Recipes
Monday 16th November 2015
Recent workshop attendees have requested some recipes for the lunches or treats we serve.
Here are the recent requests. Some of the quantities may be too much for 1 – 4 people. I always knowingly over cater.
Mistake Trifle
This is my first offering. It was traumatic to say the least and I am never making this again. But it was delicious. This is what happened on Friday, before my first Christmas 2015 event.
First, spend most of your day painstakingly making a vast, baked New York vanilla cheesecake. Once this is really cold, (which takes a further 4 hours) and while removing it from its giant tin, up-end the bastard cheesecake, partially into the cake box you have ready, partially smashing it onto the lid of the cake box, making quite sure the cheesecake is upside down and utterly, irreparably ruined.
This is what your ruined work should look like:
Commence epic bout of jagged crying, interspersed with piratical swearage, disbelieving hysterical laughter, and angry, fist-clenched, body convulsions. This will take about 10 minutes. Realise that this is, sadly, not another pre-workshop anxiety dream, but it is actually happening. Gradually regain some self-control and calm the dachshunds who are now also hysterical with vexation that you didn’t up-end the thing onto the floor so they could gorge on it and have to go to the emergency vets. Again. Well, it is Friday.
Tell Face Book, along with a picture. Receive little sympathy, but also the genius idea of making this effin’ disaster into a
trifle. Ring someone who is not hysterical and who also has access to a car and some money, and who will help you rather than face an evening of distress. Get them to bring you a red jelly (I used raspberry), a lot of double cream, and a can of black cherries or black cherry pie-filling. Further destroy the poxy cheesecake and distribute it, all smashed up, into a trifle dish. Make up the jelly and while still hot, mix in the cherries or pie filling. Pour this over the cheesecake base. Watch with detached interest as the dense cheesecake mix first resists and then gradually absorbs the fruit and jelly, popping like geysers in an Icelandic landscape.
Chill the trifle base for a few hours while you clear up the kitchen, re-apply your eye-flicks because you cried off the ones you applied in the morning, re-apply a little rouge as the first lot has slid off your sweating, greasy face like a land-slip, have a big glass of water to ease your parched and aching throat, and then serenely make a giant vanilla cream sponge just in case the Mistake Trifle is rank. Add a layer of not-too-thick creamy custard and some softly whipped double cream, silver balls, unicorn sprinkles, and anything else pretty in your cupboard. Serve the bloody trifle anyway.
I’m over it. Clearly.
Salt Caramel Choc Pots
This will make enough for about 5 people so I double it.
Make or buy salt caramel sauce. To make it, you need butter – I use a whole 1/2 lb block; fine salt – enough to make it actually salty; a 14 oz can of condensed milk and 3 table spoons of golden syrup. Mix all together in a pan, bring to the boil and gently boil (rather than simmer) for about 10 mins. Lily makes it a different way, on top of a
bain marie for about a month…Or buy a jar, it tastes the same. If you can’t buy the salted variety, just stir in a tea spoon of fine salt and mix really well.
Put a big dollop of the sauce in the bottom of a pot (I use small espresso-style coffee cups or tiny Kilner jars).
To make the chocolate topping, you need 200g good quality, high cocoa dark chocolate broken up, 100 ml boiling water, 1 tsp vanilla, 125 ml double cream, plus a little single cream to serve. Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Take it off the heat. Add the boiling water to the choc – and now you need to really stir this hard – it may look granular when you first add the water, so this step makes it all glossy and smooth. Add the vanilla and the cream and mix well. While still really warm, spoon it on top of the caramel. Chill (and this will keep fine for up to 48 hours in the fridge, covered over). To serve, bring up to cool room temp or the chocolate topping is too hard; pour a tiny bit of single cream onto each pot.
Cold Crumbles
Served as a small sweet treat in a glass or the Kilner jars, as above.
Make a crumble topping, with butter, plain flour and rub to a fine crumb; add golden caster sugar (I always reduce the amount in a recipe by 1/3rd) and a 1/2 tsp of fine salt. Mix well and spread out in a baking tin – it needs to be about 2 – 3 cm deep. Dot with more butter. Bake this and now and again, stir it all round to redistribute it. But for the last bit, leave it be, so the top and the edges go a bit caramelised and darker. I bake this for about 45 mins in the baking oven, so I think gas mark 4…? Let it go cold and rough it all up again.
Make the fruit base – I use apples and any berries in the hedges or the freezer – just on the top of the stove like you would to stew fruit, with some sugar to your taste and a tsp of vanilla. Sometimes I add grated fresh ginger, especially if the fruit is rhubarb.
Dollop this into the bottom of the glasses/jars. Sprinke/ram on some of the crumble topping, which may be a bit chunky, that’s fine. Chill – this will keep well, covered in the fridge for up to 48 hours. The crumble topping will go very hard, because of the butter. Don’t panic. Just make sure it is warm room temp before serving and it will soften. This takes about 1 hour in my kitchen which is very hot indeed. I add a topping of single cream about 5 mins before serving, as this sort of sinks into the topping; but cold creamy custard not too thick would work, as would a tsp of clotted cream balanced on the top!
Variation: fruit fool. Make the stewed sweetened fruit, cool down, puree and chill. Whip up a large pot of double cream to softly stiff. Fold the fruit into the cream. Pile into the pots or jars. Beat a few ginger biscuits up and sprinkle on top just as you serve or reserve a little of the puree and add a tart layer of that onto the fool.
