More cookies

Ah almost there now on the great biscuit adventure... this is the penultimate - I need to experiment slightly with the last one, so will have to wait til the weekend. Anyway, these are Larkhay Biscuits (aka custard biscuits, for reasons which will become apparent...).  It's very simple and takes about 30mins from start to finish.

If i remember rightly, this recipe was one that came from mum's time cooking school dinners, but don't let that put you off!  It is a classic, and the resulting biscuits are light, with a lovely creamy flavour. An optional extra is to dip or drizzle them in milk chocolate once they've cooled... but they are quite rich anyway.


Recipe
3oz icing sugar
6oz baking margarine
5oz plain flour
2oz (or one Bird's sachet, which is slightly more but not by much) custard powder

Method
Cream together the marg and sugar  - if you're doing it in a mixer, use the cover or drape a tea towel over it, cos the icing sugar will get very dusty and you'll like you're playing with dry ice!!  Add in the other ingredients and mix well, then turn out onto a floured surface, knead lightly into a firm dough and then form into a long sausage about 1.5" girth...

Slice the sausage into equal portions about 1.5cm thick, and spread out onto a couple of baking trays, leaving plenty of space around them - they will double in size. With a lightly floured fork, gently press the back of the fork twice on one side of each biscuit, then on the opposite (so the tines appear interlock like fingers), giving a nice pattern on the top.  Bake at 160 degrees for about 15 mins until golden, then remove and leave for about 10 mins before transferring on to a cool rack.

Ah… breakfast…

Sadly didn’t think about taking a photo of this before I ate it, but will share the recipe anyway and stick a photo up next time i do it! So for now, here’s some nice mushrooms which are a key flavour in this dish…

Did this kind of by accident, but it’s a great breakfast recipe – bacon, mushrooms, hint of garlic and pancakes!

Recipe (makes two pancakes – depends how greedy you are how many that serves…)

100g plain white flour

1 medium egg

about 150ml milk (i tend to add it by eye to get the batter consistency right…)

pinch of salt, pepper and optional all spice

 

3-4 rashers of decent streaky bacon (you want plenty of flavour, none of your watery stuff…), chopped into lardons

40g butter

5-6 chestnut mushrooms chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

Pinch of parsley

Good sprinkling of black pepper

splash of white wine

dusting of plain flour

splash of milk

 

Method

Dead easy.  Combine the batter ingredients and whisk until smooth.  Leave to one side for a couple of mins while you prep the filling.

Fry the bacon for a couple of minutes until starting to crisp, then add the butter, mushrooms and garlic, and fry until the mushrooms brown. Add the wine and cook off, then add the black pepper, parsley, then little bit of of flour, cooking it into the pan – you want it to combine with the fat, as if making a béchamel, so keep it moving, then add the milk, combine and then turn off the heat – you want some sauce, no lumps and no burnt bits.

In the midst of the above, i’d have a pre-heated frying pan, or tava (the indian flat pan, ideal for pancakes, used for dosas and chapattis), and start doing the pancakes – just a dash of oil, then enough of the pancakes mix to cover the whole surface of the pan.  Cook on one-side until the visible surface is set, then flip it over and cook for another couple of mins – check it’s done by flipping it again.

Serve each one with some of the filling, then rolled. Great start to a Saturday, all in about 15 minutes!

Breakfast review – Tinto Lounge, Bristol

Right then, first bash at a review – met up with a friend for brunch this morning at Tinto Lounge on Gloucester Road.  It’s a nice, friendly little bar/cafe/eatery up in Horfield with quite a wide menu (burgers, steaks, all sorts, and brunch stuff served all day…), teas and coffees and some decent beer on tap – two very good ones today, Bath Ales Dark Hare stout, and nice lighter ale, also from Bath Ales, called Toga Man, which I particularly enjoyed as it was served in an old-fashioned pint pot!  Given that it was breakfast i also bowed to convention and had a coffee.


View Larger Map
On to the food.  Service was a wee bit slow today – it was quite busy with lots of families in, and not a huge amount of space.  The kitchen also seemed to be prepping for a later service, but the waiting and bar staff were friendly and apologetic (our food turned up at about 10 minute intervals…).  Trina and our friend Jason both had eggy bread (£4.50) with bacon and maple syrup – American stylee.  It looked really good and Trina managed to polish hers off pretty much before mine arrived! Reliably informed it tasted good and was great value.

I went for their standard Lounge Breakfast (£6.50).  Good quantity – gives two slices of bacon rather than one (which really annoys me).  But… what i’d assumed was a sliced sausage was a strange sausage patty, the bacon was a bit on the crispy side, and the toast was a bit underdone… they also appear to have left my baked beans under a heat lamp for a few minutes too long, as they had that lovely skin on… On the upside, the patty was actually quite tasty, the black pudding was nice, the egg was perfect (though served with a parsley leaf, which was somewhat redundant…) and the hash browns were… well… hash browns.  In all, it was good and filled a hole – good enough to require a pint of Toga Man to wash it down… – but if we go there again, i think i’ll join the fashionable crowd on the Eggy Bread.

Overall, i like Tinto – the staff are friendly and while it’s a little crowded (it could lose a table or two)it has a good buzz about it.  I have eaten there once before a few years ago, and the food then was also good quality – simple but nicely done.  Overall, 3.5 our of 5 i think – though the beer and service definitely helped that mark.
Cheers!

