Heirloom Christmas Pudding

Look!  It's my first ever little, delicious, Christmas Pudding!

In our family, it has always been one person's task to produce the Christmas Puddings for the remainder.  Now obviously, when we lived in Germany, it was a tad tricky for my Nanna to get a pudding to us for Christmas - so generally, we came back to England for Christmas and got our pudding that way.  However, for the years when we couldn't return to England, my Nanna sent her recipe to my Mum so that she could make the same pudding.  We really aren't sure where Nanna got her recipe from, as she was separated from her parents due to emigration to Canada.  It is possible that she could have asked her Mum for her recipe and received it by post during this time, or alternatively, she could have picked up a recipe from just about anywhere.  Unfortunately, she has been gone these last twenty years or so and we can't ask her.

Nanna's Christmas Pudding recipe, written on Air Mail paper, having been sent to my Mum in Germany.

As the years went by and my Nanna became less able to do the serious arm-work of stirring the puddings, my Mum took on the job.  The recipe remained the same for a number of years, until the awareness of health issues began to make themselves felt in changes to the old familiar recipe.  Things like using a sunflower margarine instead of suet, for instance.  Also, people's tastes began to change and we all agreed that we really didn't like the candied citrus peel, so marmalade began to be used instead.

Mum's trusted slow-cooker recipe

Then the recipe evolved a little further, in that the slow cooker had been introduced and made it so much easier to cook the puddings.  Far better to be able to steam them in the slow cooker, where it was unlikely to run out of water, than on the hob where you had to keep checking the water levels and couldn't leave the process alone for longer than half an hour.

This year, for the first year ever and following my Mum's comments that, last year, the making of the puddings was rather more taxing than ever before, I managed to convince her to hand the mantle over to me.


Doing a quick calculation on my fingers, it seems to me that the original recipe (still in my Nanna's own handwriting from where she sent it to my Mum all those years ago) has to be in excess of 100 years old.  Knowing how - over the years - the recipe has evolved, made me want to add my little adjustment to it.  My additional fingerprint in the ingredients.  I love the thought that the puddings now have all our fingerprints - my Nanna, my Mum and myself - involved in the recipe.

I must admit that I threw all notions of making the puddings healthier, straight out of the window.  Well, you eat Christmas Pudding just once a year (unless you cook one for Easter, which does happen!), so to have a richly indulgent Christmas Pudding is entirely right and proper.

So, my puddings were made with 100% butter.  Changes to the recipe also included adding some Medjool dates - we'd found some at a local greengrocer and I'd been sent some even nicer ones to sample.  They were so juicy and delicious, it just made sense to include them.  I also steeped the fruit in non-alcoholic Ginger cordial from The Dorset Ginger Company before mixing.  This plumped up the fruit and added a lovely warmth to the base pudding flavour.  However, the biggest change to the puddings was that I didn't use flour in the recipe at all.  The mix was made with 100% breadcrumbs, a mix of 60% white bread/40% wholemeal, which made a huge difference to the texture of the puddings.

Now I know how much difference it made, because I made a small tester pudding too!  Well, when it's your first go, it pays to be on the cautious side.

So cute - so yummy!  All glamorous photographs will have to wait until Christmas!

I steamed the puddings individually in the slow cooker, each for 12 hours.  The buttery, spicy juices overflowed slightly as the puddings cooked and the house was filled with gorgeous smells that tantalised in a most promising fashion.

The time came to try the tester pudding and my heart was in my mouth as I turned the ramekin upside down into the bowl.  Would it come out in one piece, would it pour out disgustingly, or would it be like concrete?  No!  The pudding was light textured - definitely not one that would stick your teeth together, as so many of them do.  With juicy fruit, lovely spicing with the warmth from the ginger, the occasional flavour bomb in the shape of a whole cherry which seemed to have sucked up the Guinness stout and spiced rum into its hollow interior, soft prune, sticky date, earthy nuttiness and the richness of butter - it is a triumph.

I cannot begin to tell you, how relieved and happy I am that the puddings have turned out so well.  Perhaps you can imagine!  After all, I had 100 years of successful Christmas Pudding making behind me to live up to.  That's fairly heavy responsibility, for someone about to change the recipe.

So, if you haven't yet made your Christmas Puddings and are looking for a richly indulgent, light textured pud with the wisdom of ages woven through its recipe, you can't go far wrong with this one.

HEIRLOOM CHRISTMAS PUDDING  (makes 2 medium sized puddings - and a tester!)

