Naughty Strawberries

However you might feel about British food, you cannot deny this island produces some of the best strawberries on the planet. I’m given to understand that this is because they’re still grown in the ground, whilst the rest of the civilised world have taken to growing them hydroponically, which maximises the yield, but at the expense of texture and flavour.

That said, they can occasionally disappoint, and my box of new season’s strawbs are pleasant, but without the richness that they’ll have in June. Here’s how to improve them, quantities below for five greedy people:

• 500g strawberries
• 250g Mascarpone
• 300mL double cream
• quarter cup icing sugar
• 60mL Marsala

Lever the mascarpone out of its tub, and into a large mixing bowl. Sift the icing sugar over it. You need to combine the cream and Marsala, but if you add them all at once, you’ll just be chasing a lump of mascarpone around the bowl with a spoon. So start by adding a quarter of the cream and use a pair of metal spoons to break up the mascarpone and combine, after that it shouldn’t be too hard to add the rest. You want a smooth mix.

Retain a few of the most attractive strawberries for topping; hull and quarter the rest. In each bowl, place a dollop of the cream/mascarpone mix, a portion of strawberries, the remainder of the cream/mascarpone, and top with a single strawberry.

Leave in the fridge for an hour or two to set, and serve chilled.

More?!

You could use single cream, but you’ll need to sift in half a teaspoon of cornflour with the icing sugar to give it some stability. A chilled double espresso will add a certain kick to the mix, and you could also try a different alcohol. You could also sprinkle the strawberries with booze and allow them to sit for a while.

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A Cunning Plan

Tomorrow night’s dinner is now entirely prepared:

1. we start with antipasti – some salami, prosciutto, olives, &c. – all of which simply get turfed out of the containers in which they were purchased
2. the slow lamb and pommes boulangères are sitting in the fridge and will simply be put in the oven the moment I get home from work
3. a hermetically sealed bag of pre-prepped spinach will be steamed just before mains are dished
4. tinned baby figs will be served with mascarpone for pudding
5. some port and stilton seems unseasonal but it’s TOO DARNED COLD not to seek solace in these trusted things.

Dealt with.

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Minestrone

Just a simple Friday night supper with The Major and Him What Knows in attendance. Since The Major might have been delayed, mains was a large pot of minestrone, biding its time on the hob, whilst we waited and devoured olives and schinkenspeck. The latter is as tasty as Parma ham, and about half the price.

I sweated 150g pancetta until crunchy and rendered; about fifteen minutes. Added 400g diced aromatics (onions and carrots), a knob of butter, salt and pepper, and then continued to sweat until the veg were soft and starting to caramelise. Another half hour – I wasn’t timing as I was doing the washing up. One 450g tin of chopped tomatoes, an equal amount of water, and a 450g tin of cannellini beans were added, the whole lot brought to the boil and then reduced to a simmer. A teaspoon of dried oregano and a bay leaf dropped in.

Secret ingredient time! Right now, you can get baby white cabbages in the shops, only slightly larger than your fist, which are full of flavour, and none of the unpleasant side effects of their larger brethren. I took one of these, only around 400g, peeled off the outer couple of leaves, and then sliced into segments, with a bit of stalk attached to each to hold the leaves together. Soup topped up with a bit of hot water from the kettle as it was getting gluggy, and the cabbage dropped gently on top. Another hour’s simmering, and a handful of cooked macaroni tossed in before serving with plenty of bread and grana.

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More Boxes

Still here. Just about. Normal service will resume. Just as soon as I’ve sorted out those accursed boxes.

In the meantime, don’t forget that the first of this season’s Seville oranges are now in the shops.

Moving House

Sorry about the silence. Have been moving house. Normal service will resume once I’ve unpacked the kitchen.

So many boxes.

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Mouldy Quinces

Oops. I’d forgotten about the six quinces on top of the cupboard, and they were looking a bit iffy.

Not to worry. Quinces are such vicious rock hard bastards, that they can be salvaged, and preserved for another day. After peeling and coring it turns out only one is properly rotten, and there’s about 700g of salvageable flesh.

Cut up into one inch pieces, the flesh is thrown into the stockpot, with 700mL water, and 100g of caster sugar. Doesn’t look very appealing, but brought to the boil, stirring to make sure the sugar has dissolved, and reduced to a simmer for an hour.

After an hour the pieces are soft, and slightly translucent. The flat smells wonderful.

Now, I reckon I’m going to use this stuff in about a week from now, so I wasn’t particularly stringent with the sterilisation; just swished the contents of a freshly boiled kettle around the Kilner jar, and that was it. The fruit gets put into the jar with a slotted spoon, and the jar gets a good shake so the contents are packed down.

I added another 150g of sugar to the remaining 300mL of liquid and brought to the boil. Although quinces are packed with pectin, there’s not enough in this stuff to make actual jelly, so it’s really just syrup I want. So that gets poured over the fruit and the jar is sealed.

Now awaiting its fate.

