Back in the U.S.S.R.

 

From a very young age I knew that Georgia, together with the Ukraine and the city of Moscow belonged to the former U.S.S.R. This was not because I was particularly geeky but thanks to The Beatles and their Beach Boys parody in the White Album. But that’s as far as my knowledge went.

 

 

 

 

 

Recently, my knowledge about Georgia has been considerably expanded. Not only did I learn to make my first authentic Georgian dish but I also learnt my first (and only) Georgian word!

 

I bought some vegemince (Quorn) at the supermarket the other day since it was on offer and it had been sitting in my freezer until I decided to cook something with it.

 

Many times, when finding that I have no meat in the fridge (almost always, here in the UK), I find myself turning to Linda McCartney’s cookbook (God knows why). Thumbing through my boyfriend’s copy of Linda McCartney’s Home Cooking (we both have copies I am embarrassed to admit) I decided to make the vegetarian version of chilli con carne because that’s what I had on Saturday and I felt a craving for it. Now I refuse to cook anything with a name as silly as Chilli non carne, therefore, I have taken the liberty of changing the title.

Had Linda done her homework (like Nigella does) she would have discovered that there is a Georgian version of meatless chilli con carne called Лобио. Lobio is made with бобы (which means “beans” by the way but that was not thanks to my English-Russian dictionary as, бобы, someone dutifully pointed out, means beans in Georgian).

I followed the recipe with some changes. Inspired by the lobio, I also add a pinch of dry coriander which I added as optional in the recipe below because both the jalapeño chillies and the chilli powder were so overpowering that you wouldn’t notice the cumin one way or the other. I am not saying that spicy is necessarily bad, though. I like my meals spicy which was a very good thing in this case because the dish was, how shall I put it, otherwise bland so it was good to have the kick of the chilli there.

The morale of the story (or more precisely my conclusion) is that if you are a vegetarian who absolutely refuses to eat meat, you are far better off leaving the mince out (fake or otherwise) and having a bowl full of lobio and not Linda McCartney’s chilli. At least you’d be having something authentic on your plate.

 

 

 

Meatless Chili – adapted from Linda McCartney’s Home Cooking by Linda McCartney
6 Servings

 

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 medium onion — chopped (I found that using half an onion was enough)
• 1 ½ tsp. chili powder — (or more, according to taste)
• 2 packets TVP Chunks/128g vegetable mince or (4 ½ oz vegetable burgers, crumbled) (optional)
• 1 ½ cups vegetable stock or water — (3/4 when using vegetable burgers)
• 1 can tomatoes — (16 oz) chopped, liquid reserved
• 1 can red kidney beans — (16 oz) do not drain
• 2 Mexican green chilis in brine, drained — chopped (optional)
• Salt and freshly ground pepper — to taste
• pinch of dry coriander (optional)

Heat oil in large saucepan.
Add onion, sauté until golden brown.
Add chili powder and TVP, sauté for 5 minutes.
Add vegetable stock, tomatoes, kidney beans, green chilis and reserved liquid from tomatoes.
Cover, simmer 20 minutes.

Serve with rice, mashed potatoes or an avocado salad.

 

Note: I simmered mine, uncovered, for quite a lot longer than 20 minutes as it was quite liquidy and I wanted the sauce to reduce and get something closer to bolognaise (we can all dream, can’t we?)

 

 

 

 

Лобио  (Georgian beans)

 

1 can chopped tomatoes

½ can red kidney beans

2 cloves garlic, chopped

half a red onion (if big) or one if small, chopped

salt and pepper

generous pinch of dry coriander

bunch of fresh coriander, chopped

2 tbsp. vegetable oil, for frying

 

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the onion and sauté until golden brown. Add the rest of the ingredients except for the fresh coriander and the garlic. If you think the sauce is too thick, add some vegetable stock or boiling water to it, just play it by ear. Season to taste with dry coriander, salt and pepper. Leave to simmer for 20 minutes or longer. Halfway through the cooking, add the garlic (if you add it when you are frying the onion it will go bitter). Serve on a bed of boiled white rice.

