Mock Roast

Back at the start of March when the weather was wet and foggy (so not dissimilar to today's supposedly summer morning) I made a roast dinner for my tea. However it was a roast dinner with a difference as it did not use any meat.

The starting point was to make the roast potatoes. I took three medium-sized red potatoes and sliced them into roughly 5cm wide and 1cm long circles. It's important that the potatoes are not too thin so that they burn in the oven but they cannot be too thick either otherwise they will not cook properly. I heated the oven to one hundred and seventy degrees (one hundred and eighty for a non-fanned oven) and when the oven was warmed up I put a high-sided baking tray containing sunflower oil into the oven and heated for one minute. I then took the tray out, added the potatoes and left them to cook in the oven for half an hour.

The countdown was now on for the meal being ready so I set about slicing up three large white onions into small 1cm x 2cm pieces and left them to one side. I then found my Le Cresceut dish and poured enough olive oil into it to just cover the bottom. The next task was to source something that wasn't meat but would give the same taste and be as filling. I found in the freezer four Quorn Fillets and warmed them gradually on a low heat in the bottom of the Le Cresceut dish. The trick with these fillets is to cook them gradually so the oil doesn't spit and fly out of the dish. Once the fillets had gone a pale brown colour I added the onions, half a teaspoon of black pepper and some fresh sage and stirred the ingredients together periodically to keep them from sticking to the bottom of the dish.

After the potatoes had cooked for half an hour I took them out of the oven and turned them over before putting them back in the oven for a further half an hour.

It was now time to make the stuffing. I first thoroughly greased a bowl with margarine and added a pack of stuffing mixture to it together with a beaten egg and roughly (depending the instructions on the pack) a quarter of a pint of boiling water and some lemon juice. I then covered the stuffing with foil and put it in the oven with the potatoes. This meant that it would cook for about half an hour. Sometimes depending on the mixture you choose the stuffing may need less time to cook, perhaps more like twenty minutes rather than half an hour.

The next job was to make the gravy. I put a heaped tablespoon of plain flour into a measuring jug with a vegetable stock cube and gradually added half a pint of boiling water to it whilst stirring the ingredients together. It's important to add the water slowly so as to ensure the gravy is not lumpy. I added the mixed gravy to the onions and Quorn together with another half pint of boiling water mixed with vegetable stock so as to be sure the mixture did not dry up. I left this part of the meal to cook slowly on the hob so the ingredients blended together properly.

It was time for a more straightforward part of the meal. I cut up three carrots, three parsnips and a head of broccoli and steamed them for twenty minutes together with some sprouts. By the time I had prepared these vegetables and steamed them until they were soft enough the stuffing, roast potatoes and the Quorn gravy were cooked and ready to serve.

The results were top drawer and more than a match for a traditional roast dinner. The potatoes were exceptionally tasty and the sunflower oil enhanced their flavour considerably. The sage and pepper helped give the gravy the right taste and the gravy itself was reasonably thick without being too lumpy. The Quorn itself was substantial enough to make me not miss having made roast chicken and I didn't have to worry about fat or gristle as I would have done with chicken either.

The stuffing came out well and was solid without being too dry and the lemon juice helped enhance its taste. The steamed vegetables also did their job as did the can of Gin and Tonic I drank with the meal.

The finished product together with gin and tonic to accompany.

Alcoholic Lentils

On third Saturday in April the weather had limited the prospects of there being any cricket matches to play in so I got down to the task of cooking some Pui Lentils in Red Wine for my tea. I slapped Peter Gabriel's 1986 blockbuster So onto the stereo which with its opening song Red Rain provided an appropriate soundtrack seeing as it was absolutely throwing it down outside.

I took five hundred grams of Puy Lentils, covered them with a saucepan and left them on a low heat to gradually come to the boil. In the meantime I put enough olive oil into my Le Cresceut Dish to cover the bottom and added three cloves of garlic, which I had previously cut into small pieces, and added a quarter of a teaspoon full of white pepper. While these ingredients were slowly frying on a low light on the hob I took one large white onion and five shallots and sliced them up  into (roughly) 1cm x 3cm pieces and added these to the garlic and pepper. I let these ingredients fry until the onions and shallots were starting to become transparent.

