Greengage Jam

A few weeks ago I transported a box full of greengage plums, plus my mother’s old preserving pan back from my parent’s house in the back of a mini. There was around 1kg of fruit that we had picked from the large tree in their garden. At home, you could always tell when the fruit was getting ripe by the soft ’splat’ from the plums as they fell from the tree and onto the patio below, to be nibbled on by wasps and other insects. That was when the ladder would have to come out, to reach all those fruits that would inevitably be just beyond your fingertips, forcing you to tiptoe on the top of the ladder in a particularly precarious way.

I never sought these plums out when I was little (being somewhat fruit-averse as a child) but now, older and wiser, while I still don’t fancy eating them raw from the tree, I can appreciate their worth as cooking material. First thoughts would be as roast fruit, a crumble or a jam. Having roasted plums very successfully when they arrived in my organic box a month or so ago (using Gordon Ramsay’s recipe from ‘Just Desserts‘) I went for jam this time.

As so often when stuck for a recipe, I went to my Google customised search, which covers blogs as well as recipe sites like the BBC and Waitrose.com. There, I found a beautifully simple recipe on Orangette. This follows the simple principle of macerating the fruit with the sugar in advance (something that I believe is supposed to keep the fruit whole), and then boiled until a set is reached. This only made 2 jars of jam, but considering the small amount of fruit I had and the tastiness of the jam, that’s just fine with me.

Recipe

• around 875g plums or greengages, to give 800g stoned fruit
• 400g granulated sugar
• juice of 1/2 small lemon

Mix everything together in a non-metallic bowl and macerate for at least 2 hours, and up to 6.

Sterilise jam jars (I only needed 2) by washing them in hot water, or in the dishwasher, then placing on a tray in a 140C oven for 30 minutes.

Transfer the fruit & sugar mixture to a preserving pan or wide saucepan. Bring to to a boil and boil for 30 minutes. Skim the foam from the surface about 10 or 15 minutes in. Test the set briefly on a cold plate, then pot and seal.

As plums are high in pectin, you shouldn’t have any problem with the set – in fact, mine was quite firm, so I could probably have got away with a shorter boiling time.

Easy ribs

I have a dilemma: I like slow-cooked food, I like to cook whenever I can, but I seldom have more than half an hour after getting home before I’m so hungry I can’t wait any longer. My favourite way to get around this problem is to prepare the slow-cooked stuff in several separate stages. Pork ribs (spare ribs) adjust well to this approach, benefiting from a three stage process:

1. Marinade – flavour the meat
2. Braise – cook with liquid to dissolve the collagen into gelatin, and make the meat tender
3. Glaze – caramelise the meat and create a sticky glaze

There are two ways you can go with ribs (although many would disagree and say there are many more than that): Chinese-influenced or American-influenced. My most recent attempt saw me take the Chinese route, following a recipe from Nigella Lawson’s “Forever Summer”. To adapt this to a different flavour, simply play with the spices and liquid in the marinade. You can also make the marinade a ‘dry rub’, by tossing the ribs in spices and salt, and then adding liquid just before braising.

Spare ribs

• 16 pork spare ribs (around 1.5kg)

Marinade:

• 4 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp dried red chilli flakes
• 5cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
• 2 tbsp runny honey
• 2 star anise
• 1 stick cinnamon, broken in 2
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 4 spring onions, roughly chopped

Divide the ribs between 2 large freezer bags. Mix together all the marinade ingredients, and divide between the bags. Seal up the freezer bags and squish everything around. Put into a container and leave in the fridge for at least 24 hours.

The next evening, empty the bags into one or two roasting tins – give them enough room to sit in one layer. Cover and seal with foil – you want to keep the steam in. Heat the oven to 180C, and cook for 1 and a half hours. Allow to cool before putting in the fridge.

Glaze:

• 2 tbsp honey
• 2 tsp five-spice powder (see note)

On the third evening, put the ribs, uncovered, back into a cold oven and heat to 200C. After 10 minutes, remove the ribs and gently toss in the honey and five-spice. Glaze for 30 minutes, turning once. Sprinkle with finely chopped spring onions and chillies to serve.

