastry had turned a golden-brown colour.

After I had turned the pies out onto a wire rack and left them to cool for about half an hour I added a dusting of icing sugar to each to enhance the festive feel of the food. In recognition of the way my workmates had pulled together and worked hard during a taxing two month prior to Christmas I took the pies to work for them to sample and they were met with unanimous approval.

Lined up and ready to eat complete with a dusting of icing sugar- the taste outweighed their appearance by some way. 

Mock Roast

Christmas Eve had been a very enjoyable day as it largely consisted of a trip to the pub in the afternoon and another one in the evening with plenty of good company. On Christmas morning after swapping presents with a few family members and taking the dog a walk to a deserted local wood I got down to the task of preparing Christmas Dinner. It was a Christmas Dinner with a difference as it contained no meat.

The album of choice, which was also my Christmas present, was the eponymous debut album by German Electronica duo Neu! Released in 1971 the album still sounds ahead of its time today and its minimalist ambiance has influenced everyone from David Bowie to Joy Division and Sonic Youth.

I took a white onion and diced it up finely. I then boiled it in a small saucepan of water for around twenty-five minutes until soft. While the onions boiled I greased an ovenproof Pyrex dish with margarine and added a box of shallot stuffing mix. to the dish. I then beat one egg in a separate bowl and when the onion had boiled sufficiently I poured it and the boiling water into the bowl with the stuffing mix and stirred everything thoroughly together so as to turn the contents of the bowl into a sticky but flavoursome paste. Once I had spread the stuffing evenly throughout the bowl with a butter knife I squeezed the juice of half a lemon over it and left the bowl to stand for around 30 minutes.

I peeled six white potatoes and then cut them into roughly five centimetre wide and one centimetre thick pieces. I put the potatoes to one side and prepared some sprouts by washing them in a bowl of ice cold water and then cutting their bottom ends off as well as removing the outer leaves. I also prepared five carrots by peeling them and topping and tailing them in the usual way before slicing them width-ways so that they looked the shape of pieces from the popular game 'Connect 4'.

In two medium sized baking trays with high sides I added enough sunflower oil to each so that oil covered the bottom of the trays. I pre-heated the oven to 170 degrees (180 degrees if you're not using a fan oven) and when the oven reached the correct temperature I placed the oil-filled baking trays in the oven for one minute so as to warm the oil up. I then took the trays out and added the potatoes which I left to cook for thirty minutes.

While the potatoes cooked I added four ounces of plain flour and two ounces of margarine to a mixing bowl together four sliced sage leaves. I rubbed the flour, margarine and sage together until they took on the shape of golden breadcrumbs interspersed with small pieces of green. Next I added two table spoons of unsweetened Soya Milk to the mixture and stirred it all together with a butter knife until I had a pliable pastry.

I rolled the pastry out and then cut it into pieces large enough to wrap around the centre of six Quorn vegetarian sausages which I had also plucked straight from the freezer. I added the newly wrapped sausages to a greased baking tray.

Also obtained from the freezer were four Quorn chicken style fillets that I added to my Le Cresceut dish and fried slowly in olive oil for fifteen minutes. I then added a hint of black pepper, five diced shallots and three large white onions that were also diced. After the onions and shallots had cooked long enough to become translucent I added a pint of chicken stock and made a thick gravy with quarter of a pint of boiling water and half a tablespoonful of flour as well as one chicken stock cube. I added the gravy to the Le Cresceut dish together with some more sage and left it to cook on a low light on the hob while the other parts of the meal were prepared.

The secret to preparing this meal is to make the stuffing mixture and leave it to set first. Then prepare the carrots and sprouts and then prepare the roast potatoes and leave them cooking for half an hour and while the potatoes are cooking make the pastry sausages and get the Quorn fillets cooking in the sage, onion and gravy as soon as possible.

After half an hour had elapsed I put the steamer on a high heat so as it came to the boil very quickly and I also took the potatoes out of the oven and turned each one over. When I returned the potatoes to the oven I added the sausages in pastry and the stuffing. I left the contents of the oven to cook for twenty-five minutes and while they were cooking I added the carrots and sprouts to the steamer together with some frozen peas and steamed them until I could put a fork through them easily.

I decided I wanted a white sauce to go with the sprouts and peas so I melted two ounces of butter in a saucepan and mixed this with a heaped table spoon of cornflour. I added a quarter of a pint of skimmed milk to the saucepan and stirred it into the flour and butter on a medium heat until it was thick.

