Shepherd's pie with horseradish mash

Tessa made the most delicious shepherd's pie for dinner - tasty mince with a horseradish-tinged mash. You don't need me to tell you how to make mince, except to say that it's lamb for a shepherd's pie, beef for a cottage pie. Tessa uses more flour than I do, which makes a good thick sauce.

Horseradish mash

This amount will cover about 1.5kg of mince made with plenty of vegetables and put into a large shallow dish (say, 35cm x 25 x 5). It's enough for 10.

1.5kg floury potatoes, peeled and chunked
50g butter
3/4 jar creamed horseradish (around 120ml)
a little milk
100g grated Cheddar sprinkle over the top of the pie

When the potatoes are cooked, mash them with the butter until they're smooth (Tessa used a ricer to be sure there were no lumps). Beat in the horseradish and enough milk to give the mash a soft consistency for spreading.


When the pie is assembled, it needs about half an hour in a hot oven (180C). It's a great dish to make ahead when there are lots of people to feed ... and the horseradish really gives it an extra edge. Thanks Tessa

Mussels, from farm to plate

Yesterday, Tessa and I went to the mussel farm at Loch Spelve to buy a big bag of moules for supper. I'd never been to one before, so was unprepared for the sight of a JCB pouring mussels onto a conveyor belt leading in to the packing shed. There, six or seven nimble-fingered people were sorting the shells - picking out the small or cracked ones, letting the rest go past and into a holding tank, before being packed and sent off to the mainland. Not many of the mussels are eaten in Mull - this is a lucrative cash crop, and the family-run farm is a reliable employer in an area where jobs are scarce.
























We put the money in an honesty box (in Edinburgh, half the mussels cost twice the price) and went home. Tessa cooked them like this:

5 kg mussels
5 medium onions
5 shallots
5 cloves of garlic
100g butter
2-3 tablespoons chopped parsley
375 ml water
375 ml dry white wine

Clean and check the mussels under cold running water. Sweat the finely chopped onion, shallot and garlic in a little of the butter. After about 10 minutes, add the parsley, water and wine, and cook for five more minutes. Add the mussels, clamp on the lid, and leave to steam over a low heat so that the shells open. Shake the pan occasionally. It should take about five minutes.

Strain the mussels in a colander, letting the juices fall into a saucepan. Reduce them down, then lower the heat and whisk in the butter. You can also add a little cream if you have some.

Put the mussels into a heated tureen and pour on the sauce, plus extra parsley.

The fresher the mussels, the better the dish. But you didn't need me to tell you that. Nor that Tessa's were delicious.

A lighter crumble mix

Traditional English crumble mixture uses equal quantities of butter and flour, and a bit more sugar (say, 4oz butter, 4oz flour, 6oz sugar). Last night I put a lighter crumble topping on some very sharp stewed plums ... using ground almonds meant I could use less butter, and gave the crumble a pleasing nubbly texture too.

These were the proportions I used:

125g plain flour
85g butter cubed
4 tablespoons caster sugar
100g ground almonds

Blitz the flour and butter to breadcrumb texture, stir in the sugar and almonds. Put on top of prepared fruit (or some pre-stewed fruit) and bake for half an hour at 180C if the fruit is already cooked, longer if not.

No pic, this post is mainly for my reference

Yet more roast potatoes

The boys made roast potatoes for dinner last night. The theme was (clue: stars and stripes in roasting tin) largely American, in honour of their cousins ... a Golden Gate bridge, a Grand Canyon, a few Bart Simpsons, a Micky Mouse, a fabulous hamburger. Alfred tried to make a tractor with moving parts, but it wouldn't reassemble after the potatoes were cooked. They did, however, manage a working chest of drawers. My father was given an Eiffel Tower - much better than the one Horatio made a couple of years ago, this one was edible all the way through (the dogs wouldn't eat the earlier effort).

Once again, I got a flower with a hole in it, and we all know that roast potatoes with holes in taste sweeter .... if you don't believe me, I urge you to conduct your own tasting





































































Related links

A couple of summers ago, the boys were adamant that my "girlie" roast potatoes didn't quite cut the mustard, and so we ate them three nights in a row, while everyone put their oar in ...

The roast potato taste test
That's enough roast potatoes


and then, a little later, disaster struck the water supply, and I was reduced to buying Frozen roast potatoes

This week's girlie potatoes that started them off last night ...

Imam biyaldi -ish

My sister and two of her sons are visiting from California, so we're at least eight for every meal - more often, though, into double figures, and fetching chairs from all over the house, even when we're eating in the garden.