Note: I didn’t have any five spice powder when I made this, so left it out. I have since looked it up and found that I could have made it myself with my spices-only coffee grinder. To make it, toast and then grind together: 2 tbsp peppercorns (Szechuan, or substitute black), 2 tbsp whole cloves, 2 tbsp fennel seed, 2 cinnamon sticks and 6 whole star anise.

Monday Muffins

At my request, every birthday brings me a new crop of cookbooks to wallow in. This year was particularly fine, bringing me the two books from bloggers: David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop” and Heidi Swanson’s “Super Natural Cooking“.

Super Natural Cooking is the one intriguing me most at the moment (and only partly because I don’t have a freezer yet, so can’t make David’s ice creams!) It is one of the most unusual books I’ve come across in a long time: a book of healthy, natural, vegetarian recipes containing a wealth of unfamiliar ingredients … that all look incredibly delicious and tempting. All this has been said before, but this is a really beautiful and interesting book, and I look forward to getting to grips with quinoa, farro and sprouted chickpea burgers in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, something from my more usual baking repetoire – banana muffins. A bunch of organic bananas had been sitting on the windowsill glowering at me for more than a week, and getting browner and browner. This was the solution – and they seemed to go down very well at work to cheer up a grey and rainy monday.

Espresso Banana Muffins

• 290g light brown self-raising flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• (or 145g whole wheat flour, 145g plain flour and 2 tsp baking powder)
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 150g walnuts (I used pecans)
• 1 tbsp espresso powder
• 85g butter, room temperature
• 120g soft brown sugar
• 60 golden caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 250g plain yoghurt
• 310g peeled bananas, mashed (about 3 large bananas, the riper the better)

Heat the oven to 180C/350F. Spread the pecans or walnuts onto a baking sheet and toast for about 8 minutes. Remove from the oven, cool a little and chop. Set aside. Turn the oven up to 190C/375F. Prepare a 12 cup muffin tin with paper cases.

Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, espresso powder and around two-thirds of the chopped walnuts together.

Mash the bananas and mix in the yoghurt and vanilla. Set aside.

Beat the butter and sugars together until creamy. Mix in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the yoghurt mixture.

Add the flour, and stir together briefly, just until the streaks of flour have pretty much disappeared. Don’t overmix; it’s better to leave it too lumpy than too smooth.

Spoon the mixture into the muffin cups and top with the remaining chopped nuts.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out without batter clinging to it. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Goldilocks’ Chicken

When choosing a recipe to make, I often find myself objecting to some element of each one I read – an unpossessed ingredient, a step that I deem too fiddly – and move right along to the next one. Given the size of my cookbook library (not to mention the awesome power of the interwebs), this can lead to excessive time being lost before even getting to the kitchen. So the right course is often to pick and choose elements from each of them to arrive at a happy compromise – the option in the middle that is just right.

Yesterday’s problem was roast chicken, and my inspiration came from reading Laurie Colwin’s second compilation of cooking writing, More Home Cooking.  Her idea is to roast the chicken relatively slowly but thoroughly, to the point where the joints separate easily, and the leg meat falls from the bone, and to roast some vegetables at the same time. Laurie Colwin prescribes over 3 hours of roasting at a low temperature – I didn’t have time for that, but I liked the idea of the end result.So I turned to a reliable standby:  Marcella Hazan’s Roast Chicken with Two Lemons.

Marcella Hazan prescribes a pattern of temperatures that leads to a good, well-cooked bird, but also that your chicken is stuffed with 2 pierced lemons and the cavity sealed with a toothpick – and I didn’t want to fiddle that much. So I ended up with a compromise – and that was just right.