After the potatoes, stuffing and sausages had cooked for their allotted twenty-five minutes the meal was ready. The question was did the lack of meat mean that Christmas Dinner would be ruined? The answer was a definite 'no' as the sausages with their strong-flavoured pastry made up for the loss of the usual pigs in blankets and the Quorn fillets were as tasty as chicken but without the worry of having to contend with fat and bone. The fillets further benefited from the sage and onion gravy as well as the liberal helpings of cranberry sauce I spread over them during the meal.

The roast potatoes were crisp and rich while the sprouts, carrots and peas found a tasteful place in the dinner thanks being covered in the white sauce.

The presence of the stuffing, which was made richer by the beaten egg and boiled onion pieces, meant there were still plenty of traditional features in this Christmas Dinner which was washed down with a bottle of champagne.

All laid out and ready to eat: easily as tasty as a traditional Christmas Dinner. 

Blue Cheese in December

It had been a good weekend; it began on the Friday evening with a first rate curry and then continued on Saturday with a trip to York to catch up with some old uni mates and then a visit to a real ale pub in the evening with some school friends. As a result when Sunday rolled around it was time to take things a little steadier and do some cooking.

As it was the last weekend prior to me finishing work for the Christmas and New Year Period I decided to make something a little festive. For me there are some foods that you automatically associate with Christmas and one of those is blue cheese, which I usually like to consume with a glass of Port at this time of year. For the recipe I prepared this time round I decided to incorporate some Blue Stilton into a quiche.

The soundtrack today was the Stone Roses' eponymous first album, which combines the best elements of sixties pop and makes them over in a late eighties Mancunian style that is memorable and unique.

I first made the pastry by greasing a 25cm wide pastry tin with margarine and sprinkling a spot of plain flour into it to make sure the pastry did not stick and then preparing the pastry from eight ounces of wholemeal flour and four ounces of margarine.

I put the pastry-lined tin to one side and then made the filling by finely chopping a bunch of parsley and a bunch of spring onions and adding them to a mixing bowl. I then took three ounces of Blue Stilton Cheese and crumbled it into the bowl with three ounces of plain cottage cheese and three ounces of quark, which is a pale, flavourless yoghurt originating from Germany readily available from many supermarkets. I stirred the cheeses, quark and vegetables together vigorously until the whiteness of the cottage cheese and quark covered all the other ingredients.

The next job was to lay my hands on three eggs, crack them into a bowl and whisk them extensively for about five minutes until the yolks had merged totally with the whites. I then added them to the bowl with the other ingredients and stirred them carefully together until the eggs had been fully absorbed. For a final touch I added a hint of white pepper.

After the contents of the bowl had been fully mixed together I poured them into the pastry case and used a butter knife to level the mixture off and spread it evenly throughout the case. I placed the meal in an oven that I had preheated to 180 degrees, 190 for those of you who don't have a fan oven, and let it cook for about thirty minutes. I could tell the quiche was ready as the edges were starting to turn a nut-brown colour.

So what can be said about the taste? Well the answer is that the spring onions and parsley give the quiche a sharp, fresh flavour that helped counterbalance the richness of the cottage cheese, quark and Blue Stilton. On this occasion I had the quiche with a salad but if you want to try this dish closer to Christmas then why not have it as a supplement to some crackers and a large cheeseboard and wash it down with a glass of Port?

A little overdone round the edges but this didn't detract from the excellent taste. 

Taking a hike

The next to last Sunday in November, the 18th of November to be exact, saw me attend a very enjoyable dedication ceremony for two good friends' baby son followed by a superb slap up carvery at a pub that I had last been to when Right Said Fred were topping the charts and Phil Collins had just made his last blockbuster studio album with Genesis.

As my assault on the pub's carvery lasted for the majority of the afternoon I had limited time for cooking and decided to make something that was quick to prepare but substantial all the same. The recipe I chose was Hiker's Parkin a perfect dish to fortify oneself against the crisp frost that had started the day and was set to continue throughout the week.

The album of choice for the cooking was Queen's 1978 effort Jazz; a record that was described by the NME on its release as being fascist. Fascist it is not but eclectic it certainly is as the album mixes heavy rock, catchy pop, stadium rock, a haunting acoustic ballad and disco- influenced funk. It was also an appropriate choice to listen to as I had it on heavy rotation at the time when the couple whose baby was dedicated earlier in the day had got married.

I first took a 10 centimetre deep and 25 centimetre wide baking tray and lined it with kitchen foil that was thoroughly greased with Margarine. I then poured five ounces of rolled porridge oats, two teaspoons of powdered ginger, two ounces of soft brown sugar and two ounces of mixed peel into my plastic mixing bowl. I stirred them together thoroughly with a wooden spoon until the sticky mixed peel was turned dry by being coated in the other ingredients.