The tomatoes in the greenhouse are a tangle of good intentions thwarted, but even so, there is lots of fruit to pick if you can find it in the jungle of untied plants. And so our salads have been beautiful.

















With so many in the house, food needs to be simple to produce - but with so many young men, it also needs to be plentiful. Last night, we ate roast chicken, roast potatoes, courgettes, and a simple imam biyaldi, which I made by splitting aubergines lengthwise, baking them in a hot oven for 20 minutes before smearing them with a tomato sauce made by cooking down the remains of a tomato salad. They went back into the oven for another 10 minutes or so.

For pudding, we ate Tartuffo - my pa, who is in his late 80s and no longer eats much, had thirds, fourths, possibly even fifths. It's Willie Harcourt-Cooze's recipe, and I made it with his Peruvian Black chocolate and lovely yellow Guernsey cream from the Berkeley Farm dairy on the Marlborough Downs. The pudding was stirred while my sister and I caught up with a year's worth of family minutiae ... it doesn't get much better. Except that tonight, my sons are going to cook the roast potatoes, always a good moment, and my father has ordered one in the shape of the Eiffel Tower.

Related links

A couple of summers ago, the boys were adamant that my "girlie" roast potatoes didn't quite cut the mustard, and so we ate them three nights in a row, while everyone put their oar in ...

The roast potato taste test
That's enough roast potatoes

and then, a little later, disaster struck the water supply, and I was reduced to buying Frozen roast potatoes


Things to do with tomatoes

Roasting tomatoes
Roasted tomato ketchup
Slow roasted tomatoes
Homemade tomato ketchup - and caponata-ish
Panzanilla
Chilli jam
Preserving tomatoes in brine

Tasty tomatoes to grow
Dry-bottled tomatoes

Links to tomatoes on other blogs

Fried green tomatoes - haven't you always wanted to know how to make these? Here's how, from the blog at the Whistlestop Cafe
David Lebovitz's take on an heirloom tomato salad
Gazpacho from Kalyn's Kitchen

Cold beef with lemon and thyme

When families gather together in the summer, the most convenient way to picnic is for everyone to bring a plate of food ... and even if there's no-one co-ordinating, there's rarely much duplication. Yesterday 11 families brought a picnic lunch to share at the lunchtime break of the school cricket XI v the old boys. First to go were the onion bhajis, made by the mother of the captain, who also made vegetable samosas. Quiche, crostini, dips, sausages, raw veggies, smoked salmon - all easily transportable summer favourites.

I made cold beef strips using rump steak, a really good standby when you need something that won't take long and will travel well. The trick is to marinade the meat after you cook it to give it flavour. Quick and delicious - it's just as good hot, too.

Steak strips with lemon and thyme

Choose a thick piece of rump, and trim away the fat. When it's at room temperature, brush it with oil and cook it on a smoking hot griddle pan so that it is rare. A couple of minutes each side should be enough - it will "cook" a little more in the marinade, and if you're eating it cold, it will also carry on cooking as it cools.

For one or two pieces of rump, finely zest a lemon, then squeeze half the juice. Add a handful of finely chopped thyme, lots of pepper, some crushed garlic if you like. For a picnic, put everything in a plastic box. Take a board and a sharp knife, and slice the meat when you're ready to eat.

If you're eating this at hot and at home, put the meat in a shallow dish and pour on the marinade; leave it for about 10 minutes - you'll have to turn it, as there's not much liquid.


Other good things to take to a picnic

Travelling beef sandwich
Superquick noodles

Lamb with sundried tomatoes and basil

Here's a recipe for delicious lamb stew I made yesterday in the steam oven I am borrowing from Miele. Eleanor said it reminded her of a Thai red curry (without any spices). Definitely a keeper.

You don't actually need a steam oven to make it, indeed there'd be less washing up if you cooked it on your hob or in a conventional oven. But, for me, the surprise is that you can easily do this type of cooking in a steam oven .... and because the steam oven switches itself off when it's finished, you could put this together quickly in the morning and come home to find dinner ready to re-heat.

Lamb with Sundried Tomatoes and Basil

this is copied from a steam oven recipe supplied by Matt at Forever Better, but you could easily use a casserole dish and just keep on going on the hob

1 tbspn olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
900g lamb, diced
110g sundried tomatoes in oil, drained
1 tbspn dried parsley
25g basil
400ml vegetable stock
3 tbspns flour
seasoning, if required

1. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan. Gently fry one of the crushed cloves
of garlic and the lamb for 5 minutes to thoroughly brown the meat.

2. Meanwhile, place the sundried tomatoes with the second clove of garlic,
parsley, basil and vegetable stock into a blender. Blend to a coarse sauce.