Roast chicken and vegetables

• 1 large organic chicken
• 5 or 6 medium potatoes
• 1 onion
• 4 medium carrots
• 1/2 lemon
• 6 cloves garlic
• small handful fresh thyme
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
• olive oil, salt and pepper

Remove the chicken from the fridge at least an hour before you want to start cooking, to allow it to come towards room temperature. Pre-heat the oven to 180C (160C fan). Spread a little olive oil in a roasting tin. Remove any fat from the cavity, season inside the cavity with salt, and place the garlic cloves (unpeeled), thyme and half lemon in there. There now follows a series of roasting phases:

1. Place the chicken breast side down and roast for 30 minutes.
2. Turn the chicken breast-side up, baste it and add the peeled potatoes and onions to the pan. Roast for a further 30 minutes.
3. Remove the chicken and add the carrots, peeled and halved, and baste again. Roast for a further 30 minutes.
4. Turn up the oven to 210C (190C fan) for a final 20 minutes.
5. Remove the chicken to a cutting board to rest. Toss the vegetables in the pan juices and return to the hot oven to brown for another 10 minutes.

Carve the chicken and serve with the roasted vegetables, plus a green vegetable such as green beans or broccoli. I served this with green beans from the garden, which are going great guns in all this rain.

Marbled Cupcakes

Having promised to make dessert for friends who were giving us lunch on Sunday, I found myself able to indulge in one my chief cooking pleasures: picking something to bake from my capacious cookbook collection. My first thoughts were for a strawberry tart, something that characterises early summer. But as the week wore on, and it got windier and wetter, I felt that something comforting and chocolately would fit the bill. I ended up with Alice Medrich’s ‘Bittersweet‘, which has chocolate recipes for every occasion you could think of. I was lucky enough to attend one of Alice’s classes in California; she combines a great depth of knowledge about chocolate with an infectious curiosity. This comes across in the recipes, which are suitable for the most elevated occasions, but also detailed and reliable: which is one reason why I felt comfortable breaking the rule that you should never try out a new recipe for the first time on guests.

Molten Raspberry-Chocolate Cupcakes with Marbled Glaze

adapted from ‘Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a life in chocolate’ by Alice Medrich

Note: I used the cup measures that Alice specifies in the book when I made them. I have given conversions to metric, but haven’t checked these, so be warned. I’ll test these out next time I make this recipe.

• 1 cup plain flour (140g)
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder (50g)
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup seedless raspberry puree (125ml) (1 punnet raspberries, pureed and sieved)
• 3 tablespoons brandy or rum (I was stuck here, so used 1tbsp Grand Marnier, 1tbsp vodka and 1 tbsp water)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 10 tablespoons butter (145g)
• 1 and 1/3 cups caster sugar (300g)
• 3 large eggs

For the chocolate glaze:

• 6oz dark chocolate, 65-70% (170g)
• 8 tbsp butter (115g)
• 1 tbsp corn syrup (there’s not really a good substitute for this as far as I know – but some supermarkets stock it)

For the marbling:

• 1 oz white chocolate (25g)

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Prepare a muffin tin with paper cases or grease the moulds. This makes about 18 muffins; I made 12 muffins and 2 little cakes in some 4″ pie dishes.

Thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb and salt in a bowl. Sift onto a sheet of greaseproof paper to help mix and get all the lumps out of the cocoa. This also gives extra lightness to the sponge.

Combine the raspberry puree, brandy and vanilla in a small bowl or jug. This will be quite liquid.

In a medium to large bowl, or the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter (*much* easier with electric assistance). Add the sugar gradually while you continue to beat the butter. Once all the sugar is in, continue to beat for 4 or 5 minutes – it should be really pale and fluffy. Don’t shortcut this part – it gets all the air in.

Break the eggs into a bowl or jug and whisk just to combine the yolks and whites. Add to the butter and sugar in a trickle, while continuing to beat. Adding it slowly prevents the mixture from curdling, but if it goes ahead and curdles anyway, don’t worry – it will mean slightly less air in the mixture, but it’ll still turn out OK.