Ingredients :

450g raisins
225g currants
225g sultanas
200ml ginger cordial with 100ml hot water
50g medjool dates, pitted and sliced into chunks
150g glace cherries, approx half of them sliced in two, the remainder left whole
50g orange marmalade
zest of half a lemon
20g blanched almonds, roughly chopped
20g hazelnuts, roughly chopped
20g walnuts, roughly chopped
50g ground almonds
half a tsp freshly grated nutmeg
half a tsp (generous) ground mixed spice
half a tsp (generous) ground cinnamon
quarter tsp sea salt
65g soft brown sugar
1 (generous) tbsp black treacle
450g softened butter
375g fresh breadcrumbs (60% white/40% wholemeal)
6 large eggs, beaten
4 tbsp spiced rum
170ml (approx) Guinness Foreign Extra Stout.

Method :

1.  Place the raisins, currants and sultanas into a very large bowl.  Mix the ginger cordial with the hot water and pour over the fruit.  Cover with cling film and leave for 30 minutes in a warm room.

2.  Uncover the fruit and give them a stir.   Next, add the dates, cherries, lemon zest, marmalade, almonds (both chopped and ground), walnuts, hazelnuts, nutmeg, mixed spice, cinnamon and salt.  Give everything a good stir to mix the spices through evenly.

3.  Next, add the soft brown sugar and the treacle and stir again, until the treacle has been mixed through thoroughly.

4.  Add the softened butter.  Put your spoon to one side, make sure your hands are spotlessly clean, your sleeves are rolled up - and scrunch the butter into the fruit mixture with your fingers.  Once it is evenly spread, add one third of the breadcrumbs and scrunch again to incorporate them into the mix.  Repeat until all the breadcrumbs are included and the butter is evenly spread.

5.  Add the beaten eggs.  You can go back to using a spoon if you like - but I found using my hands to be so much easier, as you can feel the texture of the mix.  Continue to mix until the eggs are completely combined.

6.  Add the rum and half the stout.  Stir well to combine.  Now how much of the remainder of the stout you include, depends entirely upon how wet the mix is by now.  The end result you are after, is thick enough to clump together on a spoon, but wet enough to be able to drop easily from the spoon, if turned.   So continue to add the stout until the correct texture has been reached.

7.  Using a little additional butter, grease your two pudding basins liberally - and a tester ramekin if you're using one.

8.  Divide the mixture between the two basins, pressing down as you go, to make sure they are completely full.   Try to leave a quarter of an inch (at least) lip around the top of the basin, to allow for expansion during cooking.

9.  Take a square of greaseproof paper and fold a pleat into the centre.  Place the pleat over the middle of the basin and fold the sides roughly over the edges.

10.  Fold a doubled piece of silver foil with a pleat and place this over the greaseproof, smoothing it down over the sides.

Words fail - see picture!

11.  Take a piece of string and lay it across the top of the pleat, making sure you have enough spare to tie it either side - this will form a handle which will make removing the basin from the slow cooker, a lot easier.

12.  Place a large piece of string below the lip of the basin and knot it, pulling tight so that the greaseproof and foil are held tightly to the basin and the single piece of string has either end caught under the tightening string.  Knot it securely.

13.  Tie the ends of the "handle" to the tightening string, remembering to leave room to get a finger underneath!

14.  You should now have a made Christmas Pudding, all ready to go into the slow cooker for the next 12 hours.  The tester pudding will need to have something to sit on in the cooker, to prevent it from submerging and it can be cooked alongside one of the larger puddings.  The water level needs to be a good third of the way up the larger pudding basin - and start off with boiling water, as this saves the slow cooker from having to do the heating of it.

Before being cooked, the puddings will last for a few days in the fridge.  However, once cooked, remove the greaseproof/silver foil combo and replace with a clean version.  The pudding can now be kept in a cool, dark place for as long as you need it to be.  I have known puddings be left for some 2 years or more and still come out looking and tasting perfect.

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Slow cooked Cumberland beef stew with donkey carrots

When I first set out to make this meal, it was supposed to be a crispy topped Cumberland pie.  However, I ran out of puff part way through it - and discovered how yummy just the beef part of the recipe could be on its own.

As with a lot of my recipes these days, this one has taken bits from several different recipes.  However, the original inspiration came from the BBC Good Food website and their Crispy topped Cumberland pie.

The original version was made with feather blade beef, however I opted to use our favourite shin of beef because a) I was going to be slow-cooking it and b) the flavour of beef shin is amazing.  However, this plan back-fired on me this time around - as you'll discover later.

I liked the idea of the sliced potatoes on top, along with the baked to crispiness cheese coating.  Cheddar always goes so well with beef, they are a real comfort food pairing.  I was a bit nervous about the sliced potatoes, however, as I've not had a lot of luck with them in the past.  They either wind up still hard (not long enough in the oven) or turn black and unappetising looking (wrong type of potato, left too long before baking).  You see, I know what I did wrong in the past - so I was determined not to commit any of these crimes this time around.  Hubby always greets the idea of sliced potato on top of a savoury dish with great scepticism, so I not only had my own failures to beat, I had his expectations to exceed too.