3. Sprinkle the flour over the lamb and cook, stirring for 1 minute. Add the
sauce to the pan and bring up to the boil. Transfer the lamb into a solid steam
container and cover.

4. Put the container into the Miele steam oven and select Cook Universal,
100ºC with a time of 45 minutes. When the cooking is complete, check the
seasoning and adjust with salt and freshly ground black pepper as necessary.

Mostly I've used the steam oven for bottling tomatoes and steaming vegetables, which seem to taste more of themselves than any other way I've ever cooked them. Not unlike a microwave, but easier to use, more versatile, and no need to buy horrible plastic dishes. I also poached pears in wine with vanilla and cinnamon - fab, and an ideal recipe for the steam oven. The watercress soup was less successful, because I couldn't / didn't get the leeks soft enough before adding watercress and stock, so the resulting soup is pitifully thin after passing through a coarse seive.

There are definite advantages to using the steam oven - you programme it in two steps, and then you can leave it, because it switches itself off. I find, though, that it's a bit scientific for me: I'm an intuitive cook, I don't often follow a recipe properly. Part of it is that I'm learning, so obviously have to consult a manual at this stage. But it also requires a precision I cannot manage in my daily cooking.

I've still got a few experiments to carry out: I haven't yet steamed an egg, or defrosted anything. I want to prove some more bread dough, because today's batch hasn't worked out well, but that may be because I'm using a Miele recipe which didn't read right to me and which looks as if it's going to end in rock-hard bread (in which case I'll blitz it for breadcrumbs).

The verdict is - I want one. Because I'd like to bottle a winter's worth of tomatoes. I probably won't use it for conventional cookery, so it's going in the scullery, not the kitchen, and therefore doesn't have to be the built-in model, which will save a fair amount of money.

Thanks to Steph and to Matt at Forever Better for organising the steam oven trial, AND for providing me with everything I needed for yesterday's sample menu.

Related links

V simple method of bottling tomatoes in a steam oven

Other things to do with lamb

Lamb with dates and chocolate
Very easy lamb with olive paste
Nigel Slater's lamb chops
Lamb shanks - good for when you're busy busy busy and have hungry hoards to feed

Lamb with dates and chocolate - an Easter feast

Years ago, I was in Delphi on Easter Sunday. It was in the 1960s, before the days of mass tourism. The main street was closed off, because the road was being used by villagers who set up their fires to spit-roast whole lambs with herbs from the surrounding maquis. The smell was wonderful - and so was the hospitality: we were all invited to join in the eating, dancing and singing. There was a real sense of a Christian festival, of joy, of release from the privations of Lent. And so my Easter menu is always roast lamb. Until this year.

For the past few years, our daughter Lettice has played a huge part in making the Easter feast - she lays the table beautifully with flowers and chocolates; she helps prepare vegetable dishes; and, crucially, she makes the last-minute gravy. She's in South Africa, teaching in a township school, the first time she has been away for Easter. So a new plan, new traditions. The boys laid the table: an austere arrangement of cutlery and glasses, nothing more. And I made a gently spiced lamb stew, with cinnamon and saffron, chocolate and dates. Seriously delicious. Alfred insisted on roast potatoes (some things are not allowed to change), but this would be better with couscous, rice, or even mashed potato.

The recipe is adapted from Willie Harcourt Cooze's excellent book Willie's Chocolate Factory, in which all sorts of surprising foods are given the cacao treatment. Once you've got over the initial shock, you realise that good cacao is a fabulous flavour enhancer, up there with balsamic vinegar or lemon juice. Willie's cylindrical bars of cacao are, without question, a must-have in my kitchen - and, although they are expensive, as with good balsamic, a little goes a very long way.

Lamb with dates and chocolate
Enough for 4-6 people (I'll add notes at the end about scaling this up for a crowd).

1 kg lamb leg slices
2 chopped onions
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp saffron threads
3 cloves garlic, chopped
25g finely grated cacao
200g tomatoes, skinned and chopped
stock to cover
100g pitted dates

Put everything apart from the dates into a casserole dish, cover with stock, and simmer with the lid on for an hour and a half. Add the dates and simmer for half an hour with the lid off, so that the sauce can thicken.


NOTES: this simple recipe lends itself well to scaling up. I used tinned whole tomatoes (if you use their juice, you'll hardly need any stock), one can per 1.5kg lamb. I also used tinned Spanish onion, which I often do when I'm mass catering, at the same rate. Saffron is an essential element to the success of this dish: mine was highly scented & from Iran - anything less pungent, and you'll need more. AND, this is better made a day ahead: I put the dates in at the end of the first cooking stage, cooled the pan, and then reheated slowly the next day without the lid.



















