First I had to set the scene and fortunately we have a lovely oak dining table; so I loaded this with every candle stick I own and borrowed a pewter platter which I piled high with fruit that would have been available then: oranges, apples, pears, grapes & figs.  I then popped over the road to the pub and borrowed 10 pewter tankards (for props only!) and bought a dozen red roses (The red Queen was the Lancastrian heir and mother of Henry VII).  I wasn’t willing to go completely authentic so we did have plates, but each one was topped with a slice of sour dough bread to act as a trencher.

And so, on to the food:

Venison Casserole with dumplings

Braised Red Cabbage

Leeks in Cheese Sauce

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Mincemeat Pies

Custard

As people arrived, I served them a glass of small ale or small beer (basically low alcohol lager).  This was mentioned a lot in the book as for obvious reasons, they didn’t drink a lot of water in those days.

The casserole was a John Tovey recipe and resulted in the most wonderful melt in the mouth meat.  It also came with dumplings which overcame the problem that potatoes were not around in that period.

To serve 10 ladies: Using an oven proof casserole, sauté 2 finely chopped onions and 3 crushed garlic cloves in 2 tbls olive oil.  When golden brown, remove to a bowl.  Take 1.5kg of cubed venison haunch and seal in small batches over a high heat.  When all meat is sealed put it all back in the pan along with the onions & garlic.  Add 600ml port, (and some carrot batons if you fancy them) season and put a lid on the pan then put in the oven at 130c for 2 hours.  If possible, do this stage well ahead, even the day before, as it will allow the flavours to develop.

To serve, add 4 dessert spoons of redcurrant jelly and 200ml beef stock and return to the oven at 130c for another hour.  Make the dumplings by mixing 200g suet with 200g self raising flour, some freshly chopped sage and just enough cold water to bind it together.  Roll into balls (1 per person) and at the end of the hour, increase the oven temp to 160c , drop the dumplings on top of the casserole and cook without the lid for 20 minutes

The home grown red cabbage was shredded and with a few beautiful red sprouts, slowly cooked on the hob with some chopped shallots, 75ml red wine, 125ml balsamic, 75ml white wine vinegar, 500g sliced cooking apple, 6 cloves, a cinnamon stick and 4 heaped tbls of soft brown sugar.  The leeks (also home grown) were sliced into 3cm lengths, cooked in boiling, salted water for 10 mins then covered in cheese sauce and baked in the oven for the last 30 minutes of the casserole’s cooking.

The mince pies were my old favourite recipe, previously blogged Christmas 2009 served with custard

The book went down well with us all and judging by the small amount of leftovers, I hope the food did too!

Chard & Feta Filo Parcels

Squash Caponata on Bruschetta

-o-

Thai Pumpkin Soup

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Halibut Baked with Yoghurt & Sesame Seeds

Boulangere Potatoes

Mashed Carrot & Swede

Savoy Cabbage in Chilli Butter

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Salted Caramel & Chocolate Cheesecake

The starters were both Sarah Raven recipes and used veggies from the allotment, which felt quite some achievement in January.  I hadn’t originally planned to do the soup but since I had made plenty the day before, i thought it would be nice to have something once we were sitting down.

The halibut was an old favourite from a John Tovey book.  It is a nice meaty fish and goes well with some proper winter veg.  You simply spread each fillet with some Greek yoghurt and bake in a medium over for about 15 minutes, then sprinkle with sesame seeds and flash under a hot grill until the seeds caramelise slightly.

Dessert was the cheesecake from a week ago, but in homage to my favourite choc from the local Candy Store, I added a layer of salted caramel.  This was simply a tin of carnation caramel (ie evaporated milk that they have already boiled up) heated with a teaspoon of sea salt.  The flavour was amazing, if incredibly rich but the caramel did make it very difficult to serve as it created a kind of slip zone between the chocolate & the base not helped by the hard layer of chocolate on the top.

We had a lovely night, kept entertained by B and his thoughts on subjects as diverse as flat heads and the local half naked mad woman!

After a very late night and lots of rich food we really weren’t much in the mood for eating on Sunday so I made a few simple pizzas for dinner.  The bases were possibly the best yet and puffed up in the most amazing way!  After a very sticky mess a couple of weeks ago when I had the (stupid!) idea of heating the baking trays first then transferring the pizzas from the work top using my peel, this time I still pre-heated the trays (and I have a pizza stone permanently at the bottom of the oven), but made the pizzas on silicone matting making their transfer much easier and keeping the stress levels in the kitchen  right down!

