I'm a bad man

I must, once again, apologize to my blog for neglecting it over the past few weeks. It’s not my fault, I swear. The reasons for such are threefold:

1. One of my ignorant friends bought me 60 days of World of Warcraft for my birthday, and I have been addicted to that damn mmorpg for far too long. I am finally beginning to break free of its vicious grasp, and returning to my former, wiser self who is far more interested in cooking, writing and casual gaming.


2. Casually gaming. Just one more lap around this course! Just one more attempt at beating my high score! Oh, it’s 9pm already? I haven’t done any work today whatsoever? Damn!


3. The college year has started again. Boo! All that academic work and whatnot. Still, now that I’m settled back in I have more than enough free time to keep this going. Besides, I was laid off from my current job, so I should have plenty of time to juggle everything.

I’ve been doing the odd bit of cooking here and there though. I’ve got some nice stuff that I want to write about, and lots of other stuff that I want to log here and continue learning about. That is what this site is all about, really. I’ve been working a lot with dough and bread, which is my little project at the moment. I think I’m going to devote a whole little section of my site up into bread and stuff. Thinking about it, eventually I’m going to have far too many recipes for the bar on the right hand side of the site to track. I’m going to have to think about what I’m going to do with that later on!

Anyway, I promise that I will update a lot more. I apologize again for missing out on this month’s Paper Chef (I was away that weekend), and I will strive to get some more work done. I’d even write a longer news post for this, if it wasn’t 2am and the words weren’t starting to blur on the screen.

Foody Birthday Swag

I got a couple of nice little items for the kitchen for my previously mentioned birthday. The first is a lovely Santoku from my gran; German carbon steel, ice hardened, glass finished and forged in the fires of hell. Oh, and the tang is fan-tang-stic (o-ho!). I’ve never really been able to slice and dice (in the kitchen, I don’t slice and dice at all outside of it) with a proper knife before. Silly pressed knives that go blunt at the drop of a hat were all too common in my past. I blame it on being poor and not having enough cash to drop on a knife. But no more! Seriously, this thing is beautiful. It’s even more fun to chop than it was before.

If you don’t have a nice knife, then you should really treat yourself. Or have a birthday. Throw a fake party and get some friends (that don’t really know you) round and get them to club together for some expensive knives. It’ll be inconvenient when they find out your actual birthday is months away and you used them for knives, but who cares; you can always cook them something to apologize.

I also got the phenomenal On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. The thing is an information goldmine, plus the shiny new modern front cover means it looks nice on the shelf. And it’s a thick book. Thick books are well known to make you look four times as intelligent than a thin book. It doesn’t contain any recipes, but it has so much etymology, history and science in that I’ve been getting a quick read in at any opportunity. I also recommend it and advise a purchase if you are into the kind of stuff it is teaching.

So, all in all, this was definitely not a bad year. I could have got a food processor, but I traded the idea in for a Playstation 2. Childish, yes, but entertaining nonetheless.

IMBB #18 - Pancakes!

[ Note – I told this thing to auto publish on Friday but must have made a mistake somewhere, so it’s actually being published on Sunday evening. Let’s cast our mind back and just pretend it’s Friday 26th, ok? ]

This months IMBB comes from Linda (via her blog, at our table). I like reading Linda’s blog, although my mind always reads it as A Tour Table. I don’t know why. I’m trying to shake it off, but I just can’t. I think my subconscious hates me. Today is also my birthday. Super! Now, I’ll let you in on a little secret, I’m not writing this on Friday 26th August. Oh no. I’m actually writing it on Monday evening, sitting at my computer in the dark tapping away on my black plastic keys and I’m going to pretend that I’m doing this all on Friday. I normally would, but since Friday is my birthday I’m not going to be on my computer, I’m going to be making an attempt at the world drinking record down at some pub somewhere.

I think now would be a good time to divert attention back to the matter at hand, which is frying. Frying is an especially good term because it rhymes with dying, and therefore you can pun it up with a variety of classic movie titles; Fry another Day, Romeo Must Fry, Live and Let Fry. It’s all good. Bonus points for that, then. As you might be able to tell, what with it being my birthday and all (and with it being my little brothers birthday the week before that, and then me going out a lot the week before that), I have not thought much about IMBB this month. I regret it, yes, but I still wanted to contribute something. Anything, really. Anything fried.

So, what do we fry? Chicken? Too common (and undoubtedly will be done to perfection by a host of other bloggers, which would have made my poulty (ha-ha!) attempt look a bit, well, crap). Stir-fry? No, there’s about a billion people that would make me look terrible at that, too. I figured i’d settle for something nice and common, a good old fashion pancake. Then I decided to make a savoury filling because I’ve never had a savoury pancake before in my life.

The thing I did pick, the pancakes, were originally printed in Good Food magazine, which is a nice little magazine printed off and sent straight into the brains of middle class housewives looking for something to read before having an affair with the pool boy. The trouble, I find, with Good Food magazine is that the food is not actually that good and therefore the title of “Good Food” is actually a bit of a misnomer. Even more of a stretch is their implication that it is the good food magazine and therefore, by a process of negating the others, suggesting that any other food magazine does not include good food. So, whenever I see the wildly overpriced charade of a cookery magazine I’ll leave it up on the shelf as I am not in need of weak, tame recipes that I’ve read before a million times, alongside “Taste Tests” where they buy a ton of food from various supermarkets and say what’s nice and what’s not, like I couldn’t do that myself.