Welcome

Hi everyone, this is the blog’s unofficial launch day (official one to come when a few more people know about it i think!) – or rather, a cheeky way to bring it to all my Facebook friend’s attention, just in case they hid my posts for being an opinionated git during the election :-).

Not quite sure what I'm going to cook tonight – I've got some large King Prawns out of the freezer and some granary bread baton left over so i might do some sort of Mediterranean thing i think. Will tell you later…
Anyway, one thing i think it might be helpful to share was a word about rice. Quite a few people struggle to get rice consistently right, and it can be a faff – you have to check it over and over again, and there’s still the inevitable ‘oh crap’ moment when you realise it’s gone slightly over… Well there is a way to get it right consistently – works particularly well on Basmati.

Wash the rice and shake all the water out of it.  Then heat a small amount of oil in the pan you’re going to cook it in (just enough oil to lightly coat the rice, not loads) – you can add any spices at this stage too if you’re doing pilau or other flavoured rice.  Once the oil is hot, add the rice and stir it for a minute or two to coat it all.  Then add the water…

The water should be boiled prior to adding, and then comes the trick.  Add the same amount of water by volume as the amount of rice – you can do this by eye or by measuring if you want too.  Keep the pot on a medium-high heat until the water starts boiling, then put the lid on and take the pot off the heat.  The rice will keep cooking and will absorb all the water in the pan – but won’t overcook. 

Once done, you can either serve straight away, or leave it to cool.  If you cool it, spread it out on large plate or dish so it cools as fast as possible, then refrigerate it (only once cold).  Don’t serve lukewarm rice or leave rice out once it’s cooled – it’s one of easiest foods to get food poisoning from…
Anyway, lecture over, hope that’s helpful to some of you!

Big fat pork pie

Right, this is what I've baked for tonight's dinner.  Not for me your ginsters or pork farm pork pie, oh no.  This is my own special recipe for chunky pork pie, to be served hot or cold.  It uses sausages and pork fillet - you can also chuck in bacon, pancetta and other filling as you want to.  This'll be served with  new potatoes and whatever green stuff Trina buys and makes me eat...

Ingredients
Approx 150g short crust pasty - you can buy it, or this recipe looks pretty good (I'd reduce the water content a little)- i can't put the one i use on as i think it's copyright...

150g pork fillet, chopped into small chunks (no bigger than 2cm cubes)
3 good quality pork sausages
1 golden delicious apple, cubed in 2cm pieces
1 small shallot, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic chopped and crushed
Seasoning to taste (i like mine quite peppery)
1/2 tsp All spice
Pinch of grated nutmeg
1/2 tbsp white wine vinegar (or cider)
1 beaten egg (in addition to what's in the pastry - for brushing)

Combine the  ingredients except the egg (and pastry obviously...) - squeeze out or cut open the sausages. Mix thoroughly - you can check the seasoning by removing a small amount and frying until cooked, it will taste approximately the same.  Refrigerate this for an hour or two.

Roll out about 3/5ths of the pastry until it's about 2mm thick and line a small flan tray with it (no bigger than 20cms).  Line this with baking parchment, cutting it to size but leaving enough to overlap the sides of the tray (add the trimming to the rest of the pastry) and fill the cavity with baking beans or rice.  Bake this 'blind' for about 15 mins. Once the blind lightly baked, remove it and remove the beans and paper, and leave it to cool for about 20 mins or so. 

Roll out the last two fifths of pastry to make the lid of the pie - no more than 2-3mm thick, and large enough to cover the whole of the filling and meet the base of it.  Fill the cavity of the pie with the filling, leaving a small gap round the outside.  Brush the pastry edge with the beaten egg and place the lid over the top, pressing it down firmly slightly into the gap so it joins the base, and using a fork to press down around the edge.  Make a couple of air holes in the middle of the lid and brush the whole of the top with egg.  Bake on about 200 for 20 mins, then for a further 20min on about 120.  If you want to make it darker, brush it with a bit more egg before you turn the oven down.  Serve hot or cold.

First ever blog

Hi everybody (or probably nobody...)

this is my first foray in to the realm of blogging, and what better thing to blog about than something we all have to have everyday - food! So the plan is to do a regular (if not daily) blog talking about what i've cooked that day, or meals i've had out and about.

So... here goes... today i found out that i've got through to the heats for a cooking show - the dish i'm preparing is a bit of strange hybrid born out of having things in the cupboard/fridge, a quick trip the supermarket, and a couple of poussin... and potato gnocchi.

I've been making pasta for a year or so - i don't do it all the time but it's nice and relaxing on a sunday afternoon, and tastes great. But i'd never had a go at making gnocchi before - for uninitiated (which included me until a few weeks ago) it's made with potato and flour rather than eggs, flour and olive oil, and there's a definite knack to it - my first attempt came out grey (interestingly it often seems to have a little turmeric on to give it the same colour as egg pasta... check next time you're in the supermarket) and a bit stodgy, so attempt number two is tonight, and i have to have it cracked in three weeks. So the next few weeks may well be an update on progress towards perfick gnocchi (or moaning cos nothing seems to work...).

I don't think i can post the recipe i'm cooking for the show at this point - will need to check - but will do as soon as i can - it's simple and with one exception, you can get everything from your local supermarket. In the meantime, this is what it looks like.