Related links

Willie's quick chocolate pud
Easter roast lamb with ginger rub
Very easy lamb with olive paste
Lamb shanks

A week in Devon

To Devon for my brother-in-law's week-long 60th birthday party: walks on the beach, a recital of the Goldberg Variations by the harpsichordist David Wright, lots of talk, a little bridge, knitting - and no cooking.

I missed the party on the first night (I was at Lord's), but sent Lucius with a pudding, Jennifer Paterson's Adult Chocolate Cake ... and, unusually, several people enjoyed it so much they took the trouble to find out who had made it and remember to say something a day or two later. I'm not taking the credit, that belongs to JP; it's a very easy pud for a special occasion, a good one to have up your sleeve (so to speak).

Suzie's buckwheat pancakes

I say Suzie's because she made these delicious pancakes on New Year's Eve - a steady stream of them came out of the kitchen, loaded with salmon and sour cream, spritzed with lemon juice. But actually, they're from Gordon Ramsay's Healthy Appetite ... writing the note I've had in my jacket pocket ever since was my first culinary act of 2009.

Buckwheat pancakes
for 10-12 blini pan sized, or lots of tiny ones

85g buckwheat flour
85g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 tsp salt
1 tbsp caster sugar
200ml semi-skimmed milk
1 1/2 tsp melted butter OR olive oil
2 large egg whites

a small knob of butter for cooking

Mix together the dry ingredients. Make a well in the centre, then add the milk and fat. Mix until you have a smooth batter. Leave to stand for "a few minutes".

When you're ready to cook, whisk the egg whites to firm peaks, and fold them into the batter.

Fry over a medium heat for 60-90 seconds, until they are brown underneath, then flip and cook for a further minute.

Gordon Ramsay suggests serving with smoked salmon, sour cream, capers and salad leaves. Drizzle with olive oil and black pepper.

Seafood party dish served at inaugural lunch

How about this? The complete menu, with recipes, for yesterday's inaugural lunch. I'm slightly appalled at the "winter vegetables" selection - asparagus, carrots, baby Brussels sprouts, wax beans - half of which probably had jet lag. But this seafood starter sounds like a good dish to make ahead when you're having a dinner party. (Although I suspect some of the seafood will need substituting for better sustainability.)

Seafood Stew

for 10 servings

6 (1 Lb) Maine lobsters
20 medium size Sea scallops
36 large shrimp, peel, cleaned and tail removed, approx. 2 lbs.
10 (1 oz) pieces of black cod
½ cup small dice carrots
½ cup small dice celery
½ cup small dice leek
½ cup small dice Idaho potato
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground white pepper or black pepper
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 quart heavy cream
1 cup dry vermouth (can be made without)
10 (5 inch) puff pastry rounds

Equipment

10 (3 ½ inch) terrines/ramekins or serving dish of your choice

Directions

1. Bring 1 gallon of water to a boil; poach lobsters, then shrimp, then black cod and last scallops. After seafood is cooked, remove from water; reserve water and bring to boil.
2. Cook all vegetables in liquid that was used for the seafood, remove vegetables when tender. Allow the liquid to continue to boil until only 1qt of liquid remains. This will be the base for the sauce.
3. Bring seafood liquid back to a boil and add the vermouth and heavy cream and reduce by half,
season with salt, white pepper and nutmeg to taste. You have reached your desired thickness when the sauce will cover the back of a wooden spoon. Set aside to cool.
4. Cut Maine lobster, shrimp and scallops into bite size pieces.
5. Pre-heat oven at 400 degrees.
6. Fold seafood and vegetables into cool sauce, being careful not to mix too much as this will break up the seafood. Scoop mixture into terrines or ovenproof baking dish of your choice.
7. Cover terrines with puff pastry rounds, brush them with egg wash and bake them until golden
brown about 8-10 minutes, allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving. You can cook this 2-3 hours ahead of time and keep warm at 150 F degrees.

*All seafood can be substituted with other favourite options of your choice and availability.


Here's the link to the whole inaugural meal, with recipes - there's a rather good cherry chutney for duck breasts, and a lovely recipe for cooking sweet potato with molasses. Thanks to Lifehacker for showing me the way in the first place.

Caponatina

This caponatina is cobbled together from a quick look at Antonio Carluccio's Italia: recipes and customs of the regions of Italy whilst lunching at his restaurant ... it's a kind of caponata, which for some reason he has decided to call caponatina ("little caponata"), helpfully translating as "Sicilian aubergine relish". In another of his books, Complete Italian Food, he gives a more traditional recipe entitled (more traditionally) caponata.

