The Untidy Cook

Apple crumble

Sunday supper time and what better way to complete a Shepherds Pie supper than with a crumble?  I know, it's a hard combination to beat.

I had a stack of apples lurking at the back of the fridge starting to look in need of either a good rubbing with Oil of Ulay to rescue them from wrinkle-dom or, failing that, cooking.

Apples peeled, chopped into big chunks and dropped into acidulated water to stop them from browning, they were then put into the bottom of a deep sided dish.  I like having a roughly 50% apple and 50% crumble topping balance when its raw.   It all cooks down into the right balance at the end.

 

Chuck the apple chunks into the bottom of the pan straight from its water so it takes some with it. Sprinkle with a tablespoon of sugar, some vanilla extract, a few bits of butter and a good sprinkle of ground mixed spice.  

Crumble mix - 180g cold butter, 300g plain flour, 1 cup of brown caster sugar.  In this version I took out a tablespoon of flour and replaced it with rolled oats.  Put butter and flour/oats into the mixer bowl and mix together until gathered into breadcrumb sized pieces.  Add sugar, stir together and then spread evenly over the top of the apples.

Bake at 180c for about 3/4 of an hour or until the top is golden, ideally with sticky bits up the side where the apple mix has seeped up the sides and gone all caramelly.  

Consumed with vanilla ice-cream.  

Shepherds Pie

Time to prepare some LuckyBoy(tm) supper products for TLO so he's all taken care of whilst I'm off and about next week.

This recipe made 8 servings, providing some for supper and a wedge of them to be tucked away in the freezer.

• 1 kg best beef mince
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 small onions
• 8 semi-dried tomatoes
• 2 tins chopped tomatoes
• Tomato purée
• 1 tin kidney beans
• salt/pepper
• pomegranate molasses
• Worcestershire sauce
• balsamic vinegar 
• batch of fresh mashed potatoes

Firstly, cook the mince in two separate batches and then drain the fatty glug off the cooked meat.

Add some oil to the pan and sauté the finely chopped garlic cloves until transparent, add the finely chopped onions and cook through.  Roughly chop the semi-dried tomatoes - I buy these dry and then put them into a tub with olive oil, slivers of garlic and some herbs and then leave them in the fridge for use in recipes like this.  

Then replace the mince in the pan with the onion mix, along with the drained, rinsed kidney beans and the chopped tomatoes.  Half fill the tomato cans with water, swill then round and then throw this into the mix.  Add a big squirt of tomato purée, a middle sized one of pomegranate molasses, a good shake of Worcestershire sauce and a dash of balsamic to add savour.  

Place into a good sized deep, straight sided dish and top with mash.  I'd made this with a small amount of milk, butter and seasoning.  Then bake for about half an hour, which turned into about an hour as I wandered off and got engrossed in something else for a bit.  

Tonight's choice of vegetable was sautéed cabbage - finely chopped savoy cabbage, knob of melted butter in a deep frying pan all stirred together over a high heat until slightly charred in a few areas and cooked through.

 

Shepherds Pie, in progress

Detail to follow

Mini chocolate brownies

I was terribly brave this time and decided to use a recipe that I didn't normally use!  I know, going to the edge, facing the fear and doing it anyway.  Now that's what I call, pushing the emotional envelope.

As part of the phase of supper that I like to call 'pudding', I thought some little brownies with berries and cream would be quite simply the go.

I rifled through Delia, Nigela, Stephanie and finally selected Woman's Weekly.  I will find the recipe and pop it on here later.

• cup of cocoa (proper stuff, mind, not that drinking chocolate nonsense)
• butter
• sugar
• flour
• vanilla
• eggs

Melt butter, stir in cocoa.  Put eggs, vanilla & sugar in bowl and beat together.  Add cocoa'y mix, stir well, then add flour and stir until mixed properly together.

Rather than place this all in one pan, I selected my smallest cup cake sized pan.  They're about an inch wide and deep. 

First batch just went into lightly greased indents and were cooked for 14 mins at 170c.  I left them to cool a bit and then had to enlist TLO with a pointy knife to prise the resulting cute little brownies out of the pan.  Some of them got a bit mashed but they were OK.

Second batch I was ready for them - I sprayed the indents with some oil and shook some flour through them.  Then filled them with batter before cooking for 12 minutes.  I also took the opportunity to pop a hazlenut on top of each one.

Hmmm, they weren't super easy to get out but less of them stuck quite so intently to their safe, warm tin.

Mini chocolate brownies

A sneaky peak of these 'in progess'. Nice bit of cake mix.

That fabulous hedgehog

And, Lo!, the full glory of the supper party centrepiece. Ain't it grand?

Fallen chocolate easter cake

Swiped this recipe out of Nigella Lawson's Feast. 

I don't have it in front of me, I suspect if you google the marvellous Interweb it'll be out there somewhere, but the recipe when something like this:

• 250 g good dark chocolate
• 125 g butter
• 6 eggs - 4 separated
• 125 g caster sugar
• 75 g caster sugar
• vanilla extract

Line base of 23" spring-release cake tin with circle of baking parchment.  I love doing this as it feels all mathematical and precise.  Reminds me of Mr Nuttall's geometric model making classes at school.  We got to measure, cut out and make dodecahedrons, octahedrons 'n stuff out of nice crisp cardboard (during lunchtime activity club - and you explain this to the youth of today and they just wouldn't understand it). Mmmm, soothing 70's wonderfulness. 