This doesn’t mean I can’t read it now and then when I’m occupying various waiting rooms (doctors, dentists, proctologists etc) and stumble across things like “Sizzling Chicken Pancakes”. Now, what these basically want to be are chicken fajitas – anyone from areas that specialise in Mexican food, please don’t kill me, I know you can’t technically have chicken fajitas – but in a pancake instead of a tortilla. Hey, this is good food magazine; they can’t really embrace foods from other countries without slapping on something we’ve had for years in it. Still, it does have coriander in it and coriander (cilantro in America?) is delicious. The pancakes themselves are quite nice, but to be honest I’d prefer a tortilla most of the time. Still, I think they look pretty.

Chicken Pancakes

Ingredients

Salsa:

• 4 ripe tomatoes, de-seeded and finely chopped
• 1 ¼ tbsp coriander (cilantro?), chopped fine
• squeeze of lemon (or lime) juice
• 1tbsp olive oil
• 2tsp high quality tomato paste

Pancake Filling:

• 4 chicken breasts, sliced into strips.
• 1 medium-sized onion, also in thin strips.
• 1 red and 1 green pepper, (surprisingly) in thin strips.
• Some shredded iceberg lettuce
• Sour Cream
• Some good oil (for frying)

Method

1. To make the salsa, throw together all of your salsa ingredients and stir about a bit. I like making salsa, it’s not hard at all.
2. Put half of your oil into a hot frying pan and fry the chicken about a bit until it’s good and done. That should take about 5 minutes. Remove and put somewhere for a bit. Then heat the rest of the oil and fry the onions and peppers until they’re done too, about another 4-5 minutes. Return the chicken to the pan, season with a good bit of salt and pepper and keep warm.
3. To assemble, put a bed of lettuce at the edge of a pancake. Then spoon a generous helping of your chicken filling inside, too. Not too much, mind you, otherwise the whole thing will collapse into a goopey mess. Then top with some sour cream and salsa (hey, and maybe a little cheese!) and garnish with a little leftover coriander.

Cakecrafting

It’s always been a regret of mine that I haven’t spent enough time making cakes because there’s nothing that can inspire the feeling that a cake brings other than, well, cake. How the cake does this without actually telling everyone what (or why) it’s doing it is clearly one of life’s many mysteries. Is it the presentation? The look of a cake? The way the cake tastes? Whatever it is, there’s something about it that manages to captivate and hold the attention of an audience like no other dish can. Perhaps something, well, magical happens when the cake is baking in our large metal heat machines.

But, like I said, I do not make many aforementioned cakes. Regret? Yes. This regret is doubled when birthdays roll around. Then I wouldn’t find the whole process of trying to not only put together a satisfactory cake but to prepare a cake that will dazzle all my relatives. It’s the relatives that are the key – if they’re not dazzled then I’ll slip down a couple of places on the family league tables.

Like most of my kitchen escapades, this one started with some cookbooks. I figured that Cadbury’s would know a thing or two, so fetched a cookbook I had from them. I was right; they had a good looking “Easter Nest Torte” on one of their pages. I’d remove the mini eggs off top and replace them with Smarties; I figured I would get double points if I used a Nestle product to garnish a Cadbury’s recipe. The torte is basically two layers; one a chocolate sponge and the other a mousse. This cake in particular had a chocolate coat around the edge, made by slathering melted chocolate across a pre-prepared strip of greaseproof paper and then leaving the paper (wrapped around the cake) to set. The top was sprinkled with chocolate flake-like (go mad on a block of chocolate with a chef’s knife and you’ll basically make flake) thing (this is the nest part of “Easter nest torte”) and those mini-eggs (which I wasn’t using)

I promised myself that I would not leave the cake to the day of the birthday again this year, but cocked it all up and had to do it on Friday morning. Even worse, my first attempt at the cake was a miserable disaster. The sponge layer baked fine and tasted great (just moist and springy enough thank you very much) but when I came to wrapping the chocolate coat around the sponge the whole thing fell apart. I’d folded the greaseproof paper over until it reached two inches, and this left me with a piece of paper that was far too stiff and rigid to possibly want to wrap itself around the sponge in a nice circle. After the chocolate was set I was left with an oddly hexagonal shape. Well, a hexagon that had just been repeatedly smacked around the head with a baseball bad, but a hexagon nonetheless. Into the bin (a horrible waste, I know, but I can’t leave the calorie-packed cake lying around tempting me) it went, then a quick walk back to the supermarket for more butter. Oh, running out of ingredients sucks, by the way.

Second attempt, much better. The sponge was, once again, delicious and the chocolate coat was manageable. The single layer of greaseproof paper was fraught with problems too, it wasn’t strong enough to hold the chocolate and stand up straight, but I managed too fix this by getting it into the fridge quickly and holding it in place with my hands until the chocolate firmed up a little bit. The mousse was easy to make, but time consuming.