Stop the mixer, and add one third of the flour mixture from the paper. Mix just to combine, then add half the raspberry mix and mix again. Alternate the flour and raspberry until everything’s combined. Be gentle, to keep all the air in that will help the mixture rise.

Scrape the batter into the pan or spoon into the muffin tins. Bake for 20 minutes, until the mixture pulls away from the side of the tin, and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool on a cake rack. (You can store the cakes in an air-tight container overnight at this point, or freeze).

While the cake cools, make the glaze: melt the chocolate, butter and corn syrup together over simmering water, or in the microwave, stirring until smooth. Melt the white chocolate at the same time in a separate bowl. Cool the glaze until it is thickened but still pourable, then dip the top of each muffin into the glaze. While the glaze is still wet, dip a teaspoon or skewer into the white chocolate and drizzle randomly onto the glaze. Use a skewer or toothpick to drag lines through the chocolate and create the marbled effect. I found it easiest to dip 3 muffins before decorating with the white chocolate. Leave the glaze to set.

Salade Tiede – Warm Salad

Two things have provoked me into breaking my blogging silence:

1. my attendance of a booksigning for Clotilde’s new book ‘Chocolate and Zucchini’
2. the appearance of my first French beans from my very first vegetable garden

Clotilde gave a wonderful performance at the booksigning – a few words over the signing of the book and a lovely speech about the genesis of the book and her food-writing career (she has what Americans might describe as ‘the cutest little accent – French-Californian). There was also food, cooked from recipes in the book by her British publisher, Catheryn.

Having nibbled on Tomato, Pistachio and Chorizo loaf and Very Chocolate Cookies at the book event, I didn’t feel in need of a vast meal when I got home, but I definitely had french food on the brain. This, combined with my green beans waiting in the garden led me to a warm salad.

My schooling at Tante Marie’s taught me some useful rules of thumb regarding salads:

• choose 2 or 3 ingredients (apart from the leaves) – more than that and it gets too complicated
• for a warm salad, dress everything over the heat, and toss in the leaves at the last minute
• pick ingredients that have a balance of flavours – sweet, sour, salty, bitter, savoury

I feel pretty good about this combination – the pancetta (supplied in neat little pre-cut cubes) gives salt and savoury, and also provides the warm dressing with some of the fat, plus some vinegar. The tomatoes give the sweetness and the beans a nice crunch and that clean, vegetal flavour. I suspect I will return to this format with beans again, looking at the number of them on the plants, and they will definitely lend themselves to a nut oil and toasted nut combination as well (walnuts? sesame seeds?). Batavia is useful for this (apart from being what I had in the fridge) – it is crisp but also bitter and robust enough to stand up to a warm salad. Curly endive is a good alternative. Quantities are for one, ‘cos it was just me, but can easily be scaled up.

Warm Salad of Green Beans, Oven-dried tomatoes and Pancetta

• small handful green beans (haricots verts)
• 1/2 packet cubetti di pancetta (from Waitrose or Sainsburys)
• 5-6 cherry tomatoes
• 1/2 head Batavia lettuce
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp white wine vinegar
• salt and pepper

Optional: oven dry the tomatoes. I did this because I had two tubs that needed using up, but it’s fine to use them fresh. Half the tomatoes, and spread on a baking tray, cut side up. Drizzle with oilive oil, sprinkle with thinly sliced garlic, salt and pepper, and bake for 2-3 hours at 160C (140C fan). This can also be done fors a shorter time at a higher temperature, or a longer time (even overnight) at a low one. It changes the texture, but the concentration of sugars and flavour is pretty similar.

Fry the pancetta gently in the olive oil, untill slightly browned. Meanwhile, trim the beans and steam for 4-5 minutes. Once the bacon is done, remove it to a metal bowl with a slotted spoon, along with some of the bacon fat. Toss in the beans and tomatoes until coated, then add the vinegar and season and taste a bean. Adjust the fat, vinegar and seasoning until it tastes good, then toss in the lettuce leaves, and taste again. Places the leaves on the plate first, and top with the other ingredients (which is the way it works anyway – the leaves will work to the top and the rest to the bottom while you’re doing the dressing).