We’re halfway through our meat free month now and, although it’s not the easiest finding something that we can eat with the boys at the weekend I can honestly say that it has been a lot less painful than I thought.

Last night I was invited to a friend’s house for a sushi making night!  There were eight of us in all and the only things we were asked to bring were a chopping board and a knife.  I had never made sushi so was really looking forward to it and was not disappointed!  Our lovely host G had really gone to town with all the ingredients and provided Nori sheets with rice, avocado, carrot, beetroot, peppers, omelette, raw & cooked tuna for fillings as well as pickled ginger, wasabi, sesame seeds, soy sauce, miso soup, prawn & veg tempura!  She gave us all a demonstration before setting us to work.

On our sheets of Nori, we pressed out a thin layer of the nice sticky sushi rice then at one end built up a layer of our chosen fillings; I chose carrot, avocado & raw tuna.  We then made a nice tight roll and using a little water on the end of the nori sheet sealed the roll closed.  The ends were trimmed and using a slightly damp knife the rolls cut into 1cm thick slices which we all placed on one big platter in the centre of the table.  They looked amazing and tasted even better dipped in a little soy with a tickle of wasabi on each one.

2 of the other guests provided dessert in the form of green tea pound cake and water melon sorbet.  I don’t think I have ever (as an adult at any rate) eaten a more colourful pudding!  It looked stunning and was the perfect end to a perfect evening.

Earlier in the day, I’d made some Pumpkin Soup influenced by a different eastern cuisine, this time from Thailand…………

and to use up some rather unappealing, over ripe bananas something from the other side of the world; Banana Bread from Nigella’s Domestic Goddess book.

Put 100g sultanas in a small pan and pour over 75ml or bourbon or dark rum (or I guess you could use orange juice if feeling in a puritanical mood!).  Bring to the boil then take off the heat and leave until the sultanas have soaked up all the liquid.

In a mixer put 125g melted butter and 150g golden caster sugar and mix until well combined.  Beat in 2 eggs, one at a time then add 300g mashed ripe banana, 1 tsp vanilla extract and the sultanas drained of any remaining liquid.

Weigh out 175g plain flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp bicarb & 1/2 tsp salt and add 1/3 at a time carefully stirring in after each addition.  Put the mixture in a lined loaf tin (23x13x7cm) and bake at 170c for 1 to 1 1/4 hours. Cool and Eat!

The loaf was then shaped using his rolling, folding method and put in the tin for a second rise.  This is where I think the first problem arose – the tin was slightly too big so after another 2 hours, after which it had probably trebled in size, rather than the usual doubling, it just about came to the top of the tin.  I then floured the top and using my super sharp lame (or slasher!), cut a couple of slits in the top and popped it gently in the oven along with a cup of water to produce some steam.  This seems to have been problem number 2 as the top definitely dropped where I slashed it .

Once it was cooked, cooled and sliced, the result was a lot better than it looked with a good crust and nice moist open texture within, not too salty, not too yeasty, just rather a sad shape on top!

Dish # 2 was my soufflé carried over from yesterday.  I made  a 2 egg mixture and cooked some finely shredded leek in with the butter.  the cheese was mainly the super pongy Christmas smoked cheddar we had got from a friend who has his own smoker and which we found a bit too strong to eat on its own.  Interestingly, the flavour completely mellowed down in the soufflé so a good result here.  As you can see in the pics, the soufflé did its best to rise but I had obviously not greased the top of the dish sufficiently so it got itself a bit stuck at the sides!  Still, the taste and the texture were perfect, with just enough wobble still in the middle and a perfect cheesy crust on the edge.  We had it with a slice of home made bread, bowl of rocket salad and a spoonful of home made tomato & chilli jam.  Fab and surprisingly filling!

The trees came from Ken Muir and were both bush trees which should get no bigger than about 3.5m tall.  The first was the good old Cox which is pickable from October and will store until January.  The second was the rather fantastically named Scrumptious which will be ready in September but has a very short storage life.  It is described as “crisp, sweet and aromatic. It is also thin skinned and therefore ideal for children”.  We won’t have any fruit this year, but hopefully a few to try in 2013.

We staked the trees, gave them a good drink and mulch and protected them form the deer, rabbits, pheasants etc with some chicken wire – a very good morning’s work!

The light was so good and some of the colours so beautiful that I couldn’t resist a couple of pics to brighten this page up a bit – some red cabbage and rainbow chard.  Who says winter is a dull season?!

