PhilippaB

Cheese Nibbles

I had a recipe for cheese scones (dry, not very cheesy) and one for cheese straws (mostly cheese, held together with willpower and a smattering of flour) and got the recipes mixed up. So then I tried mixing the two deliberately - worked out OK.

oven to gas 7 / 220 c. or thereabouts.

8oz flour (self-raising, or plain with 1 tsp baking powder)

3oz butter (if unsalted, add 1/2 tsp salt)

2oz hard cheese (cheddar, cantal)

cut up butter into flour etc, grate in cheese, work lightly to a breadcrumb-like consistency.

add 1 oz powdery parmesan, mix.

add 1/4 pint milk, mix with knife. flour hands, combine into a ball.

flour surface / rolling pin. roll out to c. 5mm thickness, cut to ritz-cracker size shapes. 

cook for 10-12 minutes. cool on a rack. makes about 60 with one re-roll, and scraps.

optional extra: pizza glaze.

mix 1 tbsp ketchup with 1 tbsp milk to thin. brush on nibbles. 

light sprinkle of grated cheese / parmesan, mixed herbs.

slices of black olive would probably also work but I didn’t think of that at the time. 

Spicy Beef Stew

So, my mate Suze posted a recipe from BBC Good Food a while back, along these lines, but a) I’ve lost that recipe and b) it had a lot of complicated ingredients. So this is a simpler version, which still tastes pretty damn good.

400-500g braising beef, trimmed, and cubed. Roll in spiced flour (i.e. I add some chilli powder and black pepper). Fry (veg/sunflower oil) in a deep-sided frying pan, on largest burner on a high heat until browned.

Remove to a plate.  Turn down heat, sweat (veg/sunflower oil):

1 x large onion, chopped
1 x large red pepper, chopped
Handful oyster/pleurote mushrooms (or regular mushrooms that have dried out a bit), sliced

Add spices - I use garlic, chilli, ginger (pickled ginger great, powdered fine), cinnamon / mace (4- or 5-spice would be better).

Add beef back.  Move to the smallest burner, at highest heat.  Add a good slug of soy sauce (preferably sweet soy). Mix well. In a jug, add 2 x miso soup sachets to 750ml boiling water and mix (also rinse off the plate the beef was on to get all the flavours in). Add. When bubbling, turn heat down to low (maybe not lowest setting - should bubble gently but persistently). 

Leave uncovered, for about 90 minutes (try the beef, when that is at optimum meltiness, is done - anywhere between 60-120 minutes should be fine).

At end of cooking, add greens, eg green beans and/or mange tout etc, comme tu veux, for a few minutes. Serve with rice. 

Experiment - Mochaccino Cake

Having had great success with this recipe for gingerbread (ignore name of both website and recipe, if of a sensitive disposition) I have carried out a small experiment to see if the same structural approach works for other flavours of cake.

Formula:

1) In a saucepan, melt:

12 oz golden syrup* (slight shortfall made up with cane sugar)

4.5 oz butter

(if sugar involved, make sure that’s properly melted)

2) In a large bowl, sift:

8 oz plain flour

1 oz cocoa powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 3/4 tsp bicarb (clearly didn’t measure this bit exactly, but that’s what the original says)

3) In a jug, mix:

4 dessert spoons instant coffee, adding enough boiling water to dissolve

Make up to half a pint with milk

Add an egg, whisk.

Add stage 1 to stage 2, mix thoroughly. Gradually add stage 3, whisking carefully (stage 1+2 will have the consistence of road tar and will not take kindly to the introduction of stage 3).

You will now have what looks like a large bowl of chocolate sauce.

***DO NOT BE ALARMED***

Carefully pour into lined baking tin - mine is 22x22cm, it should come about halfway up the sides. Note that it rises a lot, so that’s probably the smallest area you can get away with. Bake at 180C (gas 4) for about 50 minutes.  It is supposed to be fairly squidgy, so do a knife-check. 

*Just put the saucepan on the scales. No point covering everything in syrup. Note, if you keep your syrup in the fridge to avoid ant-damage, it will not pour, and you may lose a spoon trying to lever it out of the tin. Let it warm up a bit before pouring.

Guest post from Dad.

Took Nigel and Jill to Paralympics, for their Ruby Wedding:

The engineering.
The construction.
The project management.
The acoustics.
The Olympic Stadium

The reclamation.
The landscaping.
The crowd control.
The safety management.
The volunteers.
The Olympic Park.

The people come together,
not tearing each other to pieces,
clapping and cheering anything that moved,
basking in the sun.
“Make some noise.”
The Olympic Crowd.

The speed, the strength, the determination.
The Paralympians.

The press, the noise, the smell,
the expense, the dispensable,
the triumph of desire over necessity.
“Spend some money.”
The Westgate Shopping Centre.