Swimming around happily

When it got closer to the time when I would make the transfer from the slow cooker to the oven, I think I had got myself so wound up over the potatoes failing (again), that I just opted for the easier route and didn't bother.

The marriage of beef and cheese is what makes a "Cumberland" something, Cumberland.  So, rather than miss the whole point of the recipe, I remembered seeing Jamie Oliver adding some grated cheese to a beef casserole - and did the same.  It was very definitely counter-intuitive to be grating cheddar into a beef casserole, but for all that it didn't taste obviously of cheddar cheese, it very definitely made a difference in both flavour and texture.

I must pause here and comment on the carrots.  You see, carrots have such a fundamental part to play in British cooking.  They appear on so many plates over the course of a lifetime's meals, yet rarely do you see anyone doing anything exciting with them (apart from the occasional carrot cake and maybe a carrot & coriander soup).  Now, I'm not saying that adding them to this stew was exciting, but if we could just have a little bit of appreciation here for the 'umble carrot in all its many forms, I think it would be appropriate.  The carrots used in this stew were the big fat donkey carrots.  None of your thin, springtime carrots, or your fancy Chantenay carrots.  Oh no.  What you need are big, fat, coarse carrots that are going to stand being cooked for a long time and have loads of sweetness to impart.

I love the name "donkey carrots" and have been wracking my brains to try and remember where I first heard the term.  It was either care of Raymond Blanc on his "Kitchen Secrets" programme - he is so funny in this programme! - or with Michael Caines during his carrot episode of the Great British Food Revival.  Either way, "donkey carrot" just suits this great big honking lump of carrotiness perfectly - and "donkey carrots" they shall be, for me, in future.  (I can remember when I owned horses and a donkey, buying a 25kg bag of just these type of carrots, for their feed!  More than one of them went home with me and wound up on my plate!).

Now, what was the end result like, I hear you ask?  Well, I loved it, son & heir loved it but hubby - oddly - couldn't take the texture of the beef shin.

See what I mean by connective tissue?  Can't trim it all out!

I'm really not sure what the difference was, as we've had and eaten beef shin on many other occasions and he hasn't experienced the same problem, plus I didn't notice any difference in the meat as I was trimming it up.  Trimming up beef shin is always a labour of love, so I very definitely went over it with a fine toothcomb for yukky fat and globby bits.  Shin of beef contains a lot of connective tissue, which during the course of slow cooking melts into the gravy and gives it a very rich, almost glutinous texture.  It makes me wonder if the addition of the cheese to the gravy didn't just push the texture over the edge of palatable for hubby, as he really is so terribly sensitive to soft textures in food.

For me, the cheese made the gravy incredibly savoury, rich and unctuous along with giving it a certain indefinable and very pleasant something.  I really liked the carrot and the combination of onions and celery had just melted away into the gravy.  I used my favourite Knorr Rich Beef Stock Pot to provide a good amount of additional "oomph!" to the gravy base - they really are indispensable to me, now.

That oddly coloured carrot on the right, is a purple carrot!

So all in all, I'd very definitely do this recipe again - but I think I'd choose something like Brisket of beef, or perhaps Silverside (depending on the price!), both of which have far less connective tissue and thus would make it palatable for hubby.  After all, there's no point spending all that time trimming, cooking and serving if he can't eat it!

SLOW COOKED CUMBERLAND STEW WITH DONKEY CARROTS   (feeds 4)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp rapeseed oil
6-700g beef brisket (or braising cut of your choice)
2 big donkey carrots, peeled and chopped into chunky pieces
2 onions, chopped
2 celery sticks, chopped
3 bay leaves
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 Knorr Really Beefy Stock Pot (or a beef stock cube)
1 tsp Bovril
half a tsp of freshly ground black pepper
500ml hot water
1 tbsp softened butter
2 tbsp plain flour
a large handful of grated mature cheddar cheese.

Method :

1.  Heat the oil in a frying pan until really quite hot.  Add the beef - you may need to do this bit in stages, so as not to overcrowd the pan - and sear until you have a good dark golden brown colour on at least two sides.  Decant into the slow cooker with a slotted spoon and turn it to low, making sure to replace the lid.

2.  Add the carrots to the slow cooker and replace the lid.

3.  Add the onion to the frying pan (you may need a touch more oil) and cook gently for 5-6 minutes until softened, transparent and just beginning to take on colour.

4.  Add the celery and continue to cook for another 2-3 minutes.

5.  Add the bay leaves, tomato puree, tomato ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, stock pot (or stock cube, if using), Bovril, pepper and water and stir gently to combine as it heats through.

6.  In a small dish, mix the butter and flour together.  Remove the frying pan from the heat and add a teaspoonful of the flour mixture to the gravy.  Stir well to ensure it mixes in without forming lumps.  Continue until you have the consistency you prefer - less flour mix for thinner, more flour mix for thicker.

