Sweetness and Spice

After a night spent celebrating the birthdays of two friends at a new curry house in town I decided to keep up my intake of hot Indian style food by making a sweet potato and pepper soup. This is a soup with ingredients that share much in common with those found in many curries made in this country.

As the haunting opening to Mike Oldfield's 1973 masterpiece "Tubular Bells" pinged out of the speakers of my stereo I fried a diced white onion in oil with a teaspoon of Paprika and fresh coriander for around five minutes until the onion pieces became a golden colour. As always with my soups I like to add the spices early in the preparation as it gives an extra taste to the finished product.

Once the onions had cooked I added five cubed sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes are generally easier to prepare than white or red potatoes as they peel easily compared to these types of potatoes. After I had stirred the sweet potatoes into the oil and ,now spicy, onions I let the potatoes cook for ten minutes.

After ten minutes I added two finely sliced red peppers and a pint of boiling vegetable stock. I then let the stock simmer lightly for twenty minutes which allowed the ingredients in the Le Cresceut to soften. The sweet potatoes were first to soften, as they often do when used in cooking, and then the peppers. After the twenty minutes were up I took the Le Cresceut off the heat and left it to cool for half an hour. I then blended the contents of the dish, reheated it in the dish and served it.

The resulting soup was very rich and the paprika and fresh coriander ensured that it was as strong tasting and memorable as the excellent curry I had enjoyed the night before.

This is a thick and rich soup that has a lot in common with curries served in restaurants up and down the land

Benediction

I felt slightly sore but in the nicest possible way when I woke up on the first day of September. The reason being that I had played a game of cricket the day before at a fairly high level, being division five out of eleven divisions. However the game had been worth it as my teammates are a top bunch of people, I also took a stinging catch when fielding, learned how to score when my team batted and the ground was located in the middle of numerous green fields with a dreaming spire or two on the horizon.

I needed something to revitalise me for breakfast and plumped for a dish that is rich but also full of protein. The dish was Eggs Benedict. The music of choice to cook to was Van Morrison's transitional 1973 offering 'Hard Nose the Highway' The album's mellow Jazziness and tracks such as 'Autumn Song' fitted my relaxed mood and mirrored my realisation that soon the cricket season would be over and the leaves would soon be falling off the trees in time for the clocks changing.

I have had Eggs Benedict on two occasions during the summer at two rather contrasting places; the first was at a Wetherspoons in Shipley the morning after attending a thirtieth birthday party while the second was at the Malmaison Hotel in Glasgow soon after spending a very enjoyable day in the city with a great person. On both of the times when I had the dish previously it was served with a slice of ham and a piece of salmon on top respectively.

However for my tilt at making the dish I played safe and stuck with the basics by serving the the eggs with a grilled muffin and some Hollandaise Sauce. I started by making the Hollandaise Sauce; I stirred together two egg yolks and their whites in a bowl with three tablespoons of white wine vinegar and a tablespoon of fresh Lemon Juice. I whisked them until they formed a thin golden mixture. Next I melted four ounces of low fat margarine in a pan and once the margarine had melted completely I added the melted margarine to the mixture in the bowl and whisked it thoroughly.

I left the sauce on one side and proceeded to bring a large saucepan of water to boiling point. As the water reached boiling point I added an egg yolk and white to a small plastic cup, that was well greased with margarine, which I normally used for poaching eggs. I floated the cup filled with the egg white and yolk on top of the boiling water in the pan and boiled it for six minutes.

At this point theories diverge on the best way to prepare the dish as some favour creating a small whirlpool with a spoon and then dropping the egg in and boiling it for three minutes. It's not wrong to do it this way however I chose my way to ensure the yolk and white remained in shape and because I prefer my eggs hard-boiled.

While the egg was boiling I heated the Hollandaise Sauce on the hob lightly, which caused it to thicken, and grilled two halves of a muffin. When the egg was ready I placed half of the muffin, with the buttered side facing upwards, on a plate and put the egg, once removed from the plastic cup, on top of it. Then I poured the Hollandaise Sauce on top of the egg and put the remaining sauce on top of the other half of the muffin.