(If the quinces were less mouldy, I could have kept the skins and cores, and boiled them up, at which point there would certainly have been enough pectin in the liquid to set into jelly. But not this time.)

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Crème Caramel

Creme Caramel, a.k.a “flan” and “pudim”, has much to recommend it: you use whole eggs (so no separating and then wondering what to do with the whites) and you can prepare it completely in advance, so no need to stay sober until you wield the blowtorch as with crème brûlée.

This will produce four servings assuming, like me, you’re using four 150mL china ramekins. For the custard you’ll need:

• 3 eggs (this is where free range will really make a difference)
• 400mL full cream milk (semi skimmed will do at a pinch, but consider adding a splodge of cream)
• 25g caster sugar for the custard
• another 100g of caster sugar for the caramel
• 1tsp vanilla extract or stuff to infuse, e.g. spices and peel

Start with the caramel, but first, have your ramekins ready at one side. You’ll need a scrupulously clean stainless steel saucepan; under no circumstances try this with non stick. Put the sugar in and add just enough water to cover; two or three tablespoons. Get the heat up to medium and stir gently until dissolved, that is, until you can’t see any sugar crystals, nor feel them crunching under the spoon. The liquid will go clear. This ought to take a minute or two. Once that’s done, bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to a gentle but constant bubble. From time to time, use the handle of the saucepan to gently swirl the contents around, but do not insert a spoon or anything else. The liquid will stay clear for around ten minutes, but within the space of a minute will go from being the colour of weak tea to being burnt and horrid.

Don’t wait for that to happen, but take it off the heat when it’s the colour of dark honey, and tip it into the bottoms of the ramekins that have been waiting patiently to one side. Working quickly, swirl each of the ramekins around to make sure the caramel is in an even layer. Put them somewhere to set, at room temperature; not in the fridge.

Whilst they’re setting, pour the milk into the saucepan in which you made the caramel. Heat it gently, but take it off the heat before it boils, and add anything you’re infusing, although if you’re using vanilla extract, I’d be inclined just to beat it in during the next step. Leave the milk to cool for about ten minutes, so it gets down to a whisker under 50°C. (Get the oven going, now.) You’ll notice the remains of the caramel will have been absorbed into the milk – this is a trick from Delia. (Boil the kettle, now.)

Plonk the eggs, the vanilla extract, and the 25g of caster sugar into a large bowl, beat well, and gradually add the hot milk, still stirring.

Put the ramekins into a roasting tin, pour in the custard, almost to the top, and then add enough hot water from the kettle to come two thirds of the way up the outsides of the ramekins. Generally easier to do this with the baking tray already on the shelf in the oven.

My fan-forced oven needs to be set to 150°C for this, and the custards take around half an hour, although start to check every few minutes after the first twenty minutes have elapsed. You can tell they’re done when they go from splashy to wobbly when you very gently nudge the roasting tin. Any sign of bubbling or puffing and they need immediate rescue. They will also tend to form a rubbery skin in a fan-forced oven if left too long, not really sure I have an answer for this.

Take the ramekins out of the roasting tin (tongs!) and leave them to cool. When mainly cold, cover with cling film and pop them in the fridge for a at least a few hours so the caramel softens and merges into the custard. You can happily leave them overnight, or even for two nights.

Unmoulding them needs a little practise, and expect at least one to land upside down on your first attempt. The custard generally sticks to the ramekin just around the edges at the very top, so detach gently with a butter knife. You’ll probably then need to run the knife down to the bottom all the way around around the edge. Put a small deep rimmed plate upside down on top of the ramekin and invert. It may come out, otherwise slip the butter knife in between the custard and the wall of the ramekin, and it will come slithering out. Serve immediately.

Variations

All sorts of fun to be had:

• replace some of the milk with cream
• add a yolk or two for extra richness
• infuse the custard with lemon or orange peel
• infuse with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg etc
• maybe a splash of rum?
• intriguingly, Portuguese recipes seem to use half milk and half condensed milk, although I’ve never tried this

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Caffeine Porn

As mentioned elsewhere, this is a fun background activity. Experimentation suggests this method isn’t much good for a high roast, although an all over tan and “first crack” aren’t that hard to achieve.

The results are a little unpredictable, but always tasty, and a good deal more lively.

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Blueberry Muffins

Muffins are absurdly easy to make. There should be no excuse for buying those sad, sad things you see in Starbucks. Not only have they been on the shelf for days, but most muffins you see sold in high street coffee shops have been cooked with huge amounts of vegetable oil and corn syrup to stop them from going off. And somehow they still taste stale.

This requires five minutes of effort, and shouldn’t take more than half an hour from when you get a muffin-shaped gleam in your eye to when the things are on the cooling rack.

The individual moulds in my muffin tin are 100mL in volume, and for twelve muffins, I use:

• 250g white self-raising flour (or plain plus raising agent)
• 45g caster sugar (you really don’t need more than this, unless the fruit is really sharp – feel free to substitute more interesting sugars)
• a pinch of salt
• 1 egg (medium or large, doesn’t matter too much)
• 225ml milk (or buttermilk)
• 50g butter (I used unsalted, adjust salt accordingly)
• 200g fruit (blueberries, raspberries, et cetera)

Instead of self raising flour, you could also use plain flour, and add 3 (level) teaspoons of baking powder. If you don’t have baking powder, use two teaspoons cream of tartar plus one teaspoon sodium bicarbonate. Under no circumstances use strong (bread making) flour.