I started the second attempt at about 5pm, when I knew that the cake needed to be ready for about seven. I would have done it earlier, but I had to go to the opticians for most of the afternoon. This was not nice, and the extra element of being against the clock probably meant that some of my cake suffered. This is also why I have no photos of it. As soon as it set, it was sliced and eaten. If I hadn’t of messed up the first time I would have done some, I promise.

But, even with all that adversity, the cake went ok. Everyone was impressed. It looked good. I know I could make it look better if I had a second attempt, but I certainly didn’t let myself down with it. And my little brother enjoyed his flashy chocolate cake for his fourteenth birthday – most of his friends have to make do with a basic vanilla sponge with a bit of jam and some royal icing bought from the local supermarket.

Paper Chef #9 - Flowers and Chillies?

Dang, it’s time for Paper Chef already? It only feels like it’s been four weeks since the last one! Can you believe how time flies by? Still, it’s amazing how exciting Paper Chef can be. I like the whole angle of working around a set of predetermined ingredients. I like it a lot. For instance, Lavender (well, Edible Flowers was the idea but who could resist Owen’s alluring suggestion of lavender?) is something I’ve never really cooked with before. Hell, I’ve barely even smelt lavender. And I’ve got news for you; lavender smells good. It also tastes good.

Lavender is a member of the lamiaceae family, or ‘mint’ to us non-botanist types. Other members of this wonderful family are basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage and – this is the shocker – mint. The word Lavender comes from the latin “lavandus”, meaning “to be washed.” It’s shot to fame thanks to it’s perfume and medicinal properties. The flowers are full of top quality nectar, which can be used to make honey that sells for mucho dollar. Lavender also was used to fend off the plague by the glove makers of Grasse (the lavender fends off fleas). This little purple plant is (or was) native to Greece, France and Spain and it believed to have been taken to England by the Romans, where it has become a staple flower in every self-respecting Brit’s garden.

But, still, looking at the ingredients list; lavender and dried chillis? What on Earth can I possibly do with that? Surely that’s a taste combination that makes no sense! Of course, as I was totally unaware as to the taste of lavender I didn’t really have a foundation to base this claim on. Such is the beauty of the Paper Chef event. The other ingredients on the list were Peaches, Dried Chillies and a local ingredient of your own choosing.

An extra spin on the proceedings this month was the promise of bonus points to anyone that made an effort to get all their ingredients locally. Well, this luckily coincided with my local farmer’s market on Saturday morning. A quick trip up there and I had managed to score myself some beautiful coriander, pork and onion. I already had some locally produced honey at home, and I managed to get (ok, steal) some lavender from both my grandma and my girlfriend’s gardens (god bless ‘em). The chillies proved a problem; I was hoping to procure some from Peppers by Post, a chilli company – who also provided the inspiration for my mousse - just down the road from where I am. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get around to this and had to settle for a bag of dried whole chilli that my girlfriend got from a local Asian food store. I’ve also used tinned fruit for the mousse, and my spices and condiments have come from god knows where. Still, it was nice shopping around locally. People are a lot more interesting at Farmer’s Markets than the 16 year old sod that’s ringing your food through the till at Tesco’s.

Now that I’ve got all my ingredients, it was time to get cooking. But, what to make? I had my (local) pork, peaches and chillies and – a quick ferret about in the internet later – I decided to make a salsa out of the peaches and use the chillies and lavender to marinade the pork.

Lavender and Chilli Pork with Peach Salsa

Peach Salsa

Ingredients

• 4 Ripe Peaches
• 1 Small Red Onion
• Jalapeno
• Lemon Juice
• Coriander (Cilantro?)

Method

1. Finely chop red onion and jalapeno and mix with coarsely chopped peaches and coriander. Cover and refrigerate for a minimum of a couple of hours. The salsa is best served on the day it is made.

Chilli and Lavender Pork

• 500g Pork Tenderloin (my local ingredient of this dish)

For the brine:

• 1 cup white wine vinegar
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1 cup sea (or whatever you like) salt
• 1 tbsp whole black peppercorns
• 2 cups cold, cold water

For the marinade:

• 6 dried whole chillis
• 1 and a ½ tsp dried lavender
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tbsp rapeseed/vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp sea salt
• 2 tsp black pepper
• ½ cup honey

Method

1. For the brining stage, mix the sugar, salt and peppercorns and pour over some hot vinegar. Leave the flavour to infuse for 5-10 minutes, ensuring that the sugar and salt are dissolved. Pour over cold water and leave for another 5-10 minutes, or until the water is cold.
2. Add the pork, cover and leave in the fridge for 3-4 hours.
3. Now it’s time to add the marinade. Mix the chillis, lavender, garlic, cumin, salt and pepper and throw into a blender. Add the oil and honey and mix until you’ve got a fine paste. Slather over the pork and put back into the fridge for another 3-4 hours.
4. Preheat the oven to Gas 4/350 F/180 C about 20 minutes before you heat a cast iron skillet over high heat until very hot. Add 1tbsp of oil to the skillet, then sear the pork until you have a good colour (about 1 minute 30 to 2 minutes).
5. Finish the pork off in the oven until it reaches an internal temperature of about 70 C/160 F. Leave to rest for 10 minutes before slicing thin vertical strips out of the tenderloin. Arrange on plate with salsa and some lavender to garnish.