Turning my attention to the lentils I boiled them until there were more lentils than water in the pan and when the lentils had become soft enough to squash between my thumb and index finger I poured them (together with the remaining water) into the Le Cresceut dish with the shallots, onions, garlic and pepper. I then took half of a pint of red wine (I find Chilean Red Wine or Indian Red Wine the best for this dish) and half a pint of vegetable stock and added these to the dish. I then left the ingredients to cook on a medium heat for around forty minutes until the lentils and vegetables were soft and there was roughly enough liquid just to cover the vegetables.

This dish is delicious served, as it was on this occasion, with Sage Yorkshire Pudding (see blog entry for 26 February 2012) and some steamed broccoli. As long as you get the right balance between the liquid and the vegetables it is a very easy dish to make.

This is what the dish should look like if you get the consistency of the ingredients right.

Bitterblue

Last Sunday morning I was nursing a mild hangover following a good deal of top-quality revelry the night before at a friend's wedding at which I was the best man. This fact coupled with the extremely heavy late April rain and low temperatures meant I did not feel much like cooking anything too demanding.

As a result I decided to make some blue cheese biscuits which are pretty simple to prepare. I also realised I needed to choose my music carefully as anything too heavy wouldn't do my sore head any good. Accordingly I found John Martyn's mellow 1973 album Solid Air; an album which is full of spaced out acoustics, saxophones and sounds that generally wash over you rather than assault your senses.

I poured six ounces of plain flour into a mixing bowl and stirred it together with one teaspoon of mustard and half a teaspoon of black pepper. I then took three ounces of margarine that I had cut into cubes and mixed them well into the flour, mustard and pepper. I next laid my hands on a large slice of blue cheese (probably about ten to twelve ounces worth) and stirred this in well to the other ingredients. The cheese I used was called Yorkshire Blue but any soft blue cheese that is moist will do. It is important the cheese is moist so as it binds all the ingredients together and stops them being too dry when they are rolled out.

Once I had put the ingredients together into a large mass of cheese, flour and margarine I stuck them in the fridge for half and hour to help them stay together. Half an hour later I took the ball of cheese and other ingredients out of the fridge, sprinkled plain flour on the work surface and my rolling pin and then rolled the mixture out into a fifteen centimetre by thirty centimetre square. I then cut it into rectangular shapes and put them on a baking tray lined with well greased kitchen foil.

To cook the biscuits I put them in a fan oven that was preheated to one hundred and seventy degrees (one hundred and eighty for a regular oven) and left the biscuits in there for fifteen minutes. The smell of the blue cheese cooking did a good job of giving the oven a distinctive aroma but it was worth it as these biscuits are really moreish and you can never have one at a time.

I had found this out at first hand when making them for a wine and cheese evening last Christmas as the friend whose wedding I had been best man at managed to consume quite a few during the course of that evening. The biscuits (which are especially tasty with chutney) I cooked this time round had a similar effect when I took them into work the following day for my grateful colleagues.

The biscuits made the oven smell a bit but it was worth it.

 

Oliveaceous

After yet another sunny but freezing Sunday morning walk in April I set my mind on the recipe I was to make during the afternoon. With Kate Bush's difficult second album on the stereo I greased a twenty-five centimetre wide flan tin that was around two centimetres deep. As well as using margarine to grease the tin I sprinkled some flour into it so as to be totally sure the completed product wouldn't stick to the tin. 

I first needed to make a pastry case for what was going to become an olive and onion tart. I poured out eight ounces of wholemeal flour, I should point out the you must use wholemeal flour for this recipe as I once used wholemeal bread flour and struggled to get the resulting pastry to stick together. I then put four ounces of margarine that I had cut into cubes into the bowl and rubbed the ingredients together until they resembled breadcrumbs. Now came a slightly tricky bit. I put into the mixture two table spoons of milk and mixed them into the rest of the ingredients. It's a thin line that you tread between putting too much milk in so the pastry becomes sloppy and too sticky to roll out and putting too little in and finding the pastry is too dry and disintegrates when rolled out. The trick is to add the milk and stir it in gradually but if it becomes too damp add some flour to compensate until the pastry is of the right consistency to roll out. Once the pastry was of the right consistency I rolled it out and lined the tin with it. I then put the tin to one side. 