 

 

Eating and Having a Good Time

 

 

 

 

 

I know I have been blogging a lot about books lately. This is partly because the charger for my digital camera has decided to go on holiday for a while (since my last move, actually). No charger means my digital toy is essentially dead so, no photos for a while.

Truth is, I have been wanting to blog about Narda’s book for a while. As I said before I am quite a late-comer for everything. I bought this book last year when I went on holidays to Argentina. It had been on the shelves since the year before.

People rightly say “the proof is in the pudding”. Well, I have now made several recipes from Narda’s book and they have proved a huge hit. There was the fish with capers I have blogged about before and recently I made the beetroot gnocci.

I fiddled with the recipe a bit. I didn’t have any goat’s cheese (nor did I feel like filling each one of them just for me) so I made unpretentious, normal gnocci this time. I will try them with goat’s cheese, though. I also have several ideas for other coloured gnocci (tomato, carrot, spinach…) which I will eventually try and blog about. I couldn’t find any raw beetroot either. Narda suggests baking them in salt so that they release most of their water. Since mine were already cooked (boiled, to be precise), I had to add A LOT of flour. And this is why they didn’t turn out dramatically purple but sort of pinkish instead. Ah, well.

The beauty of gnocci is that, although they are time-consuming, you can make the lot and then freeze them. They will sit quite happily in the freezer for a couple of months and you can boil them from frozen.

 

 

 

Beetroot gnocci with goat’s cheese filling  – adapted from a recipe by Narda Lepes in Comer y Pasarla Bien

 

1.5 kg. beetroot (raw)
2 kg. sea salt
thyme
horseradish root, 1
2 kg. potatoes
plain flour, as needed
goat’s cheese

ghee

4 eggs

1 cup cream or sour cream

chopped parsley

 

How to make:

 

Bake the beetroots in the oven at 180º C over a thick layer of sea salt for around 90 minutes. Bake the potatoes separately. Peel both and mash them also separately. Knead adding flour and 4 eggs until the dough becomes pliable and not sticky. The quantity of flour will depend of how much flour the dough will take, once the dough cannot take any more flour, stop adding to it. Shape the gnocci and fill each one with a tiny piece of goat’s cheese. Heat the pan with the thyme, salt and pepper. Separately whisk the cream and the horseradish.
Boil the gnocci in boiling water with sea salt. Drain and season with the hot butter (ghee). Serve with a dollop of cream on top and decorate with chopped parsley or sautéed sage leaves.  

 

 

Too many books

 

I had sworn solemnly to myself not to buy any more cookery books as I am seriously running out of space to store them.

However, when I see something interesting which is there practically for the taking, this proves a very hard thing to do.

Which is what happened the other day. As a general rule I like having the occasional sandwich at Prêt although they can be quite pricey. Right opposite the one I normally go to, near my uni, there is this bargain bookstore which had a copy of their cookery book, Prêt à Manger: Food on the Move, for less than the price of a Prêt sandwich! Of course, the book went home with me.

It was from there that I tried this recipe for home-made hummus. I did half the recipe, partly because the tin-opener had decided to play hide-and-seek so I had to use a somewhat troglodyte method to open the chickpea tin but also because fresh hummus doesn’t keep well. The quantity I made should be more than enough to feed two people.

 

 

 

Prêt’s Hummus – adapted from Prêt à Manger: Food on the Move

 

 

1 x 220g cooked chickpeas, drained

1 small clove of garlic or ½ a big one

1 tsp. balsamic vinegar or white wine vinegar

squeeze of lemon or lime juice

½ tsp. creamed horseradish (I omitted it)

slug of olive oil

salt and pepper

chopped coriander (optional)

pinch of ground cumin OR all of the following:

pinch fennel seeds

pinch of caraway seeds

pinch of cayenne pepper

 

Blend the chickpeas and the clove of garlic. Add the balsamic vinegar, the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Blend a little bit more. Add either the cumin or the fennel and caraway seeds and the cayenne pepper. Continue to blend. With the blender running add the olive oil in a trickle, just like you do when you make mayonnaise. The chickpeas should turn into a paste, if you have eaten hummus, you know what I mean! Add some chopped coriander and blend just a little more. Serve in a bowl and decorate with some extra chopped coriander on top.