Was it nice? You bet your bottom lip it was. But, there was still something missing. I wanted a fruity dessert. Peaches taste nice in dessert. So, I made up a second course. Ok, I made the second course up in advance so I could eat it straight after the pork. I like to be prepared.

Hot and Fruity Mousse with Lavender Honey

Ingredients

• 420g Tin of Peaches
• 227g Tin of Pineapple
• 2tbsp Lemon Juice
• 100g Caster Sugar
• 284ml Whipping Cream (my local ingredient. Dorset cream is a wonderful experience, by the way)
• 6 Egg Whites
• 1/4tsp Cayenne
• 22g Crystal Gelatine
• 1/8 cup lavender flowers
• 1 cup honey

Method

1. Simmer lavender flowers in honey over a double boiler for about an hour. Put in a jar and leave to cool. You can store this stuff like you would honey and it tastes great on scones and the like.
2. Wallop the peaches and the pineapple – syrup and all - into a blender alongside the cayenne and lemon juice. Whiz until you’ve got a nice smooth paste. Dissolve the gelatine in as little liquid as possible and add to the mix. Whizz again.
3. Whip cream in a mixing bowl until, well, whipped and then fold into the mixture.
4. Whisk whites until stiff and then, yes, fold into the mixture.
5. Spoon the mixture into eight ramekins. The leftovers can be put in some other bowls that are suitable for serving.
6. Refrigerate for about 4 hours.
7. To serve, drizzle a couple of teaspoons of honey over the top of the mousse and leave for a few seconds for it to cover the dish. Garnish with some fruit or something, or just leave on its own.

This was also nice. Simple and cheap. I love using Cayenne in desserts because it’s like a spicy aftertaste kick. Lavender honey is also unbelievably delicious.

IMBB #17 – A scone and a doughnut walk into a tasteTea event…

As you are no doubt aware, this months IMBB is being hosted by Clement from a la cuisine! That’s the site where the photos and recipes where the photos will literally cause your eyes to burst out of their sockets and splat against the monitor, all whilst you salivate your mouth silly with an unwavering wish to be eating what he’s eating. Yeah, that one, you know it, right? Back to the matter at hand, tea was decided to be the theme of the event this month. Let’s sandwich a poem in;

“We had a kettle; we let it leak:
Our not repairing made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week...
The bottom is out of the Universe.”
~Rudyard Kipling

What better way to get a little bit of a casual article rolling than some gentle, relaxing poetry. Picture the scene. You could just imagine sitting down on your sofa with a nice cup of tea whist reading that poem, or some of Kipling’s other works. I was doing the exact same thing the other week, only except I was drinking Dr Pepper, because I don’t like tea. Which is very strange in England; I am often met with scrunched up faces, befuddled by the mere conception that somebody isn’t delighted by the thought of ingesting the world’s only drink that has a cup invented – and named - specifically for using to drink it. If you’re thinking wine right now, I would just like to mention that that’s a glass, not a cup. Plus, tea cups need to complete the exciting ensemble with the addition of a fine tea saucer. Does wine get its own saucer? Hell no it doesn’t.

These fancy cups and plates aside, I still didn’t like tea and this was causing a huge problem for a cooking event that was very much focused on those loathsome leaves. There I was, sitting down in the middle of the night, the radio wailing out some non-offensive alternative-but-not-really (Coldplay’s always a good choice for these days) and I was in a panic. My hands were trembling, my lips were dry and I was considering just giving up on the whole thing. Just thinking about it left me physically drained and emotionally vulnerable. Then I remembered that this was all for IMBB #17 and I missed out on EoMEoTE #8 (Drama Queen Dramafest Dramatisation Edition) and toned it down a bit.

On Clement’s original post, he tells us that he wants us to share our “tea rituals and experiences”. Granted, I could scurry around a field of cookbooks, find something fancy looking that uses some tea and whip up a accompanying article that states that I’ve known this dish for years and swear by it, but that, my friends, would be lying. As it stood at the beginning of the month, my only tea ritual and/or experience is putting it into my mouth and wanting to spit it back out again. I suppose I could also include rubbing tea over paper to make it look aged for various craft projects when I was 11 years old, but I don’t think that’s really IMBB material.

So, what does tea mean to me? I mean, really. A quick wander around town and a look at the little tea shops scattered about the local scenery and its clear; Cream Tea. Not actually a drink combination of cream and tea, instead a little (traditionally mid-afternoon) dish of scones and a fine cup of tea, to bide you over until dinner time. Well, you can also have tea with crumpets or a bun. Hell, even a cake. Or, just biscuits. After a while you’ll probably be having it on its own. Or I’m sure I would if I liked the stuff. I’ll go with Cream Tea though, because I’ll be damned if I don’t love cream.