Just as the other two types of Eggs Benedict I had consumed earlier in the summer were different from each other, so this current version of the dish differed again. The sauce provided a real richness to meal and was much thicker than the sauce used to make the others while the egg provided plenty of protein and set me up for a day of walking my dog and watching cricket.

Spread the extra Hollandaise Sauce on a spare muffin slice to get the full benefit of this dish. 

Brie-Green Risotto

Peas and Mint in later summer are a combination that go together as well as coffee and cream and the risotto that I made on bank holiday Tuesday certainly lived up to this theory. I began by dicing a large onion and three garlic cloves which I then fried on a medium heat in a Le Creuscet Dish for around ten minutes after first adding a generous helping of black pepper.

Once the onion and garlic had turned a rusty brown colour I added fifteen ounces of risotto rice and stirred them repeatedly into the soft onion and garlic for two minutes. The trick with risottos is to stir the rice constantly to stop it from sticking to the bottom of the dish while ensuring the mixture does not dry up.To help my cause therefore I added half a pint of white wine and stirred it into the rice for ten minutes until the rice became translucent began to bulge noticeably as a result of it absorbing the wine.

Next I added twelve ounces of peas, if you cannot find fresh peas then frozen ones work just as well, again with the idea of ensuring that the risotto did not dry up I poured a quarter of a pint of vegetable stock into the Le Cresceut dish and continued to stir it on a medium heat until the rice, peas, onions and garlic had absorbed it. I repeated the process with another quarter of a pint of vegetable stock until the rice and vegetables had absorbed most of stock while ensuring there was enough stock remaining to keep the risotto from being too dry.

I removed the risotto from the hob and added four tablespoons of dried mint together with three ounces of cubed Brie and an ounce of grated Parmesan. Once the Brie and Parmesan had melted the risotto was ready.

The presence of the Brie and Parmesan added a real richness to this dish as did the white wine however the strength and quantity of the black pepper and dried mint gave a sharpness that made the risotto hot and strong tasting. This one is certainly a dish to enjoy with a glass of white wine as a result.

Another Cup of Coffee (with Pecan Nuts)

I had managed to sneak an extra day off work on bank holiday Tuesday and spent the early morning resting up after a summer of cricket, travelling, fundraising and parties. Every extra minute of my lie in over and above the time I would normally rise to go to work felt like it was helping me re-energize after what had been a very enjoyable four months.

When I got up I took the dog to  a country park which in years gone by was a working colliery that had  once been the lifeblood of the now downtrodden villages that surrounded the country park. I had last been to the park six years earlier when my world was a very different place.

As it was nearly the end of summer I carried on the theme of looking back and marking time by preparing on my return home a sweet dish that although taking its inspiration from a retro recipe from the seventies, was updated to contain several modern twists.

I started by greasing with margarine twelve small patty cake tins contained in a single baking tray. I then made a short crust pastry mixture using eight ounces of plain flour and four of margarine with about two tablespoons of milk to bind the ingredients together to make a pliable pastry.  I cut the pastry into twelve square pieces and moulded each piece into a cup shape that fitted neatly into the cake tins in the tray.

I cooked the pastry cups in the oven at 180 degrees, 190 degrees for non-fan ovens, for twenty minutes and once this period was up I removed them from the oven and from their cases and left them to cool on the side.

While the cases began to cool I began to prepare the filling. The soundtrack to this part of the preparation was Syd Barrett's variable but worthwhile 1988 compilation of rarities and outtakes 'Opel', which ranges from slightly embarrassing quasi-demos to driving innovative songs such as Clowns and Jugglers and the title track.  Barrett is best known as the founder member of rock legends Pink Floyd and almost as well known for his subsequent breakdown and gradual withdrawal from the music scene after masterminding the band's unique and ingenious debut album. I was bought Barrett's solo back catalogue, which is all of two studio albums and Opel, when I was studying for my A-Levels a few years ago and its far out but lovable quirkiness is something I enjoy returning to on occasion.