The agro-dolce of the caponatina is heightened by the inclusion of pears. Really good. Whatever it's called.

Caponatina

2 aubergines, cubed
8 tbsp olive oil
2 x 400g tins tomatoes
2 sticks of celery, finely chopped
60g capers
3 pears, peeled cored and sliced
1/2 tsp ground cinammon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
50g sugar
50ml white wine vinegar

Put all these ingredients into a large heavy pan and simmer gently for about 3/4 hour.

The original recipe also had 100g green olives and 100g slivered almonds (which I should think you put in at the end).

The ingredients for the caponata were:

1 large onion, chopped
3-4 celery sticks
5 tbsp olive oil
1 kg aubergines (probably 3)
1 tbsp capers
20 green olives
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
55g tomato paste
salt and pepper

If this is the recipe Carluccio uses in his restaurants, it's delicious!

Anyway, I've just made it to get ahead for a lunch on Friday, when there'll be open house for my family, as my sister is arriving for a lightning visit from California YIPPPEE, and my father (80-something) no longer eats meat as he no longer likes the taste.

Bread and butter pudding

There's a lot of leftover bread in this house this week ... most of two loaves of bread gets eaten at breakfast by ten oarsmen, which leaves a couple of slices. So, bread-and-butter pudding for dinner. Quick, easy, delicious - all the virtues.

This story is about the perils of following a recipe. I got out Tamasin Day-Lewis's Kitchen Bible. Very rich: 600ml of cream and full-fat milk with eight eggs. Eight! Diana Henry was more down-to-earth with two eggs to 600ml. I can't remember which of them thought that 300g of sultanas was a good plan for the 12-slices-of-bread + 600ml of custard. The sultanas needed soaking (in the leftover tea, ordinary strong Indian tea), so I measured 300g, then remembered I was doubling the recipe, added 300g more, thought it looked too much, glanced back at the recipe, and, reassured, got on with it.

Well, I could have made four b&b puds with that many sultanas! I put more than half of them in, but couldn't fit in any more. Fretting about this, I forgot to put any sugar in the custard (and only realised when I woke up this morning). But none of this imperfection seemed to matter: it was all gone in moments.

Bread and butter pudding, for 6-8

Soak a handful or two of raisins - I used tea, but you can use alcohol. Butter stale bread (trim off crusts), and arrange it in a gratin dish. I used a mixture of white and wholemeal. Sprinkle the raisins over, and some finely grated lemon zest.

Mix two or three eggs with 600ml of milk and as much cream as you'd like. Add a little vanilla essence. Also some sugar to taste (!). Pour this mixture over the bread, and let it stand for a while (perhaps a quarter to half an hour). This takes care of last-minute panic when you're feeding a crowd.

Bake in a moderate oven for about 25 minutes, until the custard is set. Both the recipes used a bain marie (although they avoided the word, as it frightens people), but I have never bothered, without detriment. However, I did cover the puddings loosely with greaseproof paper so that the sultanas didn't burn.



Related posts

Home-made vanilla essence
A basic white loaf
Herb stuffing - another use for stale bread

Easter roast lamb with ginger rub

This is the piece of meat that is about to come out of my oven ... a 4.25k boned saddle of lamb, enough for 16 - and, I hope, for some leftovers tonight and tomorrow.

It has been pierced with slivers of garlic and little twigs of rosemary, then rubbed with a mixture of grainy mustard, soy sauce, olive oil and ground ginger. We then consulted Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Meat for cooking times: 40 minutes at 230C, then 15 minutes per 500g, then 15 minutes' rest. Actually, it's resting for longer, because otherwise the roast potatoes won't crisp.

With it: roasted onions, kale, cauliflower with anchovy breadcrumbs, carrots, Pugliese broad beans, roast potatoes and parsley mashed potatoes. Also fabulous gravy - the roasted bones, a mirepoix under the meat, water from the vegetables, some rather good Rioja leftover from dinner last night, a little balsamic vinegar. Mmm

Related posts

Roast potatoes: a question
The roast potato taste test
Quick crushed roast potatoes
Simplifying a roast dinner
Very easy lamb with olive paste

Foolproof and easy fruit cake

Years ago, long before I was married, I decided to make a Simnel cake for Easter. I spent ages looking for the recipe, which I never found. I can't remember now whether or not I made the cake, but I clearly remember the frustrating search. I was too idiotic to realise that Simnel cake can be any fruit cake recipe you want - it's all in the decoration, the 11 balls of marzipan signifying the 11 true disciples, a Scripture lesson of a cake, the betrayal of Judas plain for all to see.

This particular fruit cake was the first recipe my mother-in-law ever gave me, the first or second time I met her. It's in my ancient manuscript cookery book as Lady C's easy fruit cake.