The next step was to make the filling; I cut up three red onions and fried them with twelve de-stoned black olives and two tablespoons of nutmeg.  I fried them for about ten minutes until you could start to see the veins in the onions, however I took care to make sure the ingredients were not burned bearing in mind they would soon be baked in the oven. I then cracked an egg in a separate bowl, beat it and then added it to the onions together with a touch under a quarter of a pint of milk. Next I poured the mixture into the pastry case, spaced the olives evenly around the outside of the case and put three in the middle.

I pre-heated the oven to 165 degrees (175 if you've not got a fanned oven) and cooked the flan on baking tray (so as to stop it leaking into the oven) for thirty minutes. Sometimes depending on the type of oven you have you may need to cook it for thirty five or forty minutes. 

The key to the quality taste of this dish was the nutmeg which mixed well with the crisp onions and the black olives. Also the pastry although quite difficult to make was certainly worth the effort and had much more texture and flavour than normal shortcrust pastry made with plain flour.

The finished dish- I took it out of the oven at just the right time to stop the onions being too burnt.

Rhubarb, Rhubarb

On Easter Sunday the Simnel Cake wasn't the only cooking project that I got myself involved in. I decided also to make the unlikely combination of Carrot and Rhubarb soup.

I teed up album numbers two and three of Black Sabbath's legendary first six albums  on the CD player and proceeded to push on with the task of making the soup. I first covered the bottom of a large metal pan with olive oil and put the hob on a low heat. I then chopped up finely two shallots and one garlic clove and then added them to the pan. As I do with all my soups I made sure the spices were blended in early into the mixture and with this in mind I put a tablespoon of cinnamon into the pan and mixed it thoroughly with the shallots and garlic.

During the three minutes that I left these ingredients cooking I diced up one and a half pounds of carrots and then put them in the pan and left them to cook for twelve minutes. I took care the stir them periodically so as they didn't stick to the bottom of the pan; this is one drawback of using a metal pan to cook soup as it is easy for the ingredients to become stuck to the pan whilst they are being cooked.

While the cooking of the carrots was taking place I took one pound of Rhubarb, which I had purchased from my local greengrocer as I often find fresh fruit and vegetables brought from traditional greengrocers are better then those from supermarkets. I cut the Rhubarb into two centimetre wide rectangles and removed the chewy, papery skin as I did so and then placed it in the pan with the juice from a freshly squeezed orange. I stirred the ingredients thoroughly and let them cook for another five minutes.

The smell of cinnamon and orange was steaming out of the pan at this point in the preparation. 

I next did something that I thought might ruin the soup but in fact it served to enhance it; I poured half a pint of chicken stock into the pan with a quarter of a pint semi-skimmed milk and as with the previous ingredients I stirred them together well and added a hint of white pepper.

It was now time to blend this bizarre mixture. After blending it I returned it to the pan, quickly reheated it through and then served it. The question was did it taste any good? There was only one answer to this question and that was yes. The cinnamon and fresh orange juice reminded me of Christmas cooking and gave out an aroma that made the kitchen smell a lot better than before while the chicken stock and milk served to add a bit of body to the soup without overwhelming the great taste of the cinnamon and orange juice. The carrot and rhubarb had their place in the soup as they had quite neutral flavours and made it substantial without compromising the taste of the cinnamon and the orange.    

Freshly blended and ready to serve. 

An Old Favourite

One Sunday in the middle of March the sun shone continuously and in the morning I took the opportunity to go on a steady 8 mile walk with an old school friend who I was able to introduce to some of the local countryside for the first time. On my return home I decided to make a pudding with plenty of sweet ingredients to give me some energy before I slipped back into the working week. I decided to go with a traditional English Pudding- the Bakewell Tart.

I first took a four centimetre deep dish that was about twenty-five centimetres across and greased with margarine and a sprinkled a bit of Plain Flour in the base of the dish.

I then cracked one Egg in a bowl and mixed it with two ounces of Caster Sugar. I added five ounces of Margarine to the bowl and stirred it into the Egg and Sugar gradually whilst adding periodically eight ounces of Plain Flour. Once everything was stirred together it resembled Cookie Dough and when it was in this state I realised it was ready to roll out.

I sprinkled a bit of Plain Flour on my work surface and rolled out the dough until it was wide enough to cover not only the base of the dish but also the sides of it. I then laid my hands on a jar of Raspberry Jam and spread over the base of the dish until the jam covered the base totally.