I creamed together three ounces of brown sugar and margarine in a mixing bowl and followed up by adding a tablespoon of instant coffee which I stirred thoroughly into the mixture together with three ounces of ground almonds. The coffee granules and ground almonds served to provide a rich and raw texture to the filling which I proceeded to spoon evenly into each of pastry cups once I was sure the cups had cooled completely.

I then made the coffee icing by placing four ounces of icing sugar in a mixing bowl with two tablespoons of lukewarm water and half a tablespoon of coffee granules. I mixed the granules into the water to make them dissolve and then stirred the mixture into the icing sugar to create a thick topping that the set hard when left to stand.

Before the icing had a chance to set properly I spread it evenly over the top of the filling in the pastry cups and to decorate I put a Pecan Nut on top of the spread icing. The outcome produced a strong tasting foodstuff that works equally as a dessert or an accompaniment to a mid-morning cup of tea. Certainly the raw taste of the coffee in the dish helped perk up my colleagues when they sampled them the following day at work and the food would not be out place on offer at a coffee shop.

The dish was finished with a Pecan Nut on each one.

Sly Burger

It was half nine on bank holiday Monday morning, I didn't quite know how my loose change had ended up in my sock drawer but what I did know was that I had no hangover and that last night I had attended an awesome party a premier four star hotel. I employed my usual cure for a night out involving, although not as much these days, alcohol by having a cup of green tea, a spot of muesli and an eight mile walk in the late summer heat with my dog.

When I returned home I felt completely human once more and set about making some burgers from scratch and I resolved to stretch myself by making cobs to put the burgers in as well. The procedure for making the cobs has been covered in my blog article on making olive cobs (see http://cookeryisthetruth.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/cob-of-olives.html for how to make the cobs) except I did not include any filling or seasoning in the cobs for this blog entry.

Once I had cooked the cobs I left them to cool on the side and began to prepare the burgers. As I had traces of a headache and a slightly sore left shoulder, perhaps as a result of sampling Talisker Whisky and indulging in some strenuous exercise on the dance floor the night before, I opted for some calm music to cook to in the form of Roy Harper's 1971 masterpiece Stormcock. The album is a mellow acoustic record comprising of four long songs with tuneful singing, challenging lyrics and powerful harmonies. Roy Harper is, much like James Brown, his own genre and his music is best described as progressive folk rock of which he is the only practitioner. Whether it is his own genre or not it certainly fitted the mood.

To prepare the burgers I sliced six spring onions, after first washing them and topping and tailing them, into two centimetre long strips and fried them lightly with 6 grams of fresh parsley, 8 sliced chives and two finely sliced garlic cloves. I fried these ingredients until they were soft and only slightly browned and then added half a teaspoon of paprika and half a teaspoon of chili flakes that I mixed into the fresh produce.

While the contents of the frying pan cooked steadily I poured eight hundred grams of Cannelini Beans and Flageolot Beans into a colander and poured cold water on them to remove the excess fluid that was contained in the cans they arrived in. I then added the beans to the frying pan and after mixing them thoroughly into the other ingredients I took the pan off the heat and mashed the contents up with a potato masher.

Next came the difficult part as it involved shaping the bean and herb mixture in the pan into twelve small balls. Once I had overcome this tricky task I put the newly formed burgers on a greased baking tray and place them in the fridge for around twenty five minutes so as to allow them to set.

Once the burgers had set I placed them under the grill and cooked them on each side around five minutes while always making sure that they did not burn. Once the burgers were ready I sandwiched them in the cobs, which I halved first, with some mayonnaise and fresh slices of tomato.

Although the cobs were not quite flat enough to keep the filling contained within them the taste made up for this as strong and rich taste of them coupled with tangy and pleasant taste of the burgers was a winning combination. The tomatoes and mayonnaise contributed a freshness to the meal that was accentuated by enjoying it on the back garden in the evening sunshine.

Red Reign

The day after trying some new local cuisine in the form of my local town's only Tapas Restaurant I decided to try something new myself by cooking a tomato risotto. The weather remained muggy and the ground was still damp from the monsoon-like conditions that had pervaded the nighttime drive home from the Tapas Restaurant as I began by preparing five hundred grams of tomatoes.