Cream teas were concocted in Devonshire by monks in the tenth century. No, seriously; some historians have manuscripts with all it written on, so it must be true! Apparently the monks’ monastery was raided by Vikings and stuff which set them back at bit so they enlisted the help of some local guys to help patch it up and fed them bread, clotted cream and jam. Which I’m sure was nice for them; these days a plumber is lucky to get an average cup of tea or coffee. How tea factored into the equation is likely another story, but one that has a simple answer; we can plonk tea alongside anything. Over the years the cream tea has bled out of Devonshire and around the country, taking up prominence in both Cornwall and Devonshire. Here in Dorset, there are plenty of cream tea options out there, just like at almost any decent church fete or community function nationwide. Basically, they’re not hard to get hold of.

All that history has probably left you a little hungry. So let’s have a look at the components in a cream tea. To make a really great one, we don’t need any fancy recipes or overly complicated cooking techniques, but we do need some tip-top quality ingredients. The first few things you’ll need to sort out is the cream and the tea. Clotted Cream is essential, so we’ll have to get some of that. You’ll also want a tea with a full body (I am informed by tea-drinkers that an Assam blend is a super choice for this) and your favourite strawberry jam. For a more authentic ‘olde England’ taste, make – or buy - an apple and strawberry jam. Apples were commonly used in the jam making process because of their copious supplies of pectin, a required element in the construction of any self-respecting jam. Once you’ve made/got yourself all of that, you can move onto the most crucial ingredient; the scone. Now, scones and crumpets are the quintessential English stereotypical food that we all eat whilst wearing our tweed jackets and speaking about the queen in our puh-rah-oh-pah English. I fear that people outside of our little island do not eat as many scones and crumpets as they should, because they taste great. Maybe we’ll cover crumpets another time, but today we’re all about the scone. It’s a wonderful little thing, the beautiful love-child of the cake and the biscuit (cookie?)

Coincidentally, ‘scone’ rhymes with ‘gone’. Let’s not forget this.

Cream Tea
Makes 5 scones, so 10 scone halves. One scone is usually more than enough for one person.

I’m leaving a recipe for jam out of this, because I think experimenting with jams and the like is part of the fun of getting a good cream tea. A quick search around on the internet or a rummage around the local store and you’ll be able to find something you like.

Clotted Cream

If you can get hold of a good quality clotted cream, then go for it. If not, then have a look at the kind of cream you can get hold of. Is it pasteurized or not? If you can, then it’s strange that you can’t get hold of clotted cream, but you can make real clotted cream. If not, then you’ll be able to make something 95% like clotted cream by doing the following with 2 cups of double (heavy) cream. The yield of this is 1 cup, so you’re going to have to kiss 1 cup of it away in the long run. Its ok, clotted cream is twice as delicious. The stuff will keep for about 3 days, by the way, but there’s a good chance it won’t last that long anyway.

1. Place cream over a simmering double boiler until the cream has reduced by about half (to 1 cup). The time this will take will vary on all those annoying outside factors that affect stuff, so keep your eye on it. You’ll know it’s done when it has the same texture as soft butter and a hard, golden crust on top.
2. Transfer this to a bowl – yes, including that crust – and let sit for two hours. Then cover and refrigerate for about 18 hours.
3. Before serving, stir that crust into the cream.

Scones

Ingredients

• 250g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch salt
• 45g unsalted butter, cubed and softened
• 1tbsp caster sugar (plus extra for glaze)
• 50g sultanas (raisins are ok)
• 1 large egg
• 100ml milk

Method

1. Preheat oven to gas 4/350 F/180 C. Line a baking sheet with some baking paper. Soak sultanas in warm water for about ten minutes. Drain and pat dry.
2. Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Add the cubes of butter and use your fingers to integrate the butter into the flour. Lift your hands out of the bowl as you rub the butter and flour together, to let the mixture get its floury hands on plenty of air (that helps when you bake)
3. Stir in the sugar and sultanas and gently combine
4. Beat the milk and the egg together, then make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and add about half of the mix. Stir in lightly with whatever apparatus you like to stir with. The less stirring you do at this stage, the better rise you’ll get on those tasty scones later on, so be gentle! Add more milk, if required, until the dough is smooth and not sticky. Turn out on to a floured surface and roll out – gently – until the mix is about 2cm high.
5. Using a 7cm cutter, cut as many scones-to-be out of the mixture as you can. Re-roll and try and get a couple more, if possible, and then put them on the baking sheet. Brush with any leftover milk mixture (just use some milk if that’s all gone) and then sprinkle caster sugar on top.
6. Bake in oven for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown. Put on a wire rack and leave to cool for 15 minutes. Serve within the hour, as a truly great scone is still warm.

Whilst you assemble your scones, brew up your tea (if it’s an Assam blend, it’ll take about 3-5 minutes to steep. If not, well, you’ll just have to follow what your packet says, won’t you?) To assemble, slice the scones horizontally and put a thick dollop of clotted cream on, followed by a generous blob of jam onto each half. Serve alongside your tea and enjoy.

A cream tea is all well and good, but it’s not really what you’re after in an IMBB, is it? Most of the baking comes from making the scone, which doesn’t include any tea whatsoever. The whole thing smacks of “make something without tea and then slap a cup of tea against it afterwards”. Granted, there’s years of tradition and entire British counties who swear by it, but it just lacks the whole ‘cooking with tea’ bit that I’m sure people are more interested in. The only thing we can do is go back to the kitchen and knock up something else.