Melt chocolate & butter together - I did this in the microwave - stir and leave to cool a little.  I did a mix of 70% cocoa butter content & dairy milk.  About half and half.  This worked just fine.

Whisk the 4 egg whites together until softly peaked, then whisk in the first batch of sugar until you have a fabulously glossy meringue mix.  Not too stiff.

Stir the 4 egg yolks plus the other 2 eggs together with the second batch of sugar and a good tsp of proper vanilla extract.  Mix well until sugar is absorbed.  Then stir in the cooled chocolate/butter mix.  Stir in a tablespoon of the beaten egg whites to slacken up the mix, then fold in the remaining whites in three batches.  Don't over mix as you want to keep the air in the mixture.

Tip carefully into prepared tin, even out top and cook in oven at 180c for 35-50 mins.  I wanted a well squidgy cake so I took it out at 35 mins and left it to cool.  Expect it to collapse and just don't fight it.  When it is cool, remove from tin & base and put on plate.  Make the ganache (see next bit) and gently smear into the now collapsed cake. 

Ganache:

• 125g dark chocolate
• 250 g double cream
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Melt chocolate in microwave, stir and let cool a smidge.  Beat cream until softly peaking and then stir in the melted chocolate and vanilla.  Stir to combine.   Again, I mixed 70% stuff with dairy milk.  All good.

Top with little sugar easter eggs.  But I didn't have any of those, so I settled for some pretty sugar flowers.  Adorable.  It was further complemented with some brightly coloured pipecleaners twisted into amusing shapes.  Weird.  Tasted good, though.

This went down very well indeed with a bowl of strawberries & blueberries and some double cream to slake the richness. 

Chicken liver pate

One of my mother's classic dinner party specials this one with only a few deviations to reflect the actuality of the fridge contents.

• 500g chicken livers, rinsed cleaned and roughly chopped
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• Chopped garlic clove or 2
• 5 slices smoked streaky bacon
• 2 bay leaves
• 50 g butter
• scant teaspoon ground cinnamon
• salt & pepper
• tbsp pudding wine
• tbsp sour cream

Saute garlic and onion in butter until softened and translucent.  Add de-rinded roughly chopped bacon and cook together with bay leaves until fragrant and cooked through for 3 to 4 mins.  Then stir in the chopped livers along with a good shake of cinnamon.   Cook for a further 5 to 8 mins.

In a moulinex, blend the the contents of the pan (having removed the bay leaves).  Then push the contents through a sieve to remove the fibrous bits of onion and stringy bits of liver (yuck!).  Stir in tablespoon of pudding wine - I had some muscat in the fridge - and a tbspoon of sour cream.  Beat well together, test for seasoning and adjust if necessary.

Put neatly into a bowl, wipe the gunk off one of the choicest bay leaves and place elegantly on the top of the pate.

If you like, melt (and if you're feeling super precise, clarify) some butter, and pour over the top of the pate to cover it.  Very pretty.  But I didn't do that, I just left it au nature.

Put in fridge for good few hours to set and settle.

Magic with melba toast (so fancy, and so white trash), toasted pitta strips or scooped up with crudites.

Very popular with the peeps.  And it improves as you keep it.  Had the fag end of it for supper last night and very splendid it was too.

Twice cooked belly pork

This was the fall back dish, which I had in readiness in case I hadn't cooked enough for Sunday's supper.  "As if", I hear the guests groan as they surveyed the food mountain that lay before them.

And so it makes its appearance as Tuesday's supper.

I had cooked some (mainly) thickly sliced boneless belly pork in the oven up to their waists in a marinade of brown sugar, soy, five spice and water.  Covered with foil, I cooked it at about 160c for an hour or so then left this in fridge, and once cold left it in the fridge.

To finish it off I put a heaped tablespoon of caster sugar into my deep frying pan and melted it until turned a deep caramel colour.  Into this went a finely chopped red chilli - at which point the caramel did that scary hissing, spitting thing - followed by the juice of a lime, about a tablespoon of soy and a couple of water.  To stop the caramel base burning, I stirred it together off the heat.   I'd prised the pork slices out of their, now jellified, sauce and sliced them into chunky cubes and took the chance to get rid of the most obvious bits of gristle and bone. I think I also threw in a slug of rice wine vinegar to add a bit of bite too.

Back onto the heat for the caramel and in went the pork cubes.  This was all heated through, during which the sauce reduces somewhat into lovely gloopy spicy sweet sour-ness.

Served with rice, some leftover butter lettuce, chopped cucumber and a bit of greek yoghurt.    I'm a bit squeamish about eating the fat and rind, of which not much is actually left after all that cooking, which looks flobby and greasy. But TLO, eats this dish - fat, rind and all.  He's so brave.  Apparently, it's not scary but quite yummy.  Maybe next time I'll give it a shot.

Anyhoo, altogether, a very satisfying dish.

Ricotta stuffed chicken

Some catch up photos of the chicken that I barbequed ages ago. Took a nice plumpy chicken, spatchcocked it (ie split it up the back, cut out the backbone, whacked its front v hard to make it lie flat). Made stuffing - ricotta, chilli, Parmesan, a egg, seasonings. Spread this under skin of bird, using a spoon to separate skim from flesh without tearing skin. Bit of oil and seasoning over the top, then onto the BBQ in one of those disposable baking trays. Cooked on moderate heat for about an hour or so. Until properly cooked through. Served w all manner of salads, some bread and good butter.