7.  Return the pan to the heat and stir until properly thickened.

8.  Decant into the slow cooker.  Replace the lid and leave to cook for the next 8-10 hours.

9.  Just prior to serving, remove the lid and using the slotted spoon, move the meat to one side of the slow cooker.

10.  Add the grated cheddar to the non-meat side and stir it gently into the gravy.  Once melted, stir the meat back in to the cheesy gravy.

Serve.

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This week's menu planning post - powered by Jelly Babies

Red Plum & Pomegranate Clafouti

I started this post yesterday and failed miserably, to the point of deleting it and starting again, so goodness knows how I'll get on today.

I know!  I'll have a jelly baby - that might help.  Jelly babies help in all kinds of situations where everything else has failed.

I didn't write up last week's menu plan because, well, I thought it was unlikely that any of it would be worth blogging.  However, it just goes to show that once you start blogging, it is very hard to stop.

We were extremely busy last week, ferrying son & heir to his various musical commitments - he was singing with the school choir in the evenings as well as his normal bass guitar lessons and choir rehearsals.  For that reason along with the fact that I've got no end of unblogged recipes waiting to go, I thought we could have a week off from making bloggable recipes.

Jelly babies - small delicious saviours of blog posts

It seems as though that didn't stop us from posting photographs of several of the yummier meals to the Rhubarb & Ginger Facebook page, nor did it stop me from making a Plum & Pomegranate Clafouti, which will appear on the blog some time in the future.

This week should (note the "should") be a lot quieter, so we're back with a menu plan which consists of five bloggable recipes - not counting anything we might encounter on the way!

So, what's for dinner this week then?

Tues : Cheddar stuffed chicken with rice, peas & asparagus

Weds : Creole chicken with rice

Thurs : Woodman's Cassoulet

Fri : Fish & chips

Sat : Pesto whiting with minted pearl potatoes, cherry tomatoes & courgette ribbons

Sun : Spanish meatballs and rice

Mon : Pasties, hash browns & baked beans.

Add to that the Christmas Puddings - for which I have now developed a recipe, incorporating my Nanna's old recipe, my Mum's not-so-old recipe and snippets of recipes from the internet.

I'm aiming to make them on Thursday during the day, then I can cook them in the slow cooker for 12 hours each, finishing some time on Friday.  Hopefully, then I can take the one for my brother's family over with us when we take my Dad's birthday present, at the weekend.  He can either pick it up from there, or they can drop it in when they're passing.  Job done.

Now, this Cheddar stuffed chicken is a bit more interesting than just chicken stuffed with cheddar cheese.  You do, indeed, stuff your chicken breast with small pieces of cheddar, but you also make a pretty darned yummy sauce involving apples, sage, bacon and cream.

The recipe originated with Recipe Girl and the minute I saw it, I knew it would be a winner.  The sheer fact that it made my mouth water was a bit of a giveaway!  So that one is going on the blog very soon.

Might look like this ...

Wednesday's Creole Chicken with rice is one of hubby's creations.  I have never had any creole or cajun food that I've really liked - so he's up against it with this one!  I have always found the spices to be almost coarse in flavour, really quite harsh, so he's going to attempt to put a chicken dish together that is spiced Creole-style, but in a way that I'll like it.  He's going to be using yellow capsicum pepper, pineapple, tomatoes, mushrooms and okra - all of which I really like - along with the chicken, so I'm hopeful.

Thursday's Woodman's Cassoulet is a "made up on the spot" recipe that is designed to make use of two pork steaks that have been roosting in the freezer.  Along with the steak, I'll be using some Polish Hunter's Sausage and two types of bean in a tomato-based sauce with large cheesy croutons on top - much like you get on French Onion soup.  Fingers crossed, it should be rich, thick and tasty - and contain all the vegetables in the one pot.

Friday is fish & chip day.  Well, I think we deserve a day off!

Hubby's back in the kitchen on Saturday, buoyed by his success with the Baked Cod dish he created recently, he's going to be tackling some Whiting fillets.

Quite cod-like, I understand

We heard someone knocking on the door one evening and, upon investigation, discovered our neighbour Frank - brandishing two packs of fresh Whiting fillets.  He'd been out fishing that day and they were surplus to requirements, so they very kindly sent them our way!  Yum!

Hubby's planning on combining them with a green pesto and baking some cherry tomatoes to go with little minted pearl potatoes and some courgette ribbons in a vinaigrette.  It all sounds very acceptable indeed.

Sunday's Spanish Meatballs were inspired by a photograph posted to the "Good Food - Good People" Facebook page.  One of the chaps there had gone to a tapas bar, where one of the dishes served were these amazing-looking meatballs in a rich tomato sauce.  The look of them just (again) made my mouth water and I resolved to make some very soon.