 

By the way, the book comes with a voucher for a free Prêt sandwich on the back jacket!

 

 

 

 

 

Back to the egg

 

 

 

 

 

 When I was young I was given Wings’ Back to the Egg LP as a present.

Apart from being one of Wings’ best albums, I loved the art (the LP had a fried egg on both sides right in the middle with the legend: “Sunny side up” on one of them). Funnily enough, the song Yesterday was initially called Scrambled eggs after Paul McCartney dreamt the tune (or so he says).

I have recently tried a few proper recipes to make them and I bumped into this one by one of my heroes, Gordon Ramsay:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU_B3QNu_Ks&feature=related

 

PERFECT is the only word that can do them justice.

You’d think making scrambled eggs is easy enough. Well, Gordon goes for a method that does everything the other way round and the result is, as he well puts it… sublime. The eggs cooked in this way are creamy and subtle beyond belief.

It will appear that the eggs will never ever set. Don’t despair! And, above all, do NOT turn up the heat. They will come together.

Paraphrasing another blog, “he has changed the way I cook scrambled eggs forever”. Try them, you won’t be sorry.

 

 

 

Sublime scrambled eggs on toast adapted from Gordon Ramsay Makes it Easy by Gordon Ramsay

Serves 2-3

6 large free-range eggs
25g ice-cold butter, cut into small dice
1 tbsp crème fraîche
freshly ground sea salt and pepper
few chives, snipped
2-3 chunky slices of rustic bread, such as pain Polaîne, to serve

1. Break the eggs into a cold, heavy-based pan, place on the lowest heat possible, and add half the butter. Using a spatula, stir the eggs frequently to combine the yolks with the whites.

2. As the mixture begins to set, add the remaining butter. The eggs will take about 4-5 minutes to scramble – they should still be soft and quite lumpy. Don’t let them get too hot – keep moving the pan off and back on the heat.

3. Meanwhile, toast the bread.

4. Add the crème fraîche and season the eggs at the last minute, then add the snipped chives. Put the toast on warm plates, pile the softly scrambled eggs on top and serve immediately.

 

 

 

After I did Gordon’s version I had to try Bill Granger’s.

After all Bill became famous for his scrambled eggs so I definitely had to give them a go!

 

The recipe I used was the one that appears in his website: http://www.bills.com.au/recipes/recipe1.htm

Despite all his remarks and explanations, it wasn’t quite up to standards. For example, Bill says the heat should be high and I remain convinced that low heat works best. With high heat my eggs were dangerously close to becoming an omelette instead!

 

Bill’s scrambled eggs – adapted from a recipe by Bill Granger

Serves 1

 

2 eggs

1/3 cup (2 fl. oz) cream (I used soured cream)

 a pinch of salt (I also seasoned the eggs with freshly milled black pepper)

10g (¼ oz butter)

 

Place the eggs, cream and salt in a bowl and whisk together.

Melt the butter in a non-stick frying pan over high heat, taking care not to burn the butter. Pour in egg mixture and cook for 20 seconds, or until gently set around the edge. Stir the eggs with a wooden spoon, gently bringing the egg mixture on the outside of the pan to the centre. The idea is to fold the eggs rather than to scramble them. Leave to cook for 20 seconds longer and repeat the folding process. When the eggs are just set (remembering they will continue cooking as they rest), turn out onto a plate and serve with hot toast.

 

Note: If you are making more than two serves of scrambled eggs, make sure you cook separate batches so as not to crowd the frying pan.

 

So which version did I like the best? I have great respect for Bill as the recipes I have tried so far have turned out very tasty but in this case I think I’ll stick to Gordon’s.

 

 

Cinnamon buns revisited

 

 

As it happens, those fabulous cinnamon buns I made a while ago at Catering College are a staple at the Nordic Bakery. In their Finnish incarnation they are called Korvapuustit or cinnamon ears and no, I don’t speak Finnish yet.