Parsnip Risotto with Parsnip crisps

Parsnip-risotto.JPG
Originally uploaded by louise_marston.

I quite like making stock; when I’ve paid £13 for a chicken, it makes me feel considerably more virtuous to know that not a drop of chickeny-goodness has gone to waste. However, although I diligently make, strain, reduce and store my stock, I’m often at a loss for the best way to show it off. It seems a waste of all that effort to just bung it into a curry or sauce. Which is why I find myself turning to risotto again and again when I have chicken stock in the house.

I’ve seen copies of Jamie’s Italy in various people’s houses over the past few months and have resisted buying, even though it looks very good, as I already own Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classical Italian Cooking and Giorgio Locatelli’s Made in Italy: Food and Stories. Browsing through other people’s copies, however, (and I am certainly not above this – if I’m in your house, no cookbook is safe) a couple of unusual recipes struck me, namely recipes for a parsnip risotto and an artichoke one. The parsnip one particularly intrigued me; the idea of the savoury stock and the sweet, earthy parsnips seemed particularly appealing. Although I didn’t have the echt Jamie version to work from, I used my usual risotto tactics, following along with Giorgio to make sure I got the technique right. The parsnip crisps occurred to me at the last minute; I’ve been buying rather a lot of them in Pret recently.

Parsnip Risotto with Parsnip Crisps

1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 small parsnips
1 tbsp butter plus 1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 glass white wine
500 ml chicken stock
1/2 cup risotto rice (arborio, carnaroli or vialone nano)
1/2 tsp thyme
2-3 tbsp grated parmesan

Finely slice half of one of the parsnips, and finely dice the rest. Heat the butter and olive oil in a large frying pan or saute pan and soften the onions. Once the onions have started to go translucent, add the diced parsnips and cook together with the onions until their almost browning. Stir in the rice, and fry for 2-3 minutes to toast the rice. Add the white wine and stir until it’s all absorbed, then start to add the chicken stock a little at a time. Stir between additions, and start to taste the rice after about 10-15 minutes. When the grains only have a little hardness left, add the chopped thyme, then keep adding stock and stirring until the grains yield all the way through. In between the stirring, heat a small frying pan and add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil (not the good stuff). Add the sliced parsnip and fry until they are brown and crisp. Remove to a plate lined with kitchen towel to absorb the excess oil, and sprinkle with a little salt.
Once the risotto is done, take the pan off the heat and let stand while you slice off another piece of cold butter and grate the parmesan. Stir these in then serve, with a little extra grated parmesan, the parsnip crisps and a little more thyme on top.

Cook’s notes: I used the gravy from making Muriel’s chicken as well as the stock for this. As this was already flavoured with thyme, lemon and garlic, it was a little too much for the dish, and just the plain chicken stock would have been better. The dish could also have stood a little more wine to add a bit of acidity to the earthiness and sweetness of the parsnips.

A tale of two beef dishes

I was in an English Food mood this weekend, partly due to Sam’s ‘English Food is not a joke’ challenge (and see previous post for more on that). I had bought a couple of packets of braising beef last week, with a vague plan to make some stew over the weekend that would act as an easy ready meal this week when I knew there would be a couple of late nights. In the end, I split the packets up and used them two different ways, both very satisfying and highly English. First on the agenda was pasties – good lunch food for those painting and decorating all weekend. The second packet went into a version of Jamie Oliver’s dark sticky stew, a basic beef stew enriched with Guinness and marmite – highly flavoured comfort food for a Sunday night.

I also made a batch of scones with the heat from the same oven as the pasties. It’s easy to forget how easy scones really are, with their connotations of an elaborate Victorian tea. But it took only 30 minutes from deciding to make them to taking them out of the oven. The finishing touch to a very English weekend (even if we did eat them with Creme Fraiche and jam).