It's well named: no beating the butter and sugar, wondering if you've got enough air into the mixture; no fear of sunken fruit. You just lob the fruit, sugar and butter into a saucepan, heat it up with some water, add flour, eggs and spice - and you're done. I'm giving it as I wrote it down, the instructions and ingredient list in one.

Oh, I'm afraid it's in a curious mixture of imperial and British teacups, but this is a forgiving recipe, and where it says cup, feel free to use a slightly smaller US cookery cup measure. If you're nervous, let me know, and I'll translate it into metric.

Another thing - this is a quick and easy, make-it-at-the-last-minute sort of fruit cake - delicious, but not one to make ahead or keep until your granddaughter's christening. Good enough to dress up for a party, easy enough to make for cricket teas.

Boiled fruit cake

I use a 9" round tin for this; otherwise I double it and put it into three large loaf tins (it freezes well).

Boil:
6 oz Flora
1 cup of sugar
1 lb dried fruit
1 cup water

Add:
spice (2 tsp mixed spice is what I generally use, unless I forget)

Cool (I never have, but then it needs less time in the oven)

Beat in (in this order):
1 cup self-raising flour
1 egg
1 cup self-raising flour
1 egg

Bake at 150C / 300F for 2 hours. Start testing after an hour if you didn't cool the mixture.


Over the years, I've made this in many many different combinations. I like to make it plain with sultanas. This time, it's a superfood health mix of cranberries, blueberries, blackberries and Goji berries. It's in the oven now, and tomorrow I'll decorate it with the pistachio marzipan I made a couple of days ago.

Related posts

Extra-fruity golden cake

Links to other blogs

Sunshine fruit cake
David Lebovitz's Chocolate cherry fruitcake
A more elaborate Simnel cake

Pistachio marzipan

Hannah, that extraordinary baker, gave me the idea for pistachio marzipan this morning, and it's been nagging away at me all day. I've just made a batch (five minutes, including photography), and it's wonderful - a lovely speckled green, outstandingly better than any marzipan you can buy (but, then, that's also true of the usual almond marzipan).

I'm going to use it to make a traditional Easter treat, Simnel cake - a fruit cake plainly decorated with a marzipan covering and 11 balls of marzipan to symbolise the 11 true disciples. I'll use my mother-in-law's foolproof boiled fruit cake recipe, which was the first she ever gave me, something she made often. I'll post the recipe in the next couple of days, when I make it ... you don't need to make this cake in advance, it's quick and easy, and the Simnel decoration is a cinch.

I just hope that my sister-in-law's Labrador doesn't spot the cake before we all get a chance to eat it - that's what happened the last time I made a Simnel cake two years ago. Somehow, we managed to keep the awful truth from her, and ate hot cross buns instead. But last year, we all forgot that she didn't know .... and she was mortified, both that her dog had eaten most of the cake, and that we'd kept the truth from her.

Pistachio marzipan

250g shelled pistachios
250g icing sugar
the white of one medium egg

In a food processor, grind the pistachios until smooth. Add the icing sugar and egg white. Mix until it forms a clump.

This keeps well in the fridge, but should be brought back to room temperature before rolling out to cover the cake.

I'm entering this - rather late, so I hope Ilva will forgive me - for this month's Heart of the Matter, party food for Easter - and to celebrate HotM's first birthday ... so many wonderful recipes and ideas for heart-healthy food.


PS I had a query a couple of days ago from an American reader about British terms for sugar. Another helpful reader mentioned that US icing sugar contains cornstarch ... here in the UK, Tate and Lyle icing sugar is pure, apart from a little anti-caking agent which doesn't appear to be cornstarch.

Related posts

Marzipan
Extra fruity golden cake

Links from other blogs

Hannah's Easter tree cookies with marzipan
Simnel cake photograph at The Fresh Loaf
Simnel cake recipe at Apple and Spice

Simplifying a roast beef dinner

For all my married life and longer, I have read The Spectator every week. The political articles are good, the book pages are better, and the home life columns used to be the best, but, alas, some of the columnists are no longer with us, and, recently, editors seem to have deemed home life to be of little interest. One of my favourites was Jennifer Paterson, the Spectator's cook, who wrote a cookery column like no other, and later became a TV cook, one of the Two Fat Ladies (the one with the motorcycle).