 

 

 

 

Cinnamon ears (Korvapuustit) from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas

Makes 24 rolls

 

2 packages active dry yeast

1 cup warm water, 105F to 115F

½ cup melted butter

½ cup sugar

3 slightly beaten eggs

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cardamom (optional)

4 ½ to 5 cups all-purpose flour

 

 

Filling:

 

½ cup soft butter

½ cup sugar

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

 

Glaze:

 

1 slightly beaten egg

2 tablespoons milk

pearl sugar or crushed sugar cubes

 

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water and let stand 5 minutes. Stir in ½ cup melted butter, ½ cup sugar, the eggs, salt, cardamom, and 4 ½ cups flour until dough is smooth. Cover and refrigerate 2 to 24 hours.

Sprinkle board with some of the remaining flour. Divide dough into 2 parts. Turn out onto the lightly floured board, and roll each part out to make a rectangle about 12 inches by 24 inches long.

Spread each half with half the butter and sprinkle with half the sugar and cinnamon. Roll up, starting from a 24-inch side. Cut each roll diagonally into 12 pieces. Each piece will be about ½ inch on one side and 3 inches thick on the other. With two thumbs, press down the middle of the side of each roll. In so doing the two cut edges will be forced upward. The rolls will resemble two “ears.”

Cover 2 baking sheets with parchment or lightly grease them. Place cinnamon ears on prepared baking sheets. Let rise until puffy. Mix the egg and milk to make a glaze. Brush rolls with the glaze and sprinkle with the pearl sugar.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or just until golden.

 

 

Jam session

 

 

Another post that went bonkers…

 

I have committed an act of disappearance again.

This time due to a long-due, much needed break to go back home.

The holiday was great, it was a highlight all the way through.

The only thing I regret about it was that it was too short. I’ll keep you posted as to my wanderings over there, not necessarily in chronological order.

It was great to see my friends and do a bit of local cooking.I hadn’t been there for ages in the summer and it was lovely to be able to wear sleeveless T-shirts and see the sun at 8 pm still high up in the sky.

Of the many wonderful moments I had, for today’s post I rescue my friend’s birthday, which she celebrated with a “mateada”. 

Mateada is a wonderful custom we have back home. We all drink mate through a sort of metal straw and we take turns in the round. There are many cebadores, the people who re-fill the mate for drinking. It’s a skill, it’s not that easy and I have to say, I can’t do it!

But it’s wonderful because it creates that friendly atmosphere which is so unique of the pampas. To be fair, there were many wonderful things to eat on that occasion, including warm ham and cheese croissants to die for. My contribution to it were bizcochitos for the mate (a must!) and as a bonus, prune jam. 

 

 

 

 

Being back home I also took advantage of the time to make some home-made dulce de leche as a gift to friends and family. My friends were delighted (or so they said) as they are not so keen on the industrialized version. I have to say it takes a bit of time (I started it, left it to watch “Mujeres Asesinas”, an excellent Pol-ka production, and went back to it to finish it) but it’s definitely worth it. 

I hope you try making the jams and enjoy them as much as everybody did back home.  

 

 

   

Prune Jam – from “La Cocina Divertida” by Blanca Cotta  

 

Ingredients:

 

Prunes, 2 cups

Apples, peeled, cored and cut into small pieces, as needed

Sugar, as needed

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

Beetroot (raw) peeled and grated, 1

How to make:

1.        Place the prunes in a small pan, cover with water and leave them to soak overnight.

2.        Boil them until they are tender. Rinse them and core them. (Do not discard the cooking liquid).

3.        Mash them with a fork until you have pureed them.

4.        Measure the puree in cups and place it in a pan.

5.        Add the same amount of cut apples, same volume of cooking liquid (and water if necessary) and same volume of sugar.  

6.        Cook over low heat, stirring ocassionally, until it thickens. Add the juice and zest of lemon and the grated beetroot.

7.        Boil until it thickens like jam.   

 

 

Dulce de leche – adapted from La Cocina Divertida by Blanca Cotta

Ingredients:

 

Milk, 4 litres

Sugar, 1 kg

Vanilla pod, 1

Bicarbonate of soda, 1 teaspoon

How to make: 

 

1.        Boil the four litres of milk, sieve it and pass it to another pan because the milk, as it boils, almost always leaves solids behind. To do it, choose a VERY BIG pan because dulce de leche, as it boils, climbs up like a thief on the run…

2.        Add the sugar, the vanilla pod and the bicarbonate to the milk. The bicarbonate is added so that the dulce de leche doesn’t split and also to give it a dark colour.