So, when hubby mentioned that we had a pack and a half of mince in the freezer - immediately I thought of these meatballs.  I knew that one pack wouldn't be enough - so the added bonus of a half pack that was looking for a home just clinched the deal.

Albondigas (apparently) - except I want a thicker sauce

I've put rice on the menu to go with these meatballs, but I'm pondering on changing that to a spicy couscous.  Watch this space!

Well, after all that creativity in action, a day of a simple pasty, hash browns and baked beans dinner seems perfectly in order.  We're hoping to get three of the big Cornish Pasties from Rowe's the bakers some time during the day.  I had one for an emergency lunch the other day and it was so fabulous, that it'd be well worth the effort of getting them!

Oh look - I'm at the end of the post!  Who'd have thought that Jelly Babies would be so good at clearing a touch of writer's block.  I only managed to eat five ....

Five of these?  Well, I'd give it a go .... lol

Baked cod on pea puree with beurre blanc sauce

Now here's something a little bit different for Jenny Eatwell's Rhubarb & Ginger - a fish dish!

We really enjoy eating fish.  Let me say that straight away.  However (and you knew one of those was coming, didn't you?), we just don't get the opportunity very often.  Which is completely ridiculous, considering that a) we live 2 minutes (literally) from the sea and b) we'll give a go to pretty much anything that came out of it!

Hubby has a few issues with river fish - he doesn't like the muddy flavour of River Cobbler, for instance.  Bottom feeders aren't his bag, at all.

However, if we could only find a supplier of affordable sea fish - you'd see it on the blog far more often than you do.

So, if anyone out there in blog-readership-land knows of a reliable and affordable fishmongler (both in the Bournemouth/Poole area and online - I don't mind either or both), let me know.

The only fishmonglers I've found locally, are in the "monied" areas of town and so their prices are astronomical.  The only one who isn't, is fabled as not selling truly fresh fish - so he's a non-starter.

It really annoys me that we live so close to the sea, yet cannot source fresh fish unless we go to the supermarket - and then it's likely to have been previously frozen.  I don't want supermarket fish - I want fish that's come straight off the boat!  Grrrrr!

Having said that, I now have to admit that the fish we used here was from our local Asda.  It was on special offer and looked particularly nice.  In fact, hubby was planning to make some fish cakes with it, but came to the conclusion that it would be criminal to munch up such a beautiful piece of fish - so this was what we wound up with.

I reckon he was quite right!

Anyway, I'll hand over to hubby, to talk you through the recipe :

See that photo up there?  Looks nice doesn't it?  Maybe even classy.  Pea puree, buerre blanc sauce, blimey!  Well, let me tell you a little secret - it's easy.  Almost unbelievably easy, and the results, well, just ask the lovely Ms Eatwell or the infamously hard to please, son and heir.  Oh, and by the way, a little veggie chopping aside, this whole dish takes only 25 minutes to prepare - honest!

The method described for for the buerre blanc sauce is the basic method.  There are probably more variations than you can shake a pointy baguette at.  For instance, rosemary, thyme and tarragon would transform it into a perfect sauce for chicken.

19 April 2013 : Every week when we do the menu plan for the coming week, we ask son & heir whether he has any special requests.  For the last four or five weeks, he's been asking for this cod on pea puree with buerre blanc sauce.  Now unfortunately, it's not that easy to achieve as the situation hasn't changed much with regard to fishmonglers over here (I have heard of one possibility, but have yet to get over there when they are open.  We've been twice (so far) and they've been shut both times - so we're not doing very well).  Aaaanyway, we waited until we could afford it - Asda had some nice cod fillets in again and we swooped upon them quickly.
 

Nothing has changed - except the Dill .... lol

Hubby made the recipe as per his instructions below (which he was glad of, because he'd forgotten how to do parts of it, it'd been so long!) but made a couple of changes to the buerre blanc sauce.  In the first instalment, he'd used salted butter but hadn't felt that was quite right, so used unsalted this time.  I have to admit, the buerre blanc was so much smoother and utterly delightful, so he obviously was quite right about it.  He also reduced the cream quantity to one tablespoonful, but added a little tarragon to the sauce at the very end, which was a very good addition that went really well with the pea puree.  Also, who knew that buerre blanc is so scrumptious on plain steamed carrots?  ~shrug~  Amazing.

I can understand why son & heir loves this dish so much.  The fish is just such a treat - to have large flakes of white fish on your fork, with your own choice of accompaniment from the plate, is something that doesn't happen often.  Usually, our fish is in a mungle with some other ingredients - such as Tuna Pasta Bake, or Kedgeree - all of which are perfectly nice, but they just don't compare with this cod dish.  The message is clear, therefore - if you can, when you can, have a go at this.  You won't regret it.