She lived for the moment, and didn't go in for journalistic tricks, so she didn't bother to anticipate an occasion which would crop up in the lifetime of the magazine (thus no dinky ideas for Valentine dinners), and she certainly didn't give Delia-ish instructions for Christmas cookery. She cooked no-nonsense food, and made it clear that, although decent food was important to her, she had other interests - for instance, she was very hot on obscure saints. This is a typical example of the sort of writing you'd get:

I am so unnerved by the announcement that a bird-eating tarantula has given birth to 700 babies in London Zoo that my mind has glazed over and I can think of nothing else. What about next year when all those babies do the same thing? They are bound to get out or be let out by anti-something or other people, and life will be far more dangerous than having attacks of lysteria hysteria. Any spider that can eat a bird is worthy of a lot of terror. However, on we must go.

JP's novel method for roasting beef first surfaced in the Spectator in 1987, and I remember thinking it was an interesting idea, although I never did anything about it. Years later, I bought a copy of her collected Spectator columns, and there it was. Again, I did nothing about it. Now that I have - for Lucius's birthday celebration last night - I cannot think why I let all that time ... TWO DECADES ... go by without roasting beef in this markedly effective and simple way.

Here is help for anyone unnerved by the last-minute titivation required for a roast dinner; for those with one oven; for those who like a simple life; for those who wish to talk to their dinner guests; for those who like to prepare ahead.

What is this wonderful recipe? You cook the beef up to 24 hours in advance, keep it out of the fridge, and serve it on the hottest of hot plates with the hottest of hot gravy (which you can now also make ahead). Astonishingly, it is just as if you had cooked and rested it in the more usual manner. She says it also works with lamb.

Yesterday was busy: visit to the butcher, young to fetch from the station at various times, tea for a neighbour, a four-course dinner to prepare, an early-evening real tennis match to watch. The perfect opportunity to use this method. I cooked the beef at tea-time. While Lucius and I were out watching Horatio play his semi-final match (he won, although he nearly threw it away), Lettice made gravy and roasted potatoes. We have only one oven, and this method meant that it could be at the perfect temperature for both meat and potatoes (normally it's a bit of a fudge).

I can do no better than let the lady herself explain the details:

I have discovered that if you are going to have some roast beef or lamb for some meal there is no need to do it just in time. I do it the night before, thus obviating all that last-minute sweating over the oven and leaving nasty greasy oven pans in the sink when you need them most. It doesn't matter whether you are serving the meat as a hot repast or a cold one, the meat will taste much better, having saved all its juices within rather than pouring them out on the carving board. It will be easier to carve and the leftovers will be as good as the original. There is nothing more depressing than the sight of an old joint that has been carved when hot then left to grow sad and grey in the larder. If you are intending to serve it cold, well and good. If hot just pretend it is. Served on hot plates with the accompanying hot vegetables and gravy made from the deglazing of the oven pan (also done the night before and kept up your sleeve) no one will notice. When you consider that a hot joint should have 'rested' 20 minutes before serving and then all the time taken in carving and serving, the actual meat is never all that hot anyway.

These are the instructions for roasting the beef (although you can perfectly well use your own usual method):

Put the meat on a grid over a pan. Smear with oil if you like (I don't bother). 250C for 15 minutes. Turn the oven down to 185C, and roast for 15 minutes per pound. I no longer cook in imperial, so my 2.3kg (ie 5lb) sirloin got 15 minutes at the higher temperature, then one hour at the lower. Perfect, pink.

If you are roasting lamb: Use the above instructions, and add a further 15 minutes at the end (ie at the lower temperature), for a rosy finish.

Really really worth a go. So long as your plates are very hot (and therefore not made of pottery, which will crackle). Amazingly, it works. Just don't put it in the fridge once you've cooked it.

The full menu, decided by the birthday boy (our family tradition):

avocado
one baked scallop (each!)
roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, peas, and gravy
apple crumble

Related links

Fillet of beef
Birthday celebrations last year (v similar menu)

Lasagne topping

All of the children were home for lunch today, and my parents. Rare event. Lasagne for lunch - easy (necessary, since lunch was late because everyone was caught up with watching the final of the Australian Open). I'd cooked the bolognese yesterday, Lettice layered it with the sheets of pasta, while I mixed up the topping:

2 eggs, beaten
500ml 0% yoghurt
nutmeg
pepper

Mix all this together and pour on the top of your lasagne. Either, drizzle with a little olive oil, or grate on a little parmesan.

The result is a tangy topping, lighter and rather more interesting than a bechamel-based cheese sauce. It's also quicker - important if you arrive back from the station (fetching elder daughter) after your guests.

No photograph: you all know what lasagne looks like ;)

Ham in Coca-Cola

Lettice loves that slimy thin-cut so-called ham you can buy in supermarkets, but says she hates home-cooked ham off the bone. On the other hand, she loves Coca-Cola. So I thought I'd do Nigella Lawson's ham in Coca-Cola. And she liked it.