It was now time to make the filling. I put four ounces of Margarine and four ounces of Caster Sugar in the bowl and creamed them with a wooden spoon until the sugar was so mixed into the Margarine that the ingredients looked like a large piece of fluff. I followed up by putting two Eggs into the bowl and stirring them in thoroughly. In order to stop the mixture turning too sloppy I added four ounces of Ground Almonds and half an ounce of Plain Flour to it and stirred it in until the mixture toughened up and thickened. Once it was thick enough I poured it into the dish so as it covered the Jam-stained base. I took care to ensure the filling was spread evenly throughout the dish.

Immediately after cooking- you'll know the Tart's cooked if the edges start to burn as happened here. 

I then heated my fan oven to two hundred degrees (I recommend two hundred and ten or even two hundred and twenty degrees if you have a normal oven) and cooked the Bakewell Tart for thirty minutes. Sometimes depending on how powerful your oven is you may need to cook it for thirty-five or forty minutes. I then left it to cool.

Some say the old ones are the best ones and this is certainly the case with this dish, a dish that is sometimes overlooked through over-familiarity by the casual food lover. The sweet filling combined with the Jam which is offset by the more savoury base make this a tasty pudding without it being too sweet and sickly. If you really want to overdose on the Sugar why not wait until the tart is cold and top it with Icing? Whichever approach you want to take this traditional pudding is worth acquainting yourself with.

Ready to eat- the jam and the filling make this pudding sweet but not too sweet. 

Soup that glows

The first Sunday in March was an extremely wet one so I elected to take a long lie in. When I decided to get up mid-morning I thought the next best thing to walking the dog was to cook a warming soup as the weather showed no real signs of letting up.

As it looked like I was going to be stuck inside all morning I mind my mind up to prepare a soup that I knew would take all morning to do but ultimately would be worth it. With the spacy guitar sounds of Pink Floyd's 1987 comeback album "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" on the stereo I set about making Beetroot and Ginger Soup. 

I took my Le Creuscet dish, put it on the hob and poured enough olive oil into it to cover the bottom of the dish. I then warmed the oil up on the lowest light possible while I prepared the other ingredients. 

I peeled a Ginger root and then grated it into the oil. I next cut three cloves of Garlic into half-inch length pieces and added these to the oil. I always think it helps with soups of this type to put your most strongly-flavoured ingredients into the mix early as it gives them chance to cook and pass their flavours onto the other ingredients that are subsequently added to them. 

I found three fresh Beetroots that I had bought from the local village market, peeled them and then cut them into one inch cubes. I find it is better to use Beetroots from local markets as the so-called 'fresh' Beetroot from supermarkets is more often than not from abroad and tastes very bitter in comparison to its British Counterpart.

I took a White Onion and proceeded to dice it up into one inch pieces. Once the Ginger and Garlic started to turn slightly brown I added the Beetroot and Onion to the dish. In order for them to cook properly I poured enough water into the dish to cover the vegetables and left them to cook on a medium heat on the hob for two hours. I found I had to occasionally to up the water about once every forty-five minutes so as to make sure the mixture did not boil dry. 

Above: when cooking the ingredients make sure you keep the water topped up so as to be certain the mixture doesn't boil dry. 

After two hours I poured the ingredients into the blender and blended into a rather toxic looking bright pink puree. I then returned them to the dish and poured a quarter of a pint of unsweetened Soya Milk into the mixture and stirred it in. It's important you cook the ingredients for at least two hours before blending to be sure they're soft otherwise if they are under cooked and you stick them in the blender your blender will overheat and start smoking. I know from experience as this is what happened the first time I tried to make this dish!  

The question was whether boiling the ingredients for two hours on the hob was worth it bearing in mind the increase in my quarterly gas bill following the making of this recipe and the fact my hob was now stained with  hot Beetroot juice that took quite a while to shift. The answer was a very clear yes, although the soup looks like something that should be used in heavy industry it has a very earthy taste due to the Beetroot that is offset against the sharp flavours of the Garlic and the Ginger. It may take a while to cook but if you can find the right Beetroot from a reliable local trader give it a go, you'll be surprised how much you enjoy it.

Above and below: after blending the garish colour belies the quality taste.