I had a last minute change of plan for dinner as the soufflé which I was going to cook really needed a salad to go with it so had to wait 24 hours for my food delivery.  Instead, I needed to come up with a store cupboard supper.  Spaghetti Puttanesca or “whore’s spaghetti” was the solution as a) i had some olives in the fridge and b) I could use some of the chipotles from the previous day (I say some, I really mean half of one; they pack that much of a punch!).  These two ingredients were combined with garlic, anchovies, capers, parsley and some chopped tomatoes for a tasty plate of pasta ready in 15 minutes.

Continuing on our meat free odyssey, tonight we set sail across the Atlantic and headed for Mexico, courtesy of Thomasina Miers and her smokey stuffed peppers.  Since Sainsbury’s delivered very small peppers, I stretched things by using 3 gorgeous dinky Baby Bear squash from last year’s allotment crop and it was hard to chose which vehicle we preferred for this amazing hot, smoky, cheesy stuffing.

The stuffing consisted of a chopped shallot, garlic, mango, finely diced cooked potato, soft goats’ cheese, chipotles en adobe*, oregano, white wine and a splash of balsamic.  This was all started in a frying pan then stuffed into the peppers & squash and baked at 180c for half an hour, finished with a grating of parmesan and given another 5 minutes.  The contrast between the sweet vegetables and the smokey, deeply savoury stuffing was wonderful and the heat from the chipotles enough to give me a good ol’ chilli high!

*The chipotles were bought online from mexgrocer.co.uk and have been sitting in the larder for some time.  They are smoked jalapeno chillies canned in a red sauce that typically contains tomato puree, paprika, salt, onions, oil, vinegar, garlic, bay leaves and oregano and are used for making sauces, chipotle mayonnaise, rubs as well as other recipes.  They added a really different flavour dimension to the dish so now I have started the tin I’m keen to find more recipes to use them.

Today’s other dish was a quick batch of coffee cup cakes as Mum & A came for a birthday cup of tea.  I just used my normal 2 egg sponge recipe and made a cup of espresso, adding half to the sponge mix and half to some butter icing.  M & I decorated them with some chocolate powder and chocolate letters we found in the cupboard – Happy Birthday A!

Chocolate Cheesecake with White Chocolate Feather Icing

For the base crush 400g chocolate digestives in a food processor until fine crumbs.  Add 75g melted butter until well combined.   Spoon the mixture into a 23cm springform tin and press down very hard all the way around the base until flat and even.  Chill

For the filling, mix 800g mascarpone with a heaped dessert spoon of icing sugar.  Meanwhile melt 300g milk chocolate in a large bowl.  Add a good dollop of the cheese mixture to the melted chocolate and mix until well distributed.  Continue like this until all the cheese is added.  It will look grainy to start with but will go smooth as more is added.  Pour on top of the base and smooth the top. Chill in the fridge for 20 minutes, or until the chocolate top begins to firm.

For the topping, melt 100g milk chocolate and add a drop of vegetable oil.  Melt 100g white chocolate.  Remove the cheesecake from the fridge and pour the milk chocolate on top, spreading it out as you go until the top is completely covered. work quickly and tilt the tin to level it.  Using a small piping bag, pipe white chocolate lines across the top about 2cm apart and feather with a cocktail stick. Leave the cheesecake in a cool place to set for about two hours.

I did a slight variation and have been thinking of several others since.  When I went to get the butter from the fridge, it was sitting next to a bar of Terry’s Chocolate Orange (well, mine actually but that’s not the point!). The temptation to give my cheesecake an orange twang was too much to resist, so a couple of teaspoons of Cointreau and the grated zest of an orange later and the rest, as they say, is history; or certainly a pile of crumbs on a plate!  I’m thinking of making it again with a layer of salted caramel and maybe in the summer with fresh raspberries as a topping rather than the feathered chocolate.

Today, whilst ironing, I have just watched 2 great programs Sky +d from Channel 4 last Wednesday – The Fabulous Baking Brothers “a delicious world of flour, fire and forearms” (and I’ve always been rather partial to a well turned out forearm!) and How to Cook Like Heston “inject some Heston-style magic into homemade cooking”.  Wow! 2 fantastic programs full of ideas and inspiration; unfortunately full of meat too which was very painful to watch during our meat free month.