Cornish Pasties
I adapted this from Gary Rhodes’ recipe in ‘New British Classics’, my only significant aberration being to substitute carrots for the traditional swede (which I didn’t have any of). I also substituted some strong white bread flour in the pastry, to help make it a little tougher and more robust. This only partly worked – my pastry was still a bit fragile. I have also specified a smaller sized pasty – Gary suggests only 4 from this mixture, but I found these too large, and therefore tricky to eat in one go.

For the pastry:
200g strong white bread flour
200g plain flour
100g butter
100g lard

450g braising beef (chuck, flank and rump could all be used), cut into 1cm cubes
2 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into 1cm cubes
2 carrots, peeled, halved and sliced
1 medium onion, finely chopped

Make the pastry. This is made as normal shortcrust pastry – make sure you season the flour well. My preferred method is to put the fat and flour into the freezer for 5 to 10 minutes, then use the food processor to cut in the fat, and add cold water to bring the pastry together in the processor. Turn the dough out and knead it lightly to make a stronger pastry, then wrap in cling film and rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut up the meat and season well with salt and pepper. Prepare all the vegetables, and divide each type into 4 piles.

Once 30 minutes has passed, remove the pastry from the fridge. Divide the dough into 8 equal pieces, and, taking one piece at a time, roll each one out into a circle about the thickness of a pound coin (around 3mm). Arrange 1/8th of the meat and vegetables in layers down the centre of the circle, first the potatoes and carrots, then the meat and finally the onions. Season well with salt and white pepper (if you have it). Brush the edge of the circle with water all the way around, and bring the edges together. Press the edges together and then crimp the top to seal it well. Place on lined baking sheet and repeat with the remaining pieces of pastry dough.

Chill for 20 minutes, then bake at 180C for 1 hour. Allow to cool a little before eating.

A Dark Sticky Stew
Adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Dark Sticky Stew in ‘Jamie’s Kitchen’.

450g braising beef steak
2 tablespoons flour
2 sprigs thyme, finely chopped
2 small onions, chopped
3 large carrots, cut into batons
8 – 10 mushrooms, quartered
1 rib celery, finely chopped
125ml Guinness
500ml chicken stock
1 teaspoon Marmite

Preheat the oven to 170C. Combine the thyme and flour and toss with the beef until it’s coated. Heat some olive oil in a casserole dish, and brown the beef really well in two batches. Remove the beef and put to one side. Soften and brown the vegetables in the same pan. Then add the Guinness, reduce and add the chicken stock, Marmite and add the beef back in. Cover with a lid and put into the oven for 1 hour, or until the beef is tender. Serve with boiled potatoes (or even better, mash) and some cabbage or broccoli.

Celebrating English Food

This is my entry for Sam’s ‘Fish & Quips – why English food is not a joke’ round-up. I started by brainstorming all the things I think of when I think of English Food, because it seems to me that it’s a pretty diverse subject:

Fresh produce / regionality	Home Baking
Rhubarb, apples, cobnuts, fish, peas, round lettuce, plums, greengages, gooseberries Preserving Smoked fish, kippers, cheeses: Cheddar, Lancashire, Wensleydale	Split tin loaves baked once a week for the family, cottage loaf, Eccles cakes, Sally Lunns, Scones with Clotted Cream
Food for workers	Victorian Cooking
Pasties, Bedfordshire clangers, Steak & Kidney pudding, Sausage & Mash, Fish & Chips, Yorkshire pudding with beef	Formal dinner parties, establishing dinner as the main meal, nursery food, Game, Roast beef & Horseradish, syllabub, jellies, Steamed syrup pudding, Jam Rolypoly

So, I decided to come at this from the angle of Working Food. My choice of dish to represent Working Food is Sausage & Mash. Also known as ‘Bangers and Mash’, this is a dish that spans the whole of English society – from cheap sausages, bulked out with lots of bread and fat and instant mash to elevated chefs like Gary Rhodes, and all the dinner tables and gastro-pubs in between, this dish is at home anywhere. I’ve also served it at a dinner party (albeit a pretty informal one) with a rich onion gravy, as per Nigella’s suggestion in How to Eat. At heart, this has much in common with Working Food the world over – cheap, spiced preserved meat combined with lots of filling, comforting carbohydrate.