3.        Boil over high heat all the time. Beware because at the beginning there will be a lot of bicarbonate-induced foam. This is why I suggested a BIG pan.

4.        As soon as it boils, dulce de leche will begin to thicken, just as it happens when you make syrup. Stir occasionally with a wooden spoon, so that the dulce de leche doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

5.        When the dulce de leche thickens like a light bechamel sauce, take the pan off the heat, place it in the sink previously filled with cold water and stir all the time with a wooden spoon until it cools down. Place it in sterilized jars and give it away as a present!  

 

Bizcochitos for the mate – adapted from a recipe by Blanca Cotta in Viva magazine

 

200 ml cream (either single or double)

2 tbsp Parmesan cheese, grated (optional)

Self-raising flour, as needed

Salt and pepper to taste 

 

1.      Place the cream and Parmesan cheese in a bowl and season to taste with salt and pepper. Mix with a fork as you add the flour. You should add as much as you need to form a soft dough.

2.      Place on the workplace, sprinkle it with flour knead. Do this as many times as you need to get a dough that is not too sticky. Roll it out and cut it into small rounds.  

3.      Place them onto buttered and floured oven trays. Fork them and cook them until dry.       

 

 

All good things come to an end

 

Yes, all good things come to an end at some point. In my case what ended was my job at the Nordic Bakery but I left there with very fond memories, my colleagues, the atmosphere, the food…

 

One of the staples at the café (for it is more a café than a bakery) is the Tosca Cake, which I thought at first was Swedish but no, it turns out that it is Norwegian. One day, when we had a mini-crisis as we had run out of flaked almonds to make it, my very good friend Sini, who is now the manager there, told me not to panic as Tosca simply meant crunchy so, technically, you can still do it with any type of chopped nuts and have an authentic Tosca. So feel free to replace the almonds with any other chopped nut you have handy (except, maybe peanuts).

 

 

 

 

Toscakake adapted from The Food and Cooking of Norway by Janet Laurence

Serves 10

 

50g/2oz/4 tbsp. unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing

115g/4oz/1 cup plain flour

7.5ml/1 ½ tsp. baking powder

pinch of salt

2 large eggs

150g/5oz/¾ cup caster sugar

 

For the topping:

 

115g/4oz/½ cup butter, softened

150g/5oz/1 ¼ cups blanched almonds, toasted and roughly chopped

115g/4oz/generous ½ cup caster sugar

30ml/2tbsp. plain flour

30ml/2tbsp single cream or milk

 

1.      Preheat the oven to 160°C/325°F/Gas 3. Butter and line the base and sides of 20cm/8in round cake tin (pan) with baking parchment. Melt the butter and leave to cool. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.

2.      In a large bowl, whisk the eggs until thick and pale and then gradually whisk in the sugar until the mixture falls in a thick ribbon. Fold in the flour mixture and the cooled butter.

3.      Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and tap lightly on a work surface to settle the mixture. Bake the cake in the oven for 30 minutes, or until just before the cake is cooked, when it is almost firm to the touch but needs another few minutes not to sink if removed from the heat.

4.      Leave the cake in the oven and prepare the topping. Place the butter, almonds, sugar, flour and cream or milk in a pan and heat gently, stirring, until the butter has melted, then continue heating the mixture until it just reaches boiling point.

5.      Preheat the grill (broiler) to medium-hot. Remove the cake carefully from the oven and spread the topping over the top, making sure that all the cake is covered. Place under the grill until the topping is golden brown, watching that the sides of the cake don’t burn. (I find that rotating the cake tin in the oven a little, helps) Stand the tin on a rack so that air can pass underneath, and leave to cool before carefully removing the cake from the tin.

 

http://www.nordicbakery.com/

 

 

 

                                                                                                                        

Julie, Julia & Me

 

 

  

 

 

Recently, I picked up an interesting book at my local library: “Julie & Julia” by a Julie Powell.