So, somewhat contrary to what I was saying earlier, I went exploring my cookbooks for a good something that I could base a tea recipe off of. Which leads me to the following question; who likes doughnuts?

Chocolate Tea Truffle Doughnuts

Truffles

Ingredients

• 80g dark chocolate (60% solids)
• 40g unsalted butter
• 3tbsp double (heavy) cream
• 1tsp tea leaves

Method

1. Bring butter and cream to a boil in a saucepan and then add the tea leaves and let steep for five minutes
2. Break chocolate into small chunks in a food processor
3. Pour the cream mix through a fine sieve over the chocolate and then discard the tea leaves. Stir the cream into the chocolate until smooth and then refrigerate for 2 hours, or until firm.
4. To make the truffles, use a melon baler (or other similar spoon) and take a scoop out of the mix. Gently roll into a ball with your hands and then transfer to another bowl and chill in the fridge until ready to be used.

Dough

Ingredients

• 10g yeast or 2tsp dried active yeast
• 150ml tepid milk
• 25g caster sugar
• 400g strong white flour
• 2tsp salt
• 40g unsalted butter
• 2 eggs, beaten

Method

1. Ready your yeast in the milk. If using dried yeast, throw a pinch of sugar in there as well to get those yeast all revved up.
2. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl, and then add the butter. Mix the butter into the dough with your fingertips until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs (you know the routine, right?) Mix in the sugar, and then make a well in the centre.
3. Pour the milk mix into the well, as well as the egg (minus two tbsp for later). Mix to combine.
4. Transfer onto a floured board and then knead until the dough is soft, smooth and elastic. This takes about 8 minutes with my hands. Then place into a lightly oiled container and leave to rise in a warm, humid place until doubled in size.
5. Punch the yeast down, leave to rise again for about 20 minutes and then roll out the dough to 3-4mm. Using a 6cm cutter, make 40 circles of dough.
6. To assemble the doughnuts, place one truffle on one piece of dough, then apply a light brush of the egg mix (were you wondering when we were going to use it?) around the edge of the dough. Press another layer of dough over the top and then seal with your fingers. Repeat this twenty times and you’re done.
7. To cook these bad boys, heat up a deep fryer/fry pan/fry utensil to 180 degrees C and cook for about a minute and a half each. Let cool on a wire rack for a minute and then toss in caster sugar.

These doughnuts were delicious. They have a gentle tea taste that works great with the chocolate, and deep fried dough is so good it's in a world of its own. I definitely recommend knocking up a batch of these when you have the time.

Now all I’m left with is the million dollar question; did this IMBB unlock the door to tea for me? Well, in some respects, yes. The tea I had with the cream tea was nice – certainly drinkable – but it’s definitely not going to become part of my daily like. Cooking with tea, however, was much more successful. I’m eagerly anticipating the other entries into this IMBB to gather some great recipes (fingers crossed for a nice tea-smoked chicken recipe) so I can further enjoy the stuff. Which - I would like to think - is what things like IMBB are all about.

Paper Chef #8 - Belated Roasted Pepper, Spinach and Olive Quiche

Oh man, I think I’m foiled on this one. I’m just adding the finishing touches to this article (whilst waiting for the sun to arrive so I can take photos of this) and, by my watch, it’s 7pm PST – seven hours past the deadline for paper chef. Personally, I’m quite angry with myself and am currently debating whether to attempt to enter this into the competition of not. The thing’s been open for more than a week, dammit. I don’t want to look like a lazy idiot – especially a lazy idiot who thinks he can stroll in six hours late and expect to be taken seriously.

My only defence is that it’s been a real jam packed week. I spent the beginnings of it trapped at my girlfriend’s ball, then I spent most of the early week buried alive underneath a administrative hell ensemble of end-of-academic-year forms alongside start-of-new-term-forms and being forced to make a start on my new coursework pieces. Then, at the weekend, I was being jetted off to a wedding, where drinks were a mere pound and I ended up consuming, in basic mathematical figures, a cubic megaton of beverages and regretting it until now. With Monday soon approaching, I decide that maybe that getting an entry into shape for this month is out of the question. I tried to make something with a tapenade, but I couldn’t work out the specifics. The whole idea seemed dull and flat. Besides, I puggin’ hate olives anyway.

On Monday afternoon I’m walking around town, and the thought hits me; I haven’t had any quiche in a while. I make a mental note to bake a Quiche Lorraine at some point this week. Then I started rolling the idea around in my mind, incorporating the ingredients required for paper chef into my quiche. After all, a quiche can be made of damn near anything. That’s the beauty. And, the secret ingredient (either cream or potato) is required to make the eggy sauce that any quiche that knows his (or her) stuff requires.

And I’ve got about – ooh – four hours to get this together before the deadline. It’ll be a cinch, right? No problem. Of course, as soon as I get home in the evening I’m absolutely zonked – the sleepless weekend is catching up with me – and I only manage to roast the peppers before moving over to the chair, thinking “sure, I’ll just rest my eyes for five minutes” and falling straight asleep, only to awaken at about 2:30am.

Mad panic ensues.