Roast Butternut Squash and Ginger Soup
This is super-easy, veggie-friendly and always seems to go down well. Very comforting in autumn and winter too.
This serves 9.
3 large butternut squash, 2 large onions, 3 cloves of garlic (sometimes I leave this out but it is much better with the garlic), 4 inch piece of fresh ginger, lots of veg stock, black pepper, salt, 2 table spoons of dry coriander seeds (berries, sometimes sold as), dry roasted in a pan and then ground by pestle and mortar, olive oil.
Wash the squash, de-seed and cut the rest into chunks – do not take off the skin cos it’s delicious and makes it thick. Chop the peeled onions into chunks. Peel and chop the ginger and the garlic. Pile it all into a big roasting tin, season and anoint it with a good slosh of oil. Roast it quite high for about an hour (this is in an aga; I used the roasting oven which is really hot but gentler than a real stove). It will need turning over a few times and lots of liquid will come out – it’s fine, don’t drain it off, but use it all in the soup. When the squash is tender and roasty, take It out. In a huge soup pan, add some oil, get it warm and add the ground coriander seeds, fry very briefly – maybe 20 seconds – add the veg roast mix and cover with vegetable stock. Simmer for about 40 mins. You may need to re-season with salt and pepper and add more water. Blitz it with a hand blender. It will go VERY thick as the pulp is blended, so add more stock or water, simmer and serve.
I sometimes add a chopped sweet potato skin on, or celery, or 2 or 3 chopped carrots at the roasting stage.
Parmesan Aubergine Bake
There are lots of recipes out there on the interwovens for this North Italian seasonal favourite. There is also a lot of tosh about having to use Parmesan that has been hand-pressed by the fingers of new-born cherubs in the most enchanted of the Provinces of Parma. Rubbish. Use supermarket ‘Parmesan-style cheese’. It’s fine. I also leave off the basil as I hate basil. Who likes food that smells like cat-wee? Not me. And I leave off the optional mozzarella cheese on top. Not sure why, as I love all cheese.
This served 10. So, you know, pare it down.
8 large aubergines, 3 large red onions, 2 cloves of garlic (can be left off but nicer with it), dried oregano – about a tablespoon, 4 cans of chopped peeled plum tomatoes OR if you have plenty in the garden, a basin full of fresh toms, peeled and chopped, 1 large carton of passata, 1 triangular block of Parmesan cheese finely grated, a little salt – be careful as the canned tomatoes, cheese and passata are salty too, black pepper, 3 handfuls of home-made white breadcrumbs, fresh, and a lot of a light oil such as rape seed which can remain stable at high temps.
Top and tail the aubergines and slice them into discs about 1.5 cm thick but don’t actually measure – you want meaty slices but not door-steps. Put on the radio to a good play or your audio book as you are now entering the griddling phase and you will be here for a while. Also, open a through draft as the air will soon be smokey and blue. In a griddle pan that has lines raised up, add some oil and get it hot. Place as many discs of aubergine in as you can fit, and lightly press down but don’t move them about. They will spit and hiss like a tom-cat, I wear long sleeves and resign myself to the mess. Put a teaspoon of more oil on each top of the slices. After about 3 mins, tip one over; if it has darkish score/griddle lines on it, flip them all over and repeat on the other side. You are not looking to cook them through, just griddle them. Set aside to rest and cool. Some hours later, you will be done and you can start the kitchen decontamination.
Make the sauce by frying the chopped onion, garlic and oregano in plenty of oil until the onion is well cooked and starting to go brownish. Add some the tomatoes and passata, black pepper and a little salt if you wish. Simmer this for about 15 minutes or 30 if you used fresh toms.
In a deep roasting tin, dollop a few spoons of the sauce and spread it out. Sprinkle with a little cheese. Add a layer of the aubergines. Repeat – sauce, cheese, aubergine, until you run out of aubergine and end with sauce on top, cheese on the sauce and then the breadcrumbs. This is when you can add the Mozzarella torn up into chunks if you want. Also the basil if you like your food to resonate of cat-wee.
At this stage, you can chill it and keep it in the fridge for up to 24 hours. But you don’t have to.
Bake it for about 2 – 3 hours, slowly at first then with more heat. Ideally the sauce will bubble through to the top here and there and the top will be roasty. Do not disturb the layers or stir it up. It will keep warm for ages too.
Serve with these:
Hassle-back bay scented roast potatoes and pan-fried sliced brussels with crispy smoked bacon OR toasted pine-nuts for a veggie option. We are having all this again next week for Second Christmas at Court Cottage.
As usual, all the food served to us on Saturday was DELICIOUS! Thank you so much, and for the recipes. You’re a star!
Thank you for posting these, I shall definitely be using some of these recipes 🙂 Although, if I’m honest, the Mistake Trifle sounds like a bit of a faff…
*runs for cover*
🙂
Xxx
Grrrrr!
You do make me laugh, may I suggest that you partake of g & t
/chilled white wine when making trifle – this is much better for a parched throat (clinically proven fact ((based on proven in tests in my kitchen))
Sam, what a great idea! I fear had I started on the vino that night, I might have been tipped right over the edge!