Here are some of the thoughts I’m now having:

• I must bake more bread!
• star anise sounds great with beef – especially in chilli. 
• Heston added a spiced butter to the end of his chilli which I would like to try: heat 2 tbls olive oil in a frying pan and lightly fry 1 1/2 tsp ground cumin and 1 1/2 tsp cayenne for a couple of seconds. Pour into a bowl and add 1 1/2tsp smoked paprika, 1 tsp tomato ketchup, 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce, 1/2 tsp Marmite and 125g unsalted butter. Mix together thoroughly, cover and keep in the fridge until required .  We had chilli Friday night and W put a couple of cubes of dark chocolate in at the end – amazing!  I already have a favourite chilli recipe from Thomasina Miers using whole pieces of beef and oven cooked but I might give the chocolate & butter ideas a go next time (along with the smoked wood chips if it’s warm enough to be eating outside!)
• In February once we’re back to meat, I will cook oxtail and beef cheek and possibly rabbit
• chocolate sticky stick donuts look amazing!
• Heston suggested using a thermometer to test if your steak is done and this seems a bit more reliable for the occasional steak cook such as me(45c or rare, 55c for medium & 65c for well done)

And here are Heston’s top 10 tips for cooking with beef:

1. Before cooking steak, take it out of the packet and leave it on a shelf in the fridge (with a tray or plate underneath it) for two days. Air circulating around the steak will start to dry it out, concentrating the flavour and tenderising the meat. Then let your steak rest outside the fridge for a couple of hours before cooking, to get it to room temperature.
2. Fry your steak in oil in a smoking hot pan.  The intense heat from the pan will cause the Maillard reaction, where proteins and sugars react to create a delicious, meaty brown crust.
3. Don’t let your steak get lazy in the pan. Turn it over every 15-20 seconds, so the outside stays hot enough for a crust to form, without the inside overcooking.
4. Not so fast! Once it’s cooked, let your steak rest for at least five minutes. This will allow the fibres to cool down and stop contracting, which holds in the moisture and leaves your steak juicy and tender.
5. Before making beef burgers, sprinkle your beef with salt and leave it for about three hours, which will bind the meat without any need for egg or breadcrumbs.
6. Instead of pummelling your burgers into tight patties, lay the minced beef strands in parallel lines and wrap them in clingfilm to keep them together. Leave them in the fridge for a couple of hours, then slice the mince log into patties. Biting down on the grain of the mince instead of across it will make the burgers melt in your mouth.
7. Star anise will “lift beef to another level”.
8. When making beef pies or puddings, save some of the reduced sauce back and inject it into your pudding or pie after cooking, using a syringe for extra sauciness.
9. Don’t take your beef lightly – for the perfect chilli con carne, brown your mince in batches until it’s really dark brown, being careful not to overcrowd  the pan.
10. If you really want to make like Heston, serve your chilli with a bowl of flaming woodchips for an extra smokey aroma.

Really looking forward to the rest of both of these series (and really looking forward to a nice juicy steak!)

Ok, so maybe I’m over stating things a bit, but we have just had another very tasty vegetarian supper!  This time it was thanks to that bloke who started us off on this meat free quest, Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall.  From his Veg Everyday I cooked a North African Squash and Chickpea Stew – which also contained lentils and pasta so no shortage of protein!

Full of flavour and smelling wonderful, the dish included cinnamon, saffron, turmeric & coriander and the kitchen smelt more like a Moroccan Souk than a house in damp Sussex.  The squash was my prized crown prince – the only pumpkin that was harvested last autumn from over 6 plants at the allotment.  It won’t be wasted though – Thai pumpkin soup is on the menu for the weekend and maybe a risotto next week (but it won’t be the same without crispy pancetta!)   

Unfortunately it was not quite as simple as this as there were still quite a few patches where the roots had dug down or run under the carpet and boy are bramble roots stubborn!  Still, after all the recent rain the ground was nice & soft, in fact a complete bog in some areas, and I managed to clear a good sized patch so with one more good go at it, things should be sufficiently clear to get the trees straight in when they arrive.

Before heading home, I staked up the broccoli and kale, had a quick clear up into the compost bin, picked some kale for dinner and pulled a couple of leeks.  Back home at midday I remembered the next job on the list – THE REMOVAL OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE!  Fortunately we have a council collection point for trees just up the road, but this is the first time I have had the pleasure of dragging the green beast up there.  With a trail of needles ready to guide me home and a couple of dozen sticking into my foot the tree is now no longer, it is deceased, it is an ex-tree!  I have about 3 kilos of needles swept up from the floor to take down to compost and a pile of decorations to put away but the tree has gone – phew

Before I left for the allotment, I got out one of my Christmas Presents – 100 Great Breads by Paul Hollywood (aka The Silver Fox from the Great British Bake Off), and made a Pain de Campagne.  This used a mix of 400g strong white flour to 100g rye flour.  Remembering his advice from the program  to follow the recipe EXACTLY and that the wetter the better, I was surprised at how dry this dough was!  Still, after a bit of kneading it came together fine and was left to rise while I went & did my hard labour.  After a final shaping and slashing and another hour’s proving it was baked for 30 minutes and came out just in time for a spot of late lunch with some very ripe brie and home made yellow courgette & tomato chutney.