Result of this is that, well, I have the ingredients for the quiche and I’ve made the quiche so I’m going to make a post for my quiche and if it’s too late to enter then that's the price I’ll have to pay for abusing alcohol. There’s always next month!

Quiche, as a dish, is one of those classics that you can always turn to when you’re in a pickle and need to fix up something tasty that looks reasonably glamorous on a plate. If we’re going to be honest, I will put good money on their being a lot of quiche in this month’s paper chef. Why? Well, it’s just a good fit for the ingredients. Plus, like I said earlier, it’s easy glamour.

Etymologically speaking, the original quiche, quiche lorraine, originated in Germany (“quiche” derives from the German “kuche”, meaning cake. The town that invented quiche would later be renamed Lorraine by the French) and it consisted of a basic egg and cream custard and bacon. As the dish shot down the slide of history, cheese has sneaked its way into the dish and its crust – originally bread dough - is now almost always short-crust pastry.

Quiche became popular after World War II in England, eventually enjoying a flutter with mega stardom in the 1970’s. Thanks to overexposure, it was largely held in contempt in the 1980’s; as it was often seen as a vegetarian dish, macho dudes were heavily against it – leading to the publication of books such as “Real Men Don’t Each Quiche”, a satire on the stereotypical man in the 80s – and, like so many celebrities after their career starts to slip, Quiche got depressed. It started hanging about in a bad crowd. It slept with cheap floozies, smoked forty a day, was usually either high on coke or drunk on gin and, in a last ditch effort to make a bit of extra cash to fuel it’s ever increasing addictions, signed a deal to be the face of a dodgy company that launched a terrible series of adverts, proving to be the last nail in the coffin of Quiche’s miserable demise.

Snapshot to 2005, and Quiche has made a bit of a comeback. Sure, it’s not the be all and end all of savoury pies, but it’s quite comfortable where it is. Plus, we all – even tough macho men - know that there’s no such thing as a good picnic basket without at least one quiche involved.

Paper Chef #8: Belated Roasted Pepper, Spinach and Olive Quiche

Ingredients

• 175g Short-crust Pastry. I listen to Delia (but make up about 1/3 more than her recipe, I like to have some more to be on the safe side) on this one, but you can do whatever you want or buy one of those nice ready made pie (7 to 9 inches) dishes. If you make your own, you need to line a 7-9 inch flan ring with your creation. You can do this by:

1. Rolling the pastry out to about 1 and a half times the size of your dish
2. Pressing the pastry around the flan ring and trimming the excess
3. Prick the base with a fork and brush the whole thing with some beaten egg. This will ‘waterproof’ the quiche and stop everything from sogging together in one giant lump.

• A jug of Royale (1 cup of cream* that has been beaten with two large eggs, with a pinch of salt and nutmeg)
• A roasted red and yellow pepper
• Cooked spinach
• Black olives, sliced in half
• Red Chilli (optional)
• Cheddar Cheese – use your favourite.

* If you're in the US, then you're fortunate because you can just use half-and-half. If you're in the UK (or somewhere without half-and-half on the store shelves), just use 1/2 cup of double cream and 1/2 cup milk.

Method

1. Bake the pastry, by itself, in a oven pre-heated to Gas 5/190/375 for 20-25 minutes, until nice and golden.
2. Heat your oven to 180° C/Gas Mark 4/350° F.
3. Fill your quiche up to about two thirds with an assortment of your fillings; roasted pepper, cheddar, spinach, black olives and - if you want a bit of a kick - the red chilli.
4. Slowly pour your royale over the filling, stopping once it reaches about three quarters of the way up the crust.
5. Bake for about 40-50 minutes, checking on the quiche after about 30. You know it’s done when a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool for at least half an hour before slicing, to let the egg set.

Naturally, the quiche is a versatile monster that can be experimented with, even down to the kind of flan ring you use; the ones that are just a plain circle or the ones with the itty squiggles that go round the edge. In the same vein, they're good for trying things out; I wouldn’t normally dream of using olives, because they make me want to cry. They didn’t taste too bad in this quiche though, which was a pleasant surprise. One of the upsides of being forced to use ingredients, I suppose. In fact, i'll probably try putting them in some other things.

I think if you haven't made quiche in a while then you should give it a go, for a number of reasons; it's summer, and summer means quiche; they're tasty little custard things; they're a good way of trying out some combinations of this and that. In fact, make a quiche, but take away one thing from the recipe you're following and add something you think will work with the other flavours.

Hey Julienne

A while back, I started coming across the term 'Julienne' a lot when I was reading recipes that referred to peppers (or carrots - but I'm not bothered about them now). What did this mystifying term mean, I wondered. Have they concocted some kind of crazy new way to chop my capsicum-challenged chums? I almost tingled - well, convulsed - at the prospect of learning this venerable gold nugget of slicing information. What could it be? For the answer, I shall quote you epicurious: Foods that have been cut into thin, matchstick strips..



Needless to say, it hardly set my world on fire.

But, nonetheless, it's a good trick to know how to do on some stuff - especially a pepper. With the recent rise of the fajita on our tiny little secluded island, more and more people are making these things at home, abiet with their good friend Senor El Paso (blurgh). Unfortunately for these budding folks, slicing the pepper can cause a nightmare; seeds scattered everywhere, thick unruly slices of pepper that are still connected at the skin and slices that are so vertically challenged they look like babies; common pepper problems that I hear about a lot from my friends and family.