It is interesting because it got me thinking. And nowadays not many books can do that. Well, not that many anyway.

It is by no means a new book having been published in 2005. But then again I am not exactly known for picking up the latest trend, being rather a latecomer in everything from music to TV programmes, you name it.

When Nirvana was touring the world, I lived in a parallel universe, all of my own, oblivious to its existence, even when they played in Buenos Aires, the very city I inhabited. Of course, by the time I was aware of WHO they were, it was too late and I was left banging my head against my bedroom wall having missed out on the only opportunity E-VER of seeing them play live (for those of you who don’t yet know it, Kurt Cobain blew his brains off shortly afterwards).

When the entire cast of Friends was in town (London in this case, the very city I was living in) to film the ending of season 4 (The One with Ross’ Wedding to Helen Baxendale, remember?) I was probably the only soul in the whole of London who, after seeing the guys everywhere: TV reports, newspapers, magazines, you name it, I mean everywhere, was still wondering: “Who the HELL are these people? Why is everyone making such a fuss?” Needless to say I became a hardcore Friends fan from that moment on and I am one to this day.

But back to Julie and her book.

Maybe I feel empathy because she wrote a blog and I am doing the same.

In any case I thought the idea of “The Project” was quite an interesting one and (it got me thinking) maybe, just maybe, I should start a Project of my own. Although, why on Earth should I want to cook my way through an entire single cookery book (single here being the key word) is beyond me. Being the proud owner of hundreds (yes, hundreds) of cookery books I wouldn’t want to cook my way through any one of them. What would I do with the rest of my books? Even less appealing is cooking my way through every single recipe in The Book when many of those recipes go against my principles (vivisecting a live lobster, anyone?). I also failed to see the point in cooking your way indiscriminately through MtAoFC when many of the recipes, as documented by Julie in said book, were a flop. Am I alone in thinking that to get a recipe right it is infinitely better to do it over and over again until you get it right? After all, that’s the whole point of cooking a recipe from scratch, I mean, learning to make it properly, right? But maybe that’s just me.

I also have a huge problem trying to understand why people would want to cook a lot of recipes for things they do not like to eat. Me being me, I prefer to pick and choose what I like to eat and then and only then, cook it. I am sorry but that’s my criteria.

Zillion of years ago, back in the days when Jamie Oliver (my hero) had a website he actually read, he replied to a question that was rendering me sleepless at night: Could I, an ex-vegetarian, now officially a chef, live up to my profession without eating my way through every single form of, let’s just say, edible thing out there? I had just read a blurb for Anthony Bourdain’s newest book, A Cook’s Tour, in which he boasts of having eaten the (still beating) heart of a cobra. I have viciously hated the man ever since. What’s the need? Seriously. I did see him on TV for the tie-in TV series going into a Japanese restaurant to eat fugu (河豚, 鰒, フグ), the famously lethal Japanese fish, and I swear I’ve never ever wished for anything in my life more than I did that time that the chef of said restaurant had committed hara-kiri for having prepared the fish incorrectly.

Anyway, I am getting carried away here. Jamie did reply to me and he said (I still have his answer to this day) that it was perfectly OK to go through life without having to eat all forms of living things out there be it out of principle or, say, because you were allergic to them or something. Just in case, I decided there and then that I was going to be a Pastry Chef.

With that out of the way, I am enjoying the book enormously. Although most of the entertainment comes from Julie’s failures at, say, knowing how to time things properly and keeping everyone waiting until 12.00-ish a.m. to eat pancakes with cheese.

Going as I do to a professional chef school, therefore knowing how and when to get things done in advance (making the pancakes batter the day before actually improves them, believe it or not) I figured that were I to write about a project of my own it would make for very dull reading indeed. After all, what’s the fun in writing: “I got the pancake batter done, put it in the fridge, went to bed and the next morning after having brushed my teeth, I made all my pancakes which I then piled one on top of the other with a piece of greaseproof paper to separate each one”. You would be crying of boredom, believe me.

Perhaps in a not-so-long future I too will have a Project of my own, only that, instead of cooking my way through MtAoFC vol. 2 I will probably tackle “Baking with Julia” which seems to me a far safer bet.

