Tasting the Future?

Peter Kay once said "Garlic Bread, I've tasted it; it's the future," an amusing quote but someone should have told him that garlic bread has been a staple part of many people's diet years before he came up with it. It was with this quote at the back of my mind that I decided to cook my own Garlic bread yesterday. I had been picked for two cricket matches, however both were cancelled due to the third rate, damp June weather  leaving the wickets looking like Irish Peat Bogs so the next best thing was to do some cooking.

I looked to the web to find some inspiration but found that most recipes involved taking a prepared baguette, stuffing it with garlic, chives and butter and then cooking it. For me this was all too easy and frankly pretty boring.

The soundtrack for the day's cooking was Elvis Costello and the Attractions' 1981 effort Trust an album which contains songs about working men's clubs, relationships and fish and chip paper and spans the genres of post punk, singer-songwriter, ska, soul pop, country, hard rock, rock and roll and rockabilly in a touch over half an hour.  

I poured twelve ounces of white bread flour into a bowl with one sachet of yeast (available from most supermarkets) and an ounce of margarine. I mixed these together with a metal spoon until the margarine disappeared into the drier ingredients. Next I made a well in the middle of the bowl and poured in a beaten egg and a quarter of a pint of milk. I stirred them into the dry mixture until they made a soft dough.

At this stage the dough was too soft and sticky to knead properly so I added three tablespoonfuls of white bread flour into the bowl and kneaded the dough into the floor to make it lose its stickiness. Following this I punched the dough hard for about five minutes to remove any air pockets from it and left it on my window sill to rise for an hour.

In the meantime I made the filling. I cut up five cloves of garlic into the smallest pieces possible together with five heads of parsley. I then fried them on a low heat for five minutes in olive oil and then left them to cool.

Frying the garlic and parsley in olive oil. 

After the dough had risen I sprinkled some flour on the work surface and rolled the dough out until it was about a foot long and half a foot wide. I then spread the garlic and parsley evenly on top of the dough together with 100 grams of margarine.

The dough was then folded so the filling was covered and the dough resembled a square parcel. I brushed the top of the dough with milk and then cut some slits in the top to let the air out while it cooked.

I greased a high sided baking tray and put the dough into it. I cooked the dough in the oven for half an hour at 165 degrees (175 degrees if you have no fanned oven).

Freshly baked and ready to eat- in this case with homemade lasagne.

When I removed the dough from the oven the smell of cooked garlic and melted margarine was the first thing I smelled. The bread itself had a soft inside which included just the right amount of garlic to give it taste but not so much that it was overwhelming. Through the cooking the 100 grams of margarine had sunk to the bottom of the bread and soaked into the base to make it crisp and very tasty.

Cross section of the bread with the melted margarine sunk to the bottom. 

Rapid Pasta

On the weekend of the 12th and 13th March I had an exciting and strenuous weekend playing cricket at Denby and an enjoyable walk with the dog in the hills. That said I wanted to cook something that was quick and easy to make which would fill me up after all the energy I had expended.

I decided to make Pappardelle with tomatoes, peas and broad beans. The soundtrack to the preparation of the meal was Elvis Costello's 1978 effort This Year's Model; an album that contains aggressive guitar, carnivalesque organ riffs and fiercely literate lyrics. I hadn't tuned to his frequency for a while and hearing the album helped me recall the summer term of my fresher's year at University when I had first bought the album.

The first task to undertake was to take eight ounces of peas and broad beans and steam them for five minutes. I had to use frozen peas and broad beans as their fresh counterparts were not quite in season at this stage in the  year. Once the peas and broad beans had been steamed I left them to one side.

I then took fifteen ounces of Pappardelle and added them to a pan of boiling water. The best type to use for this recipe is the dried stuff that's available from Sainsburys. I boiled the Pappardelle for fifteen minutes, drained it and left in the colander. In order to enhance the taste I added an ounce of margarine and a quarter of a teaspoon of black pepper and mixed these thoroughly into the pasta.

I next prepared four plum tomatoes by cutting out their hard tops and then slicing them length ways. To help them retain their taste I decided not to peel them. I then took my Le Cresceut dish and poured olive oil into the bottom of it before putting it on a low heat.

The next task was to add the peas and broad beans and warm them through for about a minute. I then added the tomatoes together with a pinch of white pepper and a generous helping of fresh basil. I followed up by adding the Pappardelle and then stirred everything together to avoid it sticking to the bottom of the dish.

In order to help enhance the taste further I added four heaped tablespoons of Mascarpone Cheese to it. The dish was now ready to serve.

The results were completely first rate; the fresh basil and tomato gave the dish a flavour that simply wouldn't have been possible if i'd used dried basil from a jar. The Mascarpone Cheese helped to give a richness that wasn't enough to make things too sickly while the Pappardelle gave plenty of protein.

Oddly enough the meal took exactly thirty-two minutes to prepare; the same length of time as the album I was listening to.

The Mascarpone, tomatoes and basil were what made the dish  top quality.