BAKED COD ON PEA PUREE WITH BEURRE BLANC SAUCE    (serves 3)

Ingredients :

150g frozen peas
3-5 fresh mint leaves (depending on how big they are)
50ml double cream
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp plus 25ml lemon juice
500ml good fish stock  (I used Essential Cuisine's fabulous fish stock powder)
6 & 4 whole black peppercorns
3 bay leaves
600g unsmoked cod (or other firm fleshed fish)
a small bunch of fresh dill
100ml white wine
2 banana shallots, very finely diced
150-175g cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes.

Method  :

For the Pea Puree

Place the frozen peas and a splash of water into a high sided bowl and microwave for five minutes.  Drain the peas and then return to the bowl along with the mint leaves.  Puree the peas using a hand blender, adding a tiny amount of double cream (or milk) until the desired consistency is reached.  Season to taste with salt, pepper and up to 1 tsp lemon juice if needed.  Cover the bowl and set aside to stay warm.

For the fish

Pour 300ml of the fish stock into a deep roasting dish and add a few peppercorns, and two of the bay leaves.  Lay the fish into the stock, adding more stock to almost cover the fish. Sprinkle the fish with dill fronds and then place the dish into an oven, pre-heated to 325degF/170degC/Gas 3 for 20 minutes.  This cooking time is recommended for chunky cod fillets but may need to be reduced for thinner pieces of fish.
 
For the buerre blanc sauce

1.  Place the white wine and lemon juice (white wine vinegar can be substituted) in a saucepan over a high heat.  Add the shallots, the remaining bay leaf and a few whole peppercorns and bring to a fast boil.  The liquids in the pan need to be reduced by about three quarters or until they become syrupy.

2.  Add the remaining 30ml of double cream to the pan and continue to cook and stir on a high heat until the emulsion reaches coating consistency.  Remove the pan from the heat and reduce the heat to very low.

3.  Now add a cube of cold butter to the pan, keeping it off the heat.  Whisk until the cube of butter has almost dissolved before adding the next cube.  Repeat this process for the rest of the butter, returning the pan to the heat when the butter's melting slows down.  This process is a critical one.  The sauce must not be allowed to get hotter than about 60degC otherwise it will split.  This is why the cubes of butter must be cold when added.  Conversely, the sauce must not be allowed to cool too much, so returning the pan to a low heat every so often is essential to warm it back up.  Continue this process, whisking continuously, until the sauce is glossy and reaches the consistency that you require. It can then be left in a warm pan, taking care not to let it come to the boil. 

4.  Season to taste and add a little lemon juice if the sauce tastes at all 'flat'.  The sauce can be served as it is or, for a more refined finish, can be passed through a fine sieve to remove the shallots and peppercorns.

To serve

Smooth as much or as little pea puree as required onto a warmed plate.  Place a fillet of drained fish on top of the puree and serve with a selection of steamed vegetables.  Pour a generous amount of the buerre blanc sauce over the fish and vegetables and serve with a well chilled, crisp white wine.


Printable version

Chicken Paprikash - easier than I thought!

I have made various paprika chicken dishes over the years, with - it has to be said - a mixture of success and failure.  As a result, I've become a bit nervous of the types of recipe that involve tomatoes (particularly tinned), chicken and paprika.

However, just lately I've seen a few recipes for Chicken Paprikash float past my consciousness and had found myself being drawn in to the idea once again.  After all, my paprika pork recipes seem to be successful, so there really was no reason why a chicken version wouldn't work.

Particularly now I've the right paprika.

Now, because nobody tells you - I shall pass on the wisdom of my years of getting it wrong.  

It seems as though buying paprika is one of those things that is fraught with misadventure.  In the past, I've had your usual supermarket-gleaned small pots of paprika, graduating to a small pot of smoked paprika.  They were okay - but I seemed to be missing out on the rich roasty toasty flavours that I see reported in food magazines and spoken of on food t.v.  So I began to consider (we're going back a number of years here) whether my little pots of paprika were really quite up to the job - and maybe there was a more "authentic" type of paprika that offered the flavours I was missing.

We kept our eyes open for different types and began to see recipes requesting the use of "sweet" and "hot" paprika.  Aha!  So there was different types available!  Why does nobody tell you that?  Why did it take me a number of years to establish that there are as many types of paprika in the world as there are recipes?  Well, that's the way it seems - I suspect there may be a few more recipes than types of paprika, in reality.  Only a few, mind.

So our first score was with a tin of smoked paprika.  This was before I realised that there was such an animal as a "sweet smoked" paprika.  I also didn't notice that there was a heat rating on the tin.  Ours was the hottest, at 3 chillies.  So that explained why, when I used three teaspoonfuls of paprika in a recipe once, it tasted appalling.  You see?  Nobody tells you these things.

After a period of some months spent looking, we eventually sourced some of the sweet smoked paprika - and tranquillity was once more restored in our recipes.