I'm not sure how much the taste of Coke comes through, but the topping is lovely, provided you cover it with greaseproof paper, because it burns in seconds ... and that's the second time I've done that.

This is a two-step recipe, boiling first, then baking in a hot oven. You can either do this all in one, in which case allow about 3 1/2 hours. Or you can boil it the day before, then finish it a little under an hour before you are ready to eat.

Ham in Coca-Cola

2kg gammon piece
2l Coco-Cola
one onion
100g fresh breadcrumbs (4 slices)
100g soft brown sugar
3 tsp mustard powder
3 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tbs Coke

Just use a piece of supermarket ham/gammon for this. You don't need to soak it. Put it in a large pan with an onion cut into two (no need to peel), and a couple of cloves if you've got them. Cover with Coke, the sugary sort, DO NOT think of using any form of diet cola. Bring it to the boil, and simmer it at the rate of 30 minutes per 500g plus 30 minutes. In other words, a 2kg piece needs 2 1/2 hours.

Mix the breadcrumbs with the sugar and mustard, and a little Coca-Cola - go carefully, because you want a paste, not a sauce.

Then, when it's cool enough to handle, remove the ham from the liquid, cut off the skin, and smear it with the crumb mixture. Cover with a little greaseproof paper, and bake in a hot oven, 200C, for about 30 minutes. Or, if it was completely cold to begin with, for about 45 minutes (an hour if it's come straight out of the fridge).


Baked potatoes, broad beans, roasted onions, parsley sauce. Lots cold for supper. Mmm.

Very low fat Christmas pudding

I've made a version of this Christmas pudding once or twice in the past - one without suet (rock solid saturated animal fat), butter, or oils, just held softly together with eggs. I should think you could take out one or two of the egg yolks if you really wanted to reduce the saturated fat content - only then I think you'd need a little more spice, because the taste of an egg is in the yolk. No pictures, because I'm not making a pudding this year.

This is quick and easy. Worth making. Easy, because all you have to do is assemble, weigh and mix the ingredients. Quick, because that's it. Except that you have to make it ahead (which is a plus), although not weeks and weeks unless that's what suits. And except that you need to cook it twice for several hours. But you don't have to stand over it while it's cooking. So, as I said quick and easy. Wholesome ingredients and not a trace of an e-number. The only fat is in the three egg yolks, so it's ideal for those watching their cholesterol, as this will feed a lot of people.

Very low fat Christmas pudding
for up to 10

650g mixed dried fruit
200g fresh wholemeal breadcrumbs
100g soft brown sugar
50g ground almonds
finely grated zest of 2 oranges
1 1/2 tsp mixed spice
3 large eggs
150 ml brandy

Measure everything into a large bowl. Stir well. Oil a large pudding basin, pour in the mixture. Cover with foil. You need to put a little pleat in the centre to give the pudding room to rise, and fix it tight (you can use string; these days I have some special cookery elastic bands which I got from Lakeland). Put this into a large saucepan, add enough cold water to come 2/3rds of the way up the bowl. Cover, bring to the boil, then simmer for 3 hours. You don't need to do anything apart from check the water level after a couple of hours. If it's low, add a little boiling water from a kettle.

The pudding needs to steam again in the same way for two hours before eating. OR, if you make the pudding in a plastic bowl, you could microwave it, because a microwave oven is basically a steamer, and therefore cooks steamed puddings to perfection in very little time. (As to timings, you'll have to consult your oven manual.)

Notes:
After the first cooking I nearly always let this cool in the water, because it's less of a palaver. It's quite a good idea to change the foil before storing this somewhere cool, but I don't always bother. But the second time you cook it, you're really only heating it up, and you will need to get it out of the pan without burning yourself. One way to do this is to pull a long sheet of foil, long enough to cover the bottom of the saucepan and hang out on both sides. Fold this into three lengthwise, for strength, then drape it over the pan. Put your pudding basin onto it, and then, later, you can lift out the pudding using the foil cradle. Or you could use an old (clean) tea towel.


You can choose whatever fruit you like: figs are traditional (that's why the Victorians called it figgy pudding); I think candied peel is disgusting, even when I've bought the best and cut it myself; I'd rather have sultanas than raisins; if you're going to use cherries, the half-dried ones you can buy these days are nicer here than glace cherries.

Spice: either use mixed spice, or make your own mixture of cinnamon and nutmeg, perhaps a cloves.

If you want to add coins to your pudding, don't bother wrapping them up. Much better clean them - effortlessly, by soaking them overnight in Coca-cola. They'll turn out sparkling mint-clean - and you'll never again drink any cola drink.