Today's record to cook with was by a local band called the Seventy and it comprised of a cover of David Bowie's excellent 1977 song Heroes. The song is difficult to cover as the original version is flawless, however the band (whose bassist I have known for the passed 19 years after meeting him at the start of secondary school)  do a brilliant job. Definitely an act worth seeking out.

I cut the tops of the tomatoes and then boiled them for two minutes in a pan of water. After the two minute period was up I carefully removed the tomatoes from the water and used my fingers to peel off the now very loose skin from them and discarded the skin. I quartered the soft, fleshy and skinless tomatoes and fried them gently in some olive oil in my Le Cresceut dish with two bay leaves which served to give the tomatoes a sharp flavour.

As the tomatoes cooked I boiled two hundred and ninety grams of risotto rice until most of the water had been absorbed into the rice and the rice became soft. I knew it was important to soften the rice early on in the cooking process as there is nothing worse than eating crunchy, under cooked rice in a risotto. Once the rice was properly softened I added it to the tomatoes and then removed the bay leaves as they had served their purpose.

The juice from the cooking tomatoes and the remaining water from the rice created some flavoursome juices to cook the rest of the ingredients in and to aid this cause I added a quarter of a pint of white wine and half a pint of vegetable stock. I let these cook on a medium heat until the rice and tomatoes had absorbed them while always ensuring that there was enough liquid in the dish that it did not boil dry.

I added a pinch of white pepper and a teaspoon of chili powder and stirred them in. I find that chili goes very well with tomato dishes. Next I plucked ten leaves of basil from the pot I had grown on the window sill and after shredding the leaves I put them in the dish. The fresh taste of this basil was ten times better than its dried counterpart found in the supermarket and enhanced the already strong flavours of the food considerably.

After adding twenty-five grams of butter and melting it into the risotto I finished it by melting twenty-five grams of Parmesan Cheese on top of the risotto which gave the top of it a glazed look. The risotto did not disappoint and the rich taste of the Parmesan and white wine, always a winning combination, was kept in check by the sharpness of the chili powder and the fresh basil. As the weather remained warm I ate the risotto out on the back garden in the pleasant Sunday evening sun; an optional extra when eating a dish that tastes that bit better in the summertime.

A rich but sharp mix of flavours makes this Risotto what it is

Chard-tastic

The hot weather still hadn't let up and after an enjoyable recall to the cricket team in some sticky heat the day before I sought out something fresh for Sunday dinner on the last Sunday in July. The inspiration came from a recipe originating in Greece a country with more warm weather than this country; most of the time. The plan was to make a dip using some white chard that I had been cultivating for the passed two months. Chard is a vegetable that is often overlooked by many as it is not regularly available in the supermarkets and therefore the only exposure to it is likely to be if you grow it yourself.

The Chard looks very similar to spinach or lettuce when fully grown and ready to harvest and either the stems, the leaves or both can be used in meals. The taste of Chard is slightly less gravelly than spinach but less bland than most lettuce.

For this dish I harvested enough leaves to fill a small teacup and then covered them with boiling water in a bowl to kill any germs that wild insects may have placed on them during their time in the garden. Next I added them to a pan of boiling water, simmered them for five minutes and after draining the pan left them on one side in a colander to cool.

As I finely cut two cloves of garlic the rather dated drum sounds of Roger Waters' 1987 album Radio KAOS beat out of the stereo. The album was Waters' first after leaving Pink Floyd and is a typically ambitious work which deals with the negative impacts of Monetarism in the form of Ronald Reagan's and Margaret Thatcher's Policies. Although the references to these long since departed leaders could make the album even more an 80's relic its concerns still ring true today albeit that they apply now to different world leaders.

After the garlic was dealt with I added it to a small bowl with two teaspoons of cayenne pepper, a tablespoon of juice from a lemon and seven tablespoon's of fresh, plain Greek Yoghurt. I then added the Chard and whisked all the ingredients together until the Chard had thoroughly blended with the yoghurt.

I served the dip with some raw carrot, cheese and biscuits which the dip's fresh yet spicy taste complemented perfectly.

Culture clash- the freshly prepared Greek Style dip which was served with cheese and biscuits that most English of dishes.