Bank Holiday Battenberg

On the Monday of the Queen's Jubilee Bank Holiday I decided to make a suitably Jubilee themed cake whose name is of course the German translation of Mountbatten; the surname of the always politically correct Duke of Edinburgh.

The music on the playlist for the weekend's Bank Holiday revelry included the Smiths' 1986 masterpiece the Queen is Dead and God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols (good for comedy value). However the soundtrack for the cooking a preparation of the Battenberg itself was Shaun Ryder's obscure 2003 solo effort Amateur Night in the Big Top which sounded like a slightly more blue version of a chill out dance compilation album. It also displayed a refreshingly DIY approach to music making that caused me to think that if myself and a few of my mates got our hands on some beers and a copy of DJ Hero we could probably make as good an album.

I first measured into a bowl fifty grams of margarine and fifty grams of caster sugar. I stirred them together with a wooden spoon until the sugar had disappeared into the margarine. I then poured the contents of an egg into the bowl and added fifty grams of self-raising flour. Next it was time to try and use my limited upper body strength to bind these ingredients together. I stirred them thoroughly by pushing the wooden spoon deep into the mixture and moving it rapidly in a clockwise direction over and over again until the ingredients were properly blended.

I prepared a 25cm long loaf tin that was around 10cm and 5cm wide. I greased it with margarine and sprinkled flour in the bottom of it. I then poured the mixture into it and spread it evenly over the bottom of the tin.Next I covered the mixture with grease proof paper and left the tin to one side.

It was now time to make the other part of the mixture. In order to do this I simply repeated the process outlined above with the same amount of ingredients apart from that I added a quarter of a teaspoon of red food colouring. I then poured this mixture onto the top of the grease proof paper and spread it out evenly.

I cooked the mixture in a fanned oven at 170 degrees (180 for non-fanned ovens) for thirty minutes, then waited for the ingredients to cool and turned the two pieces of sponge out onto a wire rack. I was left with a yellow piece of sponge and a pink piece of sponge. I then cut the two pieces length ways down the middle and left them to cool.

In the meantime I made almond icing. I decided not to play safe and use ready made icing and instead made it from scratch. I took fifty grams of ground almonds, seventy five grams of icing sugar, seventy five grams of caster sugar, a quarter of a teaspoon of almond essence and one beaten egg. I then stirred the ingredients together thoroughly in a bowl until they formed a sticky paste.

I then turned my attention to the sponge and stuck the pieces together so the pink and yellow parts were at diagonals to each other; which made the end of the cake look like a psychedelic chess board. In order to help the sponge stick together I used mango and lime curd which I spread along the sides of the four pieces of sponge.

There are better looking cakes available for sure but few that are tastier.

After this I coated the pieces of sponge with the almond paste and left the newly constructed Battenburg to set.

So what were the results? Well this cake was very much one where taste outshone aesthetics. The sponge had come out a little wonky in the tin and the ends of it were more of a golden colour then a vivid contrast between yellow and pink. Also the recipe for the paste was perhaps a touch runnier than was ideal. However when the cake was cut into the contrast between the pink and yellow became apparent and the mango and lemon curd complimented the extreme sweetness of the almond paste. It may not have looked perfect but with taste of the quality described I wasn't too bothered- happy Jubilee Bank Holiday.

Like a psychedelic chess board- a cross section of the cake.

Give Quiche a chance

The Sunday of the May Day bank holiday was going to be a busy and exciting one; the afternoon was to involve a trip to the pub to watch the penultimate round of Premiership matches and the evening promised a trip to Sheffield to watch the original incarnation of the Happy Mondays play together for the first time in nearly twenty years.

I realised that I needed to have a big dinner so I cooked a spinach quiche. I first greased a 2cm deep and 25cm wide pie tin with margarine and then dusted it with plain flour. I next made some wholemeal pastry out of eight ounces of wholemeal flour and lined the tin with it in the same way as I did when I made the olive and onion tart (see entry on this blog on 5 May 2012).

With the mannered, wintry new wave sounds of Peter Gabriel's sophomore solo album playing in the background I set about making the filling of the quiche. I first fried a pound of washed spinach in a deep frying pan until it had reduced by around two thirds. I then added four ounces of cream cheese, four ounces of grated cheddar cheese and two ounces of grated Parmesan together with a pinch of nutmeg. I then stirred the mixture and left it to cook on the lowest light possible on the gas hob.

In the meantime I cracked four eggs into a bowl and whisked them together thoroughly. I then poured them into the pan with the spinach and stirred them into it. I then dropped the contents into the pastry case and spread them evenly throughout it.

The next step was to cook the quiche the oven at 190 degrees (200 for a non-fanned oven) for half an hour. I knew the quiche was cooked through when I put a skewer into the mixture and it came out clean.

The quiche was exceptionally savoury to eat and the varieties of cheese made it very rich without being too filling and it certainly set me up nicely for the action-packed afternoon and evening that followed.

Freshly cooked- it was a little bit burnt round the edges but  the taste wasn't compromised at all

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.