For our meat free supper we went hard core and had a surprisingly tasty Kale, Mushroom & Chickpea Curry from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook (with a few tweaks).

Sautee a small onion & a large clove of garlic in a little oil until soft, then add 1/2 tsp of garam masala, some grated ginger, 1 finely chopped green chilli (with as many seeds as you can stand the heat of), salt & pepper.  Stir well, add a can of drained chickpeas, 1/2 can coconut milk, 200g quartered chestnut mushrooms, juice of half a lime and a bruised lemon grass stick (although I didn’t have one and it tasted fine without!) .  Simmer for 30 mins.  Meanwhile put a large pan of water on to boil for some rice and steam the shredded greens from 7 or 8 kale leaves for about 5 mins (i used a mixture of Redbor & Cavalo Nero from the allotment).  The water will turn a beautiful pale blue which fortunately did not permeate into the rice!  While the rice is cooking, add the leaves to the chickpea mixture along with a tablespoon each of fish sauce and soy sauce.  Serve the curry on a bed of rice and scatter with chopped coriander.

So tasty and very satisfying on a cold evening.  I would happily eat this in place of a meat curry any night (but I’m not sure that P would agree!).

While eating lunch, I sat and watched an episode of Lorraine Pascale’s Home Cooking Made Easy from before Christmas and was inspired by a couple of things I saw which I though might cheer everyone up a bit when they got home from school & work.

The first wasn’t something which she made on the show, rather, something in a shop window when she was doing her “bit” from Barcelona – some smarties cookies!  I have a great cookie recipe (normally adding dried cranberries and white chocolate), so I just omitted these flavourings and added the smarties  

Cream together 100g of unsalted butter, 100g of golden caster sug & 100g of light muscovado.  Add one egg and 1 tsp of vanilla extract.  Beat well until mixed.  Finally add 175g plain flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder & 1/4 tsp salt & mix together (if making the original recipe, add 75g dried cranberries & 140g chopped white chocolate).  Wet your hands slightly and take dessert spoon sized balls of the mixture, roll in your hands and place 4 to a baking tray, squashing them down slightly and spacing well apart as they will spread.  Press in 5 smarties to each ball and bake at fan 170c for 12 minutes.

Et voila, 13 cookies and 1 happy boy! (I say 1 as the bigger one very politely declined to even try one – you can’t win ‘em all I guess!)

The Barcelona trip was all to show her buying a couple of chocolates from a lovely little confectionary shop – not a bad gig if you can get it!  She then went home and made Chocolate Marshmallow Brown Sugar Fudge – definitely one to try when I next need cheering up, so long as my teeth can cope with all that sugar. 

Grease & line a 20cm square cake tin.  Put 70g butter, 300g soft light brown sugar and 125g evaporated milk in a pan over a low heat and melt gently. Once the sugar has dissolved, add 225g marshmallows and turn up the heat. Boil the fudge for 5-6 minutes.

Take the pan off the heat and add 300g milk & 75g dark chocolate which has been finely chopped. Leave for one minute, then stir the mixture together until everything is melted.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and leave to set for a couple of hours. Once set, remove from the tin and cut into 25 squares.

Let’s hope it tastes as good as it sounds!

P & I are having a meat free January (although there will have to be a couple of exceptions!), so I was already planning to have spaghetti with a mushroom & tomato sauce  for dinner, however Lorraine made some homemade pasta with cracked black pepper in it and served this with a creamy mushroom & pancetta sauce.  Obviously we can’t have the pancetta but I do have a tub of crème fraiche to use up so a slight tweak was not a problem and the pasta dough was made in moments.

Oh, joy on a plate!  Somewhere at the back of my mind I remembered a pasta dryer lurking at the back of a cupboard and gave it an airing (geddit?!).  What a difference!  I find fresh pasta really easy to make but whenever I make long pasta, no matter how much flour I dust it with, it always sticks together – not with the pasta dryer. 

The sauce was some sliced chestnut mushrooms sautéed with 3 cloves of garlic in some olive oil & butter, finished with crème fraiche & parmesan.  No black pepper needed as this was in the pasta already.  Not exactly low-cal, but an hour at the gym this morning and getting wet on both school runs soon justified that.