 

So there.

 

A very English afternoon tea

 

 

 

 

Remember the afternoon tea I told you about a while ago? Well, I did go and it was fantastic. I kept on postponing this post because I wanted to give you the recipes of what we had (my friend Fernanda and I) and even if they are not exactly what we ate they come pretty close. We had all sort of afternoon fancies, finger sandwiches, cake and, of course, the quintessential English afternoon tea must: scones with jam and clotted cream.

 

 

 

 

 

Summer berry tartlets – from Afternoon tea by Susannah Blake

makes 12 

 

3 tbsp. ground almonds

100g plain flour

1 tbsp. caster sugar

50g butter, chilled and diced

2 tbsp. water

80ml crème fraîche

1 ½-2 tbsp. good quality lemon curd

200g summer berries, such as strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and redcurrants

icing sugar, to dust (optional)

a 6.5 cm biscuit cutter

a 12-hole tartlet tin, greased

 

Put the almonds, flour and caster sugar in a food processor and pulse to combine. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. With the motor running, gradually add the water until the mixture comes together into a dough. If necessary, add a drizzle more water. Press into a ball, wrap in clingfilm and chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

 

Roll out the pastry thinly on a lightly floured surface and cut out rounds with the biscuit cutter, pressing the trimmings together to make more rounds. Press the rounds into the prepared tartlet tin and prick the bases with a fork. Bake in a preheated oven at 190°C (375°F) Gas 5 for about 12 minutes until crisp and golden. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

 

To serve, fold together the crème fraîche and lemon curd in a small bowl. Put spoonfuls of the mixture in the bottom of each pastry case, top with berries and dust with icing sugar, if liked.

 

Finger Sandwiches – from Afernoon Tea by Susannah Blake

makes 18-24

 

12 thin slices of white or wholemeal bread

butter, at room temperature, for spreading

salt and freshly ground black pepper

 

Parma ham and fig filling:

 

40g thinly sliced Parma ham

1 ripe fig 

½ tsp. balsamic vinegar

½ tsp. olive oil

a handful of rocket leaves

 

Egg and cress filling

 

2 tbsp. good-quality mayonnaise

½ tsp. grated lemon zest

2 hard-boiled eggs, cooled, peeled and chopped

a handful of cress

 

Stilton and pear filling

 

50g Stilton cheese, thinly sliced

1 pear

 

To make the Parma ham and fig sandwiches, thinly butter 4 slices of bread and fold the ham on top of 2 of them. Cut the fig into thin wedges, remove and discard the skin, then arrange the wedges on top of the ham. Whisk the vinegar and olive oil together in a small bowl, season with salt and pepper and drizzle over the fig. Scatter rocket leaves on top, then top with the remaining slices of buttered bread. 

To cut the sandwiches, lay your hand on top of the sandwich and press down gently. Using a serrated knife in a gentle sawing motion, cut off the crusts. Next, cut the sandwich diagonally into quarters or lengthways into 3 fingers.

 

To make the egg and cress sandwiches, thinly butter 4 slices of bread. Combine the mayonnaise and lemon zest and season with black pepper. Add the hard-boiled eggs and fold together.

Divide the mixture between 2 slices of the buttered bread and spread out evenly. Top with cress and the remaining slices of buttered bread, then cut as described above.

 

To make the Stilton and pear sandwiches, thinly butter 4 slices of bread. Arrange the Stilton over 2 slices of the buttered bread. Slice the pear into thin wedges, remove and discard the core, then arrange on top of the cheese. Season with black pepper, then top with the remaining slices of buttered bread and cut as described above.

 

 

Ritz sandwiches – adapted from The London Café Book 2

 

 

Smoked salmon sandwiches

Brown bread

Lemon butter

Smoked salmon

 

Cucumber sandwiches

Spinach bread

Dill butter

Thinly sliced cucumber, seasoned with pepper

 

Ham sandwiches

Tomato bread

Sundried tomato butter

Thinly sliced ham

 

Cream cheese sandwiches

Caraway bread

Cream cheese

Finely snipped chives

 

Egg sandwiches

White bread

Mayonnaise

Hard-boiled eggs, mashed

 

To make the perfect finger sandwiches, slice the bread lengthways, remove the crust and straighten the edges. Make up the large rectangular sandwiches with the ingredients above, then cut them into eight equal fingers.