So, how does one rectify the problem? Julienne!

1. Chop the top and bottom off your pepper.
2. Make a vertical cut.
3. Gently lay the pepper out on a board.
4. Slice off the membrane and the other nasty bits.
5. Chop it (skin side down) into itty bits.

Like I said; it's nothing special. But something good to know if you don't already, right?

Beware of Distractions

You know the drill; you're just pottering about in the kitchen, reducing some sauces and the phone rings. It always does just when you're in the middle of something like this, instead of twenty minutes ago when it would have been infinitely more convenient. Nethertheless, you answer it, and get to talking; how much does a suit cost these days? How was your day? What's your take on the Olympic bid? The conversation interests you, so you start to neglect your sauce. You think it'll be ok. How stupid must you be to cack up a sauce, you reassure yourself. With phone in hand, the sauce wanders out of your mind whilst you stroll out of the room and sit down in the comfy chair.

Fifty minutes later, disaster strikes. After scooping the charred remains of whatever was left in the pan, you're left with a thick black stone stuck at the bottom of your pan. Which you then have to clean.

Moral of story; unplug phones whilst cooking.

Fish Cakes

Fish cakes are definitely a chip shop classic in the south of England. My local chip shop can rustle you up this tasty little patty in no time at all. Recently, with the fall of the chip shop in popular culture, it has become harder to get your hands on one of these tasty little items. It’s a dangerous situation that has offered virtually no reprise; we cannot turn to our local supermarkets for solutions as they only supply these tough, virtually miniscule blobs of overcooked potato and nasty cuts of fish. Maybe the reason for this painful neglect is that fish cakes have been firmly entrenched within the “Kids Food” section of the culinary craft, but they do not necessarily deserve to be. Elegant and beautiful they aren’t, but their taste certainly makes up for it.



There are two kinds of fish cakes in my mind, thanks to the way that aforementioned Chip Shop can prepare them. The first is a flaked fillet of fish with a few herbs, rolled into a ball, bound together with an egg, covered in breadcrumbs and then deep-fried. If done right, they’re quality alongside a portion of thick cut chips, but because of the way they need to be cooked, I usually prefer to leave them at the chippie. The second, the ones I like to prepare at home, has the same base; flaked fish. Only now the fish is mixed with mash potato, shaped into a patty and then shallow fried. As they already have potato inside them, they taste great as a lunch when served alongside a good salad.

Fish Cakes
Yields: Six Cakes

For the filling:

• 450g/1lb of good quality white fish fish; cod and haddock are my faves.
• 450g/1lb of floury potatoes (can’t go wrong with King Edwards)
• 2tbsp chopped parsley.
• 1/2tsp cayenne pepper – more if you’re into that sort of thing.
• Liberal amounts of salt and pepper.
• 1tbsp lemon juice.
• Butter (for the mash - optional)

For the coating:

• 100g crusty bread.
• 1 egg.
• Plain flour.


Method

1. Preheat your oven to gas mark 4. Cut the bread into thin slices and cook on a baking tray for 25 minutes. Tear the bread into chunks and pulse inside a food processor until fine breadcrumbs are formed. If you like your breadcrumbs extra crunchy put back in the oven at Gas Mark 2 for 10 minutes.
2. Poach the fish (put the fish in a single layer on a pan, cover with water, boil, reduce heat to simmer, cover and leave for five minutes) then put on a plate and leave to cool.
3. Peel and boil the potatoes until they’re done (roughly 15 minutes, but it depends on your cooker). Mash the potatoes with a fork, adding a small amount of butter if you want. I tend not to add milk or cream as this makes the overall patties a bit too soft and rebellious.
4. Now the fish has cooked, remove any skin and bones and flake it with a fork. Fold it in with the potatoes – you don’t want to over mash the mixture – alongside parsley, cayenne, lemon juice and salt ‘n pepper. Shape the mixture into six patties and then very lightly coat in flour. This can be quite tricky, as the patties do not normally want to behave. If there is not enough moisture in the mix, add a small amount of egg. Then lightly – and carefully; remember that the patties can be rebellious - coat with a beaten egg and finally coat in a thick layer of breadcrumbs. At this point they can be chilled for about a day, but leave them in the fridge for at least an hour.
5. Heat about 3tbsp of a suitable oil (something with a high smoke point and quite flavourless – sunflower or rapeseed are good choices) in a large frying pan and cook the patties in two batches of three for five minutes a side – or until golden brown (whichever comes first). Pat the excess oil off the fish cakes with a paper towel and serve.

Of course, the size of your patties can vary depending on personal preference. Make a smaller patty and they’ll fry quicker, plus you’ll get a crispier overall fish cake. Make them even bigger and you’ll get the opposite. Remember though, that a bigger patty can lead to the whole thing falling apart when you try and get the breadcrumbs on them. I think the most you can get out of these amounts is 10 tiny little ones (similar shape to the ones you get from Tesco) and the biggest you can make is 4. It’s all up to you, really.