Now, note please that I said "tin".  If your paprika doesn't come in a tin, unless you've bought it on the continent somewhere, I suspect that you're being short changed in your paprika use.  So, if you too have some little jars of paprika quaking nervously in your spice cupboard, I suggest you give them a ceremonial heave-ho into the bin and source some La Chinata Paprika - but watch out for the chilli rating, to establish which one you've got!

So anyway, I've digressed.

I had been looking at the various recipes that floated past my consciousness and picking out the bits that I liked, rejecting the bits that we wouldn't like and pondering over the gaps.

It seems as though Chicken Paprikash is a particularly American recipe - although I may be wrong in that.  (NOTE!  See comment at the end of this posting, regarding the origins of Paprikash!).  I gather that there are two ways of eating it - one where the sour cream is included in the recipe and the other where you eat it with sour cream alongside.  I decided to go with the "sour cream alongside" version, although I will admit to hedging my bets with regard to that until it was almost ready to serve.  I reckoned that if the paprika or tomato was too strong, I'd just use the cream to calm it all down a bit.

As it was, the recipe - my version of the recipe - came together remarkably easily and didn't need calming down at all.  It's wonderful when you've got the right ingredients to begin with - god bless those little tins of paprika.

One of hubby's favourite vegetables is the sweet pepper (capsicum pepper) and so he was very happy to have both red and green versions in evidence.  The tomato cooked down beautifully and didn't become so acidic that it made the whole thing uncomfortable to eat and even the chilli flakes blended very happily into the whole, leaving their warmth and tangy spiciness as evidence of their presence.

I was really very pleased with the way this one turned out - it could so easily have degenerated into a disaster, but instead was a resounding success.

23 January 2018

I've just been contacted by my Hungarian friend Kate, who tells me the following :

"Chicken paprikash is a Hungarian dish. And there is no other "paprikash" dish we have (aka pork, etc). And what makes it "paprikash" is the authentic proper Hungarian paprika you use. Not smoked. Never smoked. (This is not a criticism! It is just a misconception peeps have that in Hungary we have smoked paprika. We don't. That is a Spanish thing. Hungarian paprika is not smoked. Ever.)

Anyway, I digress... :-) the other thing that really caught my eyes was chicken breast as meat. No. Nope. No how, not ever, nuh-huh!!! 😁😁😁 Chicken paprikash is traditionally made with either a combo of thighs and drums, or legs, or just thighs. Dark meat is where it's at!!"

❤"  
So there we are then!  The wrong end of the stick has been duly grasped and waved around, then corrected.  LOL  Hence, what we have here is very much "my version" of a true Paprikash.

CHICKEN PAPRIKASH   (feeds 3)

Ingredients :

2 tbsp rapeseed oil
2 onions, peeled and finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
3 skinless, boneless chicken breasts cut into large chunks

1½ tsp dried oregano

1½ tsp sweet smoked paprika

½ tsp hot smoked paprika

½ tsp finely ground black pepper

pinch of sea salt

400ml can of chopped tomatoes

2 heaped tsp of tomato puree

a pinch of red chilli flakes

1 tsp sugar

1 yellow capsicum pepper, cored, de-seeded and chopped into large chunks

1 green capsicum pepper, cored, de-seeded and chopped into large chunks

100ml soured cream.

Method :

1.  In a large bowl, place the chicken chunks, the oregano, both types of paprika, black pepper and sea salt, plus half the garlic.  Stir to coat the chicken in the spices and leave to one side.

2.  To a deep wok or frying pan, add the rapeseed oil and the onions.  Fry on a moderate heat for 5 minutes or so, until the onion is transparent, softened and turning golden.

3.  Add the garlic and fry for another minute or so, stirring.

4.  Remove the onions and garlic onto a plate with a slotted spoon.

5.  Increase the heat under the frying pan and add a little more rapeseed oil, if necessary.

6.  Once the pan is very hot, add the chicken chunks and fry until caramelised on two sides.

7.  Reduce the heat to moderate, and add the tinned tomatoes, the tomato puree, chilli flakes, sugar and capsicum pieces, along with the onion/garlic mixture.  Mix well to amalgamate and cover with a lid (or a baking tray, in my case!).  Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

8.  Once the capsicum is tender and the chicken is cooked through, remove from the heat and add two thirds of the soured cream.  Stir through.

9.  Serve with white rice and a dollop of soured cream on the side.

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Goat's cheese, leek & hazelnut super-smart tart!

Now there are some tarts that are nice but dull - and some tarts that are surprisingly delicious.  This is one of the latter.

I liked the idea of this tart for more than one reason.

First of all, I really like leeks - they're the only one of the onion family that I can eat without experiencing some severe regret in the tummy department, later on.  I particularly like the way they are so adaptable and can be used in so many different ways.  My favourite leek recipe is the Tave Me Presh or Baked Mince with Leeks.  If you haven't tried this recipe yet, do give it a go.  Trust me, it's fabulous.