Arrange one of each type of the five different sandwiches in a ‘raft’, to be served to each person. Continue to serve rafts of sandwiches until everyone is full.

 

 

 

Scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam – from Afternoon Tea by Susannah Blake

 

makes 10-12 

 

225g self-raising flour

1 tsp. baking powder

2 tbsp. caster sugar

50g unsalted butter, chilled and diced

1 egg

75ml milk

 

to serve:

clotted cream

good-quality strawberry jam

 

a 4-5 or 5-cm biscuit cutter

a baking sheet, greased

 

Put the flour, baking powder and sugar in a food processor and pulse to combine. Add the butter and process for about 20 seconds until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Transfer to a large bowl and make a well in the centre.

Beat together the egg and milk in another bowl, reserving 1 tablespoon of the mixture in a separate bowl. Pour most of the remaining liquid into the flour mixture and bring together into a soft dough using a fork. If there are still dry crumbs, add a little more of the liquid. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead briefly until smooth. Work in a little more flour if the mixture is sticky. Gently pat or roll out the dough to about 2.5 cm thick and cut out rounds using the biscuit cutter, pressing the trimmings together to make more scones.

Arrange the scones on the prepared baking sheet, spacing them slightly apart, and brush the tops with the reserved egg and milk mixture. Bake in a preheated oven at 220°C (425°F) Gas 7 for about 8 minutes until risen and golden. Transfer to a wire rack to cool slightly. Serve warm with clotted cream and strawberry jam.

 

 

 

 

 

Bombs Away

 

After many adventures in the kitchen of Westminster College which included exploding roly polies and Pithiviers on the run, we finally got on to make something worth of the name bomb: profiteroles which, in Argentina, are called little cream bombs.

 

 

 

 

To make them, you have to start by making a pâte à choux which you can then use to make small profiteroles or a big ring for the Paris Brest for example.

Contrary to what you might read in countless cookery books, these gorgeous-looking profiteroles are NOT easy to make. I suppose it’s not that bad when you’re using an electric whisker but when you’re doing it all by hand, man that’s a whole other story. I will not be making them like this again unless I am at gunpoint or I am asked to do them for a test at college in which case I will not have a choice in the matter.

 

 

Pâte à choux  (basic recipe) adapted from Técnicas  y recetas básicas by Blanca Cotta

 

Ingredients:

 

Water, 1 cup

Flour, 1 cup

Salt, a pinch

Butter, 70g (o margarine)

Eggs, 4

 

How to make:

 

1.      Place the water, salt and butter in a small pan and bring to the boil.

2.      As soon as it boils, add the flour all in one go, as you stir quickly with a wooden spoon until you have a sticky, uniform mass that comes off the sides of the pan (stir continually over the heat so that it doesn’t burn.)

3.      Take the dough off the heat and put in a bowl. Wait a few seconds so that it loses a bit of heat but do not let it go cold.  

4.      Whisk the eggs and add, little by little, to the paste, stirring well after each addition. If you add the eggs gradually like this instead of whole as the classic recipes would indicate, you will avoid the split and you won’t have to whisk endlessly to bring it back together again.

5.      Once you’ve added all the eggs, put the pâte à choux in a piping bag (remember that as they cook, the profiteroles will double or treble their size) and form little balls on a greased and floured baking tray. Leave some space between the balls. If you don’t have a piping bag, use two teaspoons. They work equally well. Press them down gently with a wet finger.

6.      Bake the bombs in a very hot oven first, until they puff up, and then carry on cooking them in a very low oven, until they are dry and goleen. If you are too impatient and take them out as soon as the bombs puff up… their internal humudity will flat them and you will believe you have flopped. This step is fundamental to dry them out on the inside and to make them keep their shape.

 

Note: It makes a world of difference if you actually spray your bombs as you put them    

          in the oven. That extra steam will help them puff and grow.