Strawberries!

This time last year, we had a bit of a problem with cherries - our cherry tree was massively productive, we didn't have a freezer and we couldn't even give them away because everyone else in the village had the same problem.

This year, we had a very hard winter and it froze too late for the cherry trees to be happy. Our tree has literally (and I use the word in the full knowledge of its meaning) no cherries on it (well, there were two, but something ate them before they had time to ripen). The neighbours are having the same problem.

The strawberries, however... now that's a different story! We inherited a fairly large strawberry patch when we bought the house, and, despite the slugs' best efforts, we've had 4.7 kilos (just over 10 pounds) of strawberries in five days.

So, what are we doing with all these strawberries?

This should give you an idea... :-)

BN for Vendetta

Slightly worrying phenomenon observed in the biscuit tin the other day:

There's a definite resemblance there! Should I be worried?

Parsnips. And soup. So parsnip soup, then.

The French, until recently, didn't know about parsnips. Well, the majority of them didn't anyway.
I actually taught ze husband the French word for parsnip, which is panais (N.B. to be pronounced as "pané", not "pannayiece". Thank you for understanding).

Being English and, moreover, northern, I am well acquainted with most root vegetables, and parsnips are nothing unusual. That doesn't mean to say I like them. I acutally have something of a loathing for roast parsnips, in particular. There's just something about the sweetness that I don't like. If they were being blatantly and unashamedly sweet, like sweet potatoes (especially the kind with marshmallows on top, om nom nom), that would be fine, but...no, they try to be subtle, and as ze husband keeps telling me, "trop de subtilité tue la subtilité".

There is one way I like parsnips, though, and that's in soup. I made parsnip soup for ze in-laws a couple of weeks ago and they liked it, too. (It was actually them who bought the parsnips, having discovered some lurking in an obscure corner of the supermarket veg aisle. All is not lost).

I think a recipe may be in order, don't you? (I'm not sure where "order" is, mind. Let me know if you find it).

Ingredients (to feed 6. Maybe. It depends on how hungry they are).

Parsnips say...6 really big ones, or 8-10 smaller ones
Stock -about a litre. Homemade or not. I don't really care. I don't actually think it makes that much difference (ok, ok, burn me, I'm a food heretic. Whatever. It's cold outside, anyway).
Olive oil -a good drizzling sort of amount.
Onions- a few. (No, I didn't say ANYTHING about my recipe being precise)
A potato or two -if you want, and depending on how parsnippy you like your soup. Potatoes dilute the parsnippiness a bit and make the parsnips go further if you think you might be a bit short. (I'm a bit short. Just not of parsnips).
Curry powder - eh, a bit. We'll think about how much when we get to it).
Seasoning


Preheat oven to GM7/200°c. If you use Fahrenheit, go and turn on the computer and look up the conversion.

Peel and chop parsnips, onions and potatoes. Big or small chunks, batons or slices, whatever makes you happy. It's all going to get liquidised later anyway. Put vegetables on baking tray, drizzle with a decent amount of olive oil, stick in oven for about an hour (but keep an eye on them after the first 30 minutes, if they start to burn around the edges reduce the temperature). During this time, go away and translate something, or write a blog post, or have a nap. Or something.

Take vegetables out of oven and put in Big Saucepan. Pour on stock. The liquid should just cover the vegetables. If it doesn't, add a bit more boiling water. No-one will mind.

Let it cook for a bit until the vegetables are all properly soft. Liquidise, either using a handheld blender in the pan or in small batches in a freestanding blender. If you're anything like me, have a fight with the blender, splatter half the kitchen with soup, clean it up and then start again with the blending.

Put soup back in pan. Add salt and pepper to taste and one dessert spoon of curry powder (or cumin, if you have cumin. Nom nom cumin). Stir. Taste. Add more curry as necessary. I think I ended up putting around 3 dessert spoons in mine. Maybe.

Eat soup and feel like a paragon of healthy eating. Or a tarragon of healthy eating. Or an Aragorn of healthy eating, if that's what takes your fancy (note the absence of Legolas here. If we were talking about elfy eating, maybe he'd be around. But we're not).

Happy parsnip hunting!

Cui Miam Miam

Tonight, we're having people over for dinner, Breton-style.

Ze Boy and I have been thinking about galettes for a couple of weeks now, and, as usual with this kind of thing, we'll only be able to get the idea out of our heads once we've eaten them. Alas, I couldn't find buckwheat flour in Tesco, but I have brown flour, so that'll just have to do. A friend of ours has stealthily imported some proper cider (none of this strongbow nonsense, thank you very much!), so the thing is going to be Done Properly.