In the meantime I melted three ounces of margarine in a small milk pan and then added the melted margarine to the mixing bowl together with six ounces of golden syrup, one beaten egg and two tablespoons of milk.

After all the ingredients were mixed together they formed a pleasantly fragrant paste that was golden brown in colour. I then poured the mixture into the greased baking tray and spread it evenly throughout the tray using a butter knife. The mixture was then cooked in the oven at 150 degrees (160 if you haven't a fanned oven) for forty five minutes. As always with dishes of this type I knew it was ready when I put a meat skewer through the middle of it and the skewer came out clean.

After the Parkin had been left to cool on a wire rack I cut it into bite size squares before I served it.

The taste was superb as the oats gave plenty of substance to the dish while the strong taste of the ginger was offset against the sweetness of the golden syrup, my workmates certainly seemed to agree when I took some of the Parkin to work the next day as it boosted their morale as well as meeting with the approval of their taste buds.

Straight out of the oven and left to cool on a wire rack prior to cutting up. 

Cut into squares and ready to take to work 

Time for Turmeric

On Remembrance Sunday I had a slight lie in after an evening of celebration, cake and Fifa 2013 in honour of the birth of my friends' daughter the night before. Then after a walking my hyperactive Lakeland Terrier I remembered I had bought a jar of Turmeric during the working week and decided it was time to put it to good use in my cooking.

Turmeric is a bright orange colour normally and looks more like something you would use in a school science project rather than an ingredient to use in cooking. It has a spicy flavour all its own however and adds a special dimension to any dish it is added to.

I used it this time round in a soup of chickpeas with spinach. The soundtrack for the cookery was Queen's 1977 release News of the World. The album is known for being front loaded with the one-two punch of We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions however there is much more to it as the third song Sheer Heart Attack would not have sounded out of place on a Sex Pistols or Clash album and the seventh song Get Down Make Love was subsequently covered by Nine Inch Nails. The album as a whole shows that there is much more to the Queen than just Bohemian Rhapsody and It's a Kind of Magic.

I put three tablespoons of olive oil into the bottom of my Le Cresceut dish and moved the dish from side to side so that the oil covered the bottom of the dish. I turned the heat up on the hob and poured a teaspoon of coriander seeds, three diced cloves of garlic, two diced onions and half a teaspoon of fresh coriander into the dish. After I had mixed these ingredients together I added a teaspoon of Turmeric which gave the food an almost radioactive glow as I stirred the Turmeric into it.

After frying the ingredients on a low heat for about ten minutes, always making sure that I stirred them periodically to avoid them sticking to the bottom of the pan, I added four ounces of chopped spinach, the juice of half a lemon, four tomatoes with the tops removed, a can of chickpeas and a pint of chicken stock. I then covered the Le Cresceut with the lid and left the dish to simmer for around half an hour.

After the half hour was up I added a hint of black pepper and blended the ingredients on the lowest setting that my blender had. I then re-served it in the Le Cresceut dish after warming it through on the hob for about five minutes.

After blending the soup it looked a dark colour not dissimilar in fact to the colour of khaki warn by soldiers in the Second World War. The taste was excellent with the chickpeas and spinach providing an earthy taste which contrasted well with the sour taste of the lemon and the powerful flavour of the Turmeric.

Halfway through eating- an earthy soup brought to life by the strong taste of Turmeric and Lemon

Florentine Age

The second Saturday in November saw me have the usual Saturday morning walk with my Airedale Terrier which helped to brush the cobwebs away after a handy trip to a newly discovered local pub with a good mate the night before.

On my return home I decided that I fancied something suitably filling and rich so I decided to make Poached Eggs Florentine for my lunch. The first step was to make a helping of Bechamel Sauce by putting a diced garlic clove and a diced onion in a milk saucepan with 450 millelitres of milk, half a teaspoon of grated nutmeg, the leaves from a sprig of time and a bay leaf. 

I let the contents of the pan simmer slowly whilst I melted fifty five grams of margarine in a larger saucepan, once  the margarine had melted I added fifty five grams of plain flour and stirred the flour into the melted margarine until it turned into a moist ball that was deep gold in colour. 

