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

Currants and Rum

It was the penultimate Sunday in October and I was unwinding after an enjoyable catch up with a couple of close friends, who were expecting a new daughter, the previous evening and the shock of having to don a boiler suit and oxygen mask and boiler suit to salvage my fire-damaged office towards the end of the previous working week. As always after these kind of events I headed for the kitchen to try and make something new.

I had forgotten to buy raisins to go with the rum I found at the supermarket so instead of rum and raisin slices I elected to make rum and currant slices.

The soundtrack to the rather long process of preparation was Steely Dan's 1980 album Gaucho, a record that although highly listenable with the odd moment of inspiration does suffer a little from over rehearsed songs and the fact that its composers were taking a family-sized amount of Class A drugs during the recording. For the second part of cooking I listened to John and (his then wife) Beverley Martyn's turn of the sixties offering Stormbringer! an album which contains some of John Martyn's best early songs such as the powerful slow-burning title track, the haunting harmonies of Traffic Light Lady and energy of Go out and Get It. Beverley Martyn also does her bit with above-par singing on several songs including the excellent self-penned Sweet Honesty.

I greased a 20cm by 20cm baking tin, that had high sides which were around 10cm tall, with a paper towel covered in margarine. In a bowl I mixed together four tablespoons of dark rum, which I had been asked for ID on when I purchased it the night before even though I am well over the legal drinking age, with two and a half ounces of currants. I then left the bowl to one side so that the rum would soak into the currants and make them bloated.

I then put seven ounces of dark chocolate and put them in a heat proof bowl with two and a half ounces of margarine. I put the bowl on top of a pan of boiling water and waited while the heat from the boiling water melted the margarine and the chocolate into a rich, dark liquid. After I took the bowl of chocolate and margarine off the hob I added nine fluid ounces of plain Greek Yoghurt and four and a half ounces of sugar to the heatproof bowl and stirred them together until I had a very thick mixture.

I sifted four ounces of plain flour into a separate bowl and then added the currants, rum and the rather gooey chocolate mixture together with three beaten eggs. Once these items were properly combined using a strong metal tablespoon I poured them into the greased metal tin and spread the mixture equally throughout the tin. I cooked it in my oven at 170 degrees, 180 degrees if you don't have a fan oven, for about half an hour. As always with these type of dishes I knew it was ready when I poked a skewer through the middle of it and it came out clean. Once it had cooled I cut the sponge I had made into bite sized cubes.

Despite it being unorthodox to use currants with rum the combination worked well and the dark rum, Greek Yoghurt and dark chocolate gave the cake a very smoky taste which was counterbalanced by the sweetness of the sugar which stopped the smoky taste being too overpowering.

All sliced up and ready to eat.

Strong tasting but still tasty enough. 

You say potato...

The first Thursday in October was a memorable one; I did a four hour walk in bright sunlight with the dog which gave me a good chance to unwind and take stock during my week off from work.

On my return home I decided to make my tea a little more interesting by having a go at making a Potato Tarkari. I needed to cook something with potatoes as my cupboard seemed to contain more spuds than one man could realistically consume on his own.

The record of choice for today's meal was Fairport Convention's first album which is an exciting brew of musical virtuosity, covers of singer-songwriters and American West Coast music all turned inside out from the original versions. It was recorded by the band in mid-sixties prior to them turning into the somewhat cliched   folk-rock act they became the early seventies.

I peeled two large white potatoes and after washing them I diced them into cubes and steamed them for around five or six minutes.

While the potatoes were steaming I took two red onions, around four ounces of ginger root juice (if you don't want your Tarkari to be too spicy use two ounces) and then cut them into one or two centimetre long pieces. I then put a small amount of olive oil into the bottom of my Le Cresceut dish, turned on the heat on the hob and poured the onions, ginger, a pinch of mustard, half a teaspoon of paprika, two ounces of fresh coriander and a hint of saffron into the dish.

After the potatoes had softened I added them to the dish and stirred them constantly to avoid the ingredients sticking to the bottom of the Le Cresceut which would have inevitably caused trouble trying to wash it after the meal was eaten. I stirred the contents of the dish, while still cooking it on a medium light, on and off for around twenty five minutes. In order to make sure the potatoes were properly done I added an eighth of a pint of water to the dish so the potatoes could absorb it.

The dish was exceptionally spicy and definitely one for those who like their food strong tasting and tangy. As is often the case with dishes involving potatoes they provided the body of the meal and their stodgy taste was offset by the strong spices in particular the raw freshness of the ginger root. To help complement the meal, and to keep my throat damp after all the spices, I had a large glass of California Red Wine which I would recommend highly to accompany this type of meal.

Plenty of spices are hidden between the pieces of potato

Sausages and Wine (in a Casserole with Butter Beans and Tomatoes)

It was a Wednesday, it was still my week off and it was yet another day of bright sunshine. It was also another day of unwinding prior to doing another cooking project in the evening.

The dish to be prepared on this particular evening was one of my idiosyncratic takes on a traditional dish. I chose to make sausage casserole but instead of using normal sausages I used some Marjarom flavoured vegetarian sausages.

With Peter Gabriel's mature and well-wrought 1992 offering Us on the CD player I lightly fried four of the sausages with two sliced cloves of garlic, a cubed red pepper and two diced onions in some oil in my Le Creuscet Dish. As the ingredients began to cook I added half a teaspoon of chili oil, together with half a teaspoon of paprika and half a teaspoon of chili powder. These ingredients set the stage for a very distinctive-tasting and spicy dish.

After the dish had cooked on a medium to low light for ten minutes and the onions had begun to brown I added four fresh tomatoes, which I had previously sliced into quarters, the leaves of two sprigs of fresh thyme and 300ml of chicken stock. In order to make the dish a little richer I added half a pint of rose wine. This wine is usually reserved for the use of students in drinking competitions or as a pre-night out beverage of choice. However in this dish it made perfect sense as its taste worked well with the thyme and numerous spices in the dish.

I turned up the heat on the hob a little and simmered the dish lightly to evaporate the wine. I stirred the mixture regularly as it simmered for a further twenty minutes. After the twenty minutes were up I added a tin of butter beans and used a large metal tablespoon to blend them into the rest of the meal. After a further five minutes I was ready to serve the casserole.

The sharpness of the spices and fresh thyme coupled with the richness of the wine, protein given by the butter beans and the sausages made this a dish good enough for a Sunday dinner or an even more formal meal.

Just after the wine had evaporated; the dish was nearly ready at this point.

A heady mix of spices, fresh vegetables, fruit and wine all in one meal.