Another major reason for choosing sausage and mash is that it has inspired some of the greatest English food writing – I refer, of course, to the majestic prose in Nigel Slater’s ‘Real Food’. And so it seemed only fitting to follow the great man’s words to create the dish:

Sausage & Mash – adapted from Nigel Slater’s Real Food

Choose really good quality pork sausages. I went for Lincolnshire sausages from Tesco on this occasion, but my favourite is Duchy Originals Pork and Herb. British sausages have a particular spice blend which is not always present in other countries, and can’t really be replicated by an Italian sausage, for instance. Gary Rhodes says the key flavourings are mace, sage, thyme,onion and Worcestershire sauce. I also think that white pepper is important.

Heat a heavy frying pan (I used my Lodge cast-iron pan) and add the sausages.

Cook over a medium-low heat for 40-45 minutes, cooking the meat through very gently, keeping it moist and developing lots of sticky goo on the outside of the sausage. Turn occasionally, but be careful not to pierce the skin – and definitely don’t prick the skin before you start! A juicy sausage depends on keeping as many of the juices in as possible, and if it’s a good quality, meaty sausage, it won’t split.

Meanwhile, peel some Maris Piper potatoes, cut them into even chunks and cover with cold water.

Bring to the boil, and simmer for 15-20 minutes (depending on the size of the chunks), until they are tender to the point of a knife. Drain and push through a potato ricer (or you can mash by hand – I have my ricer for just this purpose). Add a good deal of butter and mix into the hot riced potatoes, then pour in some hot milk and beat with a wooden spoon to make it light and fluffy. [Nigel's proportions are 900g potatoes, 100g butter and 100ml milk, but I go more or less by eye.]

Dollop on the plate and serve with the sausages and proper Heinz tomato ketchup (although Heinz is an American company, there is something completely British in my mind about Heinz tomato ketchup).

Technorati Tags: EnglishFood, food, NigelSlater, sausages

Bad-tempered Cookies

It’s quarter to midnight and I’ve just finished mopping tomato ketchup off the floor. Cookies are a nightmare. No really. I’ve had it up to here.

I was a fool. I read Adam’s enthusiastic, nay, evangelical posts about Martha Stewart’s cookie recipe and I had to give it a go. More fool me. Firstly, the recipe needed to be translated from the dreaded American cups. American cups as a baking measurement are just infuriating – for some reason the good old US of A refuses to use scales while baking, just as they cling to pounds and inches. Cups are never the same weight twice, especially when you’re talking about something like flour. Then there’s the ingredients. American All-Purpose Flour is actually somewhere between Plain Flour and Strong White Flour, and American granulated sugar is not as coarse as British granulated but not as fine as caster sugar.

So I took Adam’s recipe, and measured it carefully, substituting approximate British equivalents and … just look what happened:

Isn’t that the ugliest batch of cookies you’ve ever seen? The first set were gigantic and undercooked in the middle, the second and third batches better, but still ugly, the third set I burnt (those ones in the lower right-hand corner aren’t actually double chocolate – they just got baked for half an hour!).

Maybe it wasn’t the cookies after all – maybe they were just a karmic sign, because just after I pulled out the last baking tray, this happened:

You see, all week I’ve been avoiding a couple of kitchen chores: to scrub the kitchen floor and to wash down the skirting boards and door frames in preparation for painting them this weekend. The Ketchup Disaster ensured that I had to wipe down the skirting boards, and walls, and mop the floor. So maybe the cookies were just a sign after all: don’t waste your time on frivolous baking projects, get on the floor and clean, damn you!

So it’s Jeffrey Steingarten’s cookie recipe next – let’s hope I find a better time to try it, karmically-speaking.

Technorati Tags: baking, cookies