Goat's cheese always gets a thumbs up from me.  There was a time when I found goat's cheese to be entirely too "goaty" for comfort.  It always tasted wonderful, but I just couldn't get past the smell.  It always brought back memories of Harvey - a goat-I-once-knew - and his stinky beard.  ~shudder~  Why boy goats think it's sexy to pee on their own faces (which could be defined as a talent, I suppose), God only knows.

These days, I seem to have been able to get past the Eau de Harvey and into the lovely creamy texture and fresh flavour of goat's cheese.  So I could imagine how the creamy goat's cheese would go so well with buttery leeks.

The tips of the goat's cheese caught a tiny bit - but it certainly didn't mar the flavour!

Now the addition of hazelnuts to the equation is a new one - and jolly interesting, I thought.  I have to be careful over the use of nuts in my cooking, as hubby has some tooth issues and we don't want him to lose one of them on a surprise nut.  The problem was easily dealt with, as the nuts are sprinkled on top of the tart filling as opposed to being mixed in.  I simply sprinkled hazelnuts over three quarters of the tart - and sprinkled a little red chilli on hubby's portion.  Where there's a will, there's a way!

It may seem ridiculous to be concerning one's self over the fat involved in pastry, when the filling of the tart includes full fat creme fraiche and full fat goat's cheese.  However, as the old lady said as she wee'd in the sea - every little helps.  Because this tart uses filo pastry sheets to build up its pie crust, you can at least consider that a certain amount of fat has been reduced.  Aha, yes, I hear you thinking "but, surely you need to brush the filo pastry with melted butter?".  No - you don't.  I know, it goes against all previously received wisdom, but you just lay the pastry sheets down - and fill them up with filling, then bake.  Don't ask me why or how, but it works.

I gave the egg mixture a jolly good whisking before pouring into the pastry and I think it was worth doing so, as the filling rose beautifully.  It was light and fluffy - almost souffle-like, although I hadn't taken the eggs that far.  All in all, it made for a lovely light, fluffy forkful of deliciousness.

I served the tart with a simple salad made with a watercress/lambs lettuce/rocket combination of salad leaves and a diced avocado.  Just think of all the lovely nutrients we gained from that combination.  I always feel healthier just thinking about eating watercress and avocado, never mind actually doing it!

I also made some mini Paprika Roast Potatoes, which went extremely well with the whole combination.  They aren't so bad as you might think, either, as you simply dice the potato then toss it in a tablespoonful of rapeseed oil (which has health benefits all on its own), a pinch of salt and pepper and 1 tsp of sweet smoked paprika.  Roast in a hot oven (I put them on the rack above the tart, which was cooking at 180degF) for some 45 minutes, remembering to give them a toss around half way through and you're done.

Obviously, hubby knew that the tart was vegetarian - but I seriously doubt that son & heir even gave it a moment's thought that he had no meat on his plate.  Now that's the kind of meat-free meal that makes you want to serve another! 

With the salad and the roast paprika potatoes, it made for a satisfying meal

GOAT'S CHEESE, LEEK & HAZELNUT TART   (feeds 3-5)

Ingredients :

4 large filo pastry sheets, halved
a knob of butter
1 leek, trimmed, quartered lengthways and sliced finely
1 tsp Dijon mustard
250g creme fraiche d'isigny (or low fat creme fraiche if you must)
2 medium eggs
140g soft goat's cheese
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
25g toasted hazelnuts, chopped.

Method :

1.  Pre-heat your oven to 180degC/350degF/Gas 4.

2.  Taking one half sheet of filo pastry at a time, lay it into the bottom of a 23cm quiche dish or loose bottomed tart tin.  Without brushing with oil, lay the next one at an angle to the first - and so on - until the sheets have covered the tin and formed a base for the tart, with no gaps for leaks and with the edges draped over the sides of the tin.

3.  Heat the knob of butter in a frying pan and once melted, add the leek pieces.  Cook on a gentle heat until softened but not browned at all.  Set aside to cool slightly.

4.  In a large bowl, whisk together the mustard, creme fraiche, eggs and a third of the goat's cheese.

5.  Add the leeks and stir through, including some seasoning.

6.  Pour the egg mixture into the flan case and add pieces of the remainder of the goat's cheese, distributing them evenly.

7.  Sprinkle over the hazelnuts and fold in the overhanging pieces of filo pastry.  Brush these with a little oil.

8.  Bake the tart for some 25-30 minutes, until the filling is risen and golden, with just a little jiggle left in the centre.

9.  Allow to cool in the tin for some 10 minutes or so, then remove and cool until just warm.

Serve with some mini paprika roast potatoes and a salad of watercress, rocket & spinach with avocado.

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