I then turned my attention back to the pan with the milk in and discarded the bay leaf as although it adds to the flavour of the dish it is unwise to eat it. I gradually added the milk, nutmeg, diced onion and garlic and thyme to the pan with the margarine and flour so  that the milk mixture combined with the ball of margarine and flour without making the mixture lumpy. Some recipes for this part of the dish advocate removing the thyme onion and garlic at this point and throwing them away but I find retaining them adds more taste to the dish and is less of a waste of food. Once everything was properly mixed together I left it to cook on a low light for thirty minutes. 

While the contents of the saucepan cooked I chose some appropriate music to listen to. Today's choice was Tom Waits' 1973 debut album closing time a record that covers a wide range of ground despite its only instruments being Waits' tobacco ridden voice, a pocket-sized horn section, a piano and the the odd bit of percussion, acoustic guitar and bass. This charming album mainly seems to be set in a late night world of rough bars populated by down and outs and other lowlifes and it owes a big debt to the work of Bob Dylan and Randy Newman.      

After half an hour I filled about half of another saucepan with water and while it was coming to the boil I added five ounces of grated cheddar cheese to the sauce that had been cooking and once the cheese had melted into the sauce I left it to cook on the lowest light of the hob possible.

When the water in the other saucepan came to boil I added the yolks and whites of four eggs to it and boiled them for about four minutes until they were slightly hard boiled. I then turned off the heat and set them to one side.

I added enough olive oil to fill the bottom of my Le Cresceut dish, turned on the heat and gradually added five hundred grams, roughly two medium sized packs worth, of spinach to the dish. As the spinach cooked it began to shrink which meant there was enough space to add a liberal helping of white wine vinegar, the Bechamel Sauce and the four eggs once I had first put them through a colander to remove all the water. Once I had stirred everything together in the Le Cresceut dish on a medium heat for five minutes it was ready to serve.

The results were pretty positive for my initial attempt at this quite difficult dish which is made rich by the hard boiled eggs, white wine vinegar and given substance by retaining the onion, garlic and thyme in the Bechamel Saunce. I think next time though I'll cook the eggs for a little less longer so that they are soft boiled and the yolk runs out of them onto the other ingredients when I serve it. In any event the meal was able to fortify me sufficiently for the evening's action-packed trip to the home of two of my friends in order to help them celebrate the birth of their daughter with a spot of sponge cake and a couple of bottles of champagne.

Just after the eggs and Bechamel Sauce had been added to the shrunken spinach

Two poached eggs and plenty of spinach, sauce and white wine vinegar  means a rich and tasty meal.

Leeks and Lemons

On the middle Sunday in October as I unwound after an exciting trip to a Turkish restaurant for a friend's birthday the night before I flicked through my recipe books and stumbled upon a tried and tested recipe that was easy to make. It used two ingredients that would not normally be found together; Leeks and Lemons.

I picked something a little more obscure as the soundtrack to the afternoon's food preparation with Arthur Brown's seminal 1968 offering The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. This album is best known for the song Fire, which he performed on Top of the Pops in a flaming head dress, but careful listening reveals an artist and band with a more diverse musical palette. Amongst other songs to check out are a passionate cover of James Brown's "I got money" which shows the range of Arthur Brown's voice, the mellow soul of "Rest Cure" and meandering, proto-ambient, piano driven "Child of my Kingdom,".

I topped and tailed two leeks having first peeled their outer layers off and removed all the dirt from them. I then cut the leeks length ways into strips that were about 10 centimetres long and 1 centimetre thick. Next I melted a generous piece of butter in the bottom of the Le Cresceut and tossed in the leeks with half a teaspoon of white pepper. The leeks were then sweated until the began to turn a pale brown.

I took a large Cox's apple and removed everything from it save the stem, core and pips. I took what I had removed and diced it into cubes. The diced apple was then added to the pan together with two bay leaves and a litre of vegetable stock. I find Cox's apples the best type of apple to use for this soup as they have a rich and sweet taste. I then let the dish simmer for twenty-five minutes.

After twenty-five minutes I removed the bay leaves, as it is not advisable to eat them, and added the juice of one lemon together with four sprigs of parsley. I blended the ingredients on the lowest setting I had on the blender and then poured the soup back into the Le Cresceut dish.

As I warmed the soup through I added a generous helping of grated Parmesan cheese and once this melted into the soup it was ready to eat. On paper a soup containing Leek, Lemon and Apple should not taste at all pleasant. However the reality is thankfully very different; the sourness of the lemon is well offset by the sweet richness of the Cox's apple and the strong taste of the Parmesan while the Leeks give the soup enough body to help it be substantial without making it an overly heavy meal.

Covered in Parmesan with a garnish of parsley- as tasty as it looks. 

Ready to eat- an unlikely mix of ingredients that are tastier than you'd think