If you think of it in time, you can replace the milk with buttermilk for a more authentic American taste.

The ideal fruit is fresh blueberries: frozen is also fine, but produces a somehow less exciting result. Fresh cherries – stoned, halved, and steeped in brandy – will yield awesome results. Raspberries are great, too: they need a good shake after rinsing as they hold a lot of water, and go quite well with around 100g of white chocolate pieces stirred into the dry ingredients.

Start by getting the oven going. I set my fan forced to 180°C. Your muffin tray will need to be greased with butter or you’ll need muffin cases. I normally forget and improvise by lining the tin with squares of baking paper. Find a tumbler whose base is the same size as the bottom of the moulds…

…squish each square around this…

…and pop them in; they’ll stay in place if anchored with a dab of butter.

Melt the butter and turn off the heat. Whilst it’s cooling put the dry ingredients into one bowl, and mix well, especially if you’re adding raising agent. Pour the warm butter into a separate bowl, beat in the milk, and then beat in the egg, until combined. (If you do this with hot butter your muffins will taste of scrambled egg.)

Now, add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and all the sources are agreed: you must do as little mixing as possible, so the gluten in the flour doesn’t activate and make your muffins stodgy. A dozen good strokes with the spoon should be enough to eliminate any visible dry flour, and you needn’t worry about the lumps, of which there will be plenty.

Using a pair of teaspoons, pop a spoonful of batter in the bottom of each case…

…divide the fruit amongst the cases…

…and then top with the remainder of the batter. No need to smooth it out: it really can be as slapdash as it looks below.

Into the oven for 25 minutes. Retrieve, cool in the tray for a few minutes, and then onto a cooling rack. This is where the squished paper square approach comes into its own, as you can lift them out by the corners.

Eat when cool enough to do so safely, but they’ll be good for half a day, if they last that long.

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A Chicken in Every Pot

Simmering a chicken in a pot for a few hours is a remarkably good way to cook the bird, and has a slightly mediaeval feel about it. Of course, you miss out on the crispy skin you’d get if you roasted the bird, but the tender succulent meat compensates nicely, as does the happy by-product of several litres of chicken stock. This does take all morning, but only involves twenty minutes’ actual work.

You’ll need a posh bird for this, but it doesn’t have to be large. For my six litre pot, I use the following:

• a small free range chicken, about 1.5 kilos, giblets removed
• some crudely chopped onions, celery and carrots – around 600 grams
• a dozen whole black peppercorns, four large cloves peeled garlic, two bay leaves, half tsp salt

Top with water up to six litres, bring to the boil, and then reduce heat to the barest simmer: you want gentle glooping, not furious bubbling. It’s important that you don’t let it boil furiously, as the liquid will go grey and horrid, and the chicken rubbery. The chook will, inconveniently, not quite submerge, so turn it over a few times, when you remember, just to make sure.

After about two hours – longer, if you have a larger bird – the chicken will be falling apart, so carefully transfer it to a rimmed chopping board – a big wooden spoon in one hand and tongs in the other will do nicely. The same tongs and spoon can then be used to strip the carcass – although you’re basically just lifting the meat off and leaving the skin and bones behind, as all of the connective tissue will have dissolved. My 1.5 kilo chicken yielded 1.25 kilos of meat without too much effort.

If you have vermin, they will come running, so make sure the kitchen is clean after this, and the grisly remains are inaccessible. If you have a cat, you won’t have vermin, but the heady aroma from the pot may get the poor mog quite excited, so some bribery may be in order. Ditto children and partners.

Now, back to the pot. You should have ended up with the best part of four litres of chicken stock. You can chuck out the veg at this stage, as they will have yielded up their flavour to the broth and not be much good. There will be some fat in the stock, which is fine if you’re using it immediately. If you put the stock in the fridge overnight, the fat will solidify and can be easily removed and discarded.

So, what to do with this?

• you could simply make risotto: 600g meat, 1.5L stock and 300g rice will feed four people generously, and save the rest of the meat and stock for another time
• serve the warm chicken meat with some boiled new potatoes, mayonnaise and salad – and then follow up with a soup made from the stock in which you’ve simmered some fresh veg and maybe some noodles
• make chicken pies! (more about this later)

Some variations:

• a tomato or two will add a nice colour and flavour to the stock
• if you’ve got a bunch of parsley handy, then throw in the stalks
• the leaves from the celery will also contribute to the flavour
• more garlic won’t hurt
• leeks are good as well
• you can do this with the grisly remains of a roast chicken if you just want stock
• sometimes you can get trays of chicken wings on the cheap: these are good for the stockpot (again, you want free range, as factory farmed chicken yields very unpleasant stock)

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