For pudding, I must admit to having found inspiration in an Oldelaf et Monsieur D song. After trawling the internet for a recipe (and trying to work out how to spell the damn thing, Google doesn't work if none of the letters in the words match up), I finally found a trustworthy one on a friend's blog. The thing I've made goes by the somewhat unpronouncable name of Kouign Amann, or, to use Ze Boy's version of it, Cui Miam Miam. Actually, he informs me that it's meant to be spelt "couie miam miam", but that sounds a bit too much like something extremely vulgar, so I've gone for the Cui version. In any case, a kouign amann by any other name would still have as much butter in it. Om nom nom.

Back to the cupboard now to hide until our guests arrive.

One-a-Penny, Two-a-Penny

Hot Cross Buns!

As ever, apologies for my pathetic attempts at photography. They actually looked quite pretty in real life.

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I am a great believer in Hot Cross Buns. Firstly, they have a fixed season, and a short one too- it makes you appreciate them all the more knowing they're only around for a few weeks. Secondly, bread products. Nom nom nom. With raisins in them. OM nom nom nom nom.

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(Incidentally, the Woodsettes scored a major victory the other day- we managed to get both our parents to use the word "nom" in the course of one meal. Virtual high five? Yes, I think so).

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Thirdly, there's all the symbolism. The cross bit is pretty obvious. But there's also the fact that you wait three hours for them to rise (spot the Easter parallel...) and that they're traditionally made in batches of 12, like the 12 disciples.

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Home-made hot cross buns, however, have always been a bit of a problem. Firstly (yes, I'm in a numerical listing mood, can you tell?) they tend to be a bit dense, veering towards the cannonballesque. Secondly, they're practically inedible within six or seven hours as they get even harder. Thirdly, even fresh out of the oven, eating the traditional flour-and-water cross bit is in itself something of a penitential experience.

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This year, I decided it might be time for a new recipe. Normal bread without chemical treatment goes stale very quickly, a fact anyone who's tried to eat a baguette more than a day old can attest to. Brioche, on the other hand, is much softer to start with and keeps a bit better because of the fat content. It also gets eaten faster because, well, it's tastier. The obvious solution to the hot cross bun problem? Adapt a brioche recipe! It proved fairly straightforward, actually, and the test batch I made last week (just to check, you understand) all got eaten before they went stale. The only problem was the crosses on top, which were still quite painful to eat. Now, I could have gone down the icing route, but that just wouldn't feel right- a hot cross bun should be cooked with its cross on, adding the cross later is somehow cheating.

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The answer?

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MARZIPAN!

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Had I been organised, I would have bought marazipan. I wasn't, so I made some instead. It's very straightforward, actually, and for once I wasn't left with half a packet of marzipan drying out at the back of the fridge. For reference, the recipe is as follows:

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4 oz ground almonds

4 oz icing sugar

1 egg white

pinch of salt

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Mix everything together. If it's too sticky, add cornflour little by little until it behaves itself. Knead and leave in fridge overnight to harden up a bit. Keep the egg yolk for glazing your hot cross buns.

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That's it! Being disorganised can be awfully tasty, you know.

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Back to the cupboard with a dozen or so hot cross buns, methinks. Om nom nom.

(Incidentally, I'm having a couple of formatting problems, so please excuse the slightly peculiar layout).

The Sugar-Free Cake Challenge

So.

A week or so ago, a friend challenged me to produce a cake with no added sugar. I did, of course, accept the challenge- not to have done so would have been rude and also somewhat pathetic (rather like Simon Cowell, methinks). The subject- sugar-free cake, not X-Factor judges- brought back memories of Food Tech at secondary school, a subject at which I did not excel, to put it mildly. The fact I didn't know how to work a conventional cooker at that point didn't help- the one (and only, as far as I can see) disadvantage of growing up with an Aga is a persistent tendency to forget to switch the oven on. One of the barely-edible monstrosities I produced in Food Tech lessons, alongside lemon meringue wallpaper paste and nasty pizza (yes, it is possible to muck up pizza!) was a sugar-free sponge cake. It was, to put it bluntly, VILE.

Haunted by the memory of the Food Tech sponge (it would, I feel, have been more successful as a discus than as a dessert), I was not entirely sure where to start.

And then I sat down and had a cup of tea, and everything was ok again.

TEA LOAF!

No added sugar. Virtually no fat (although I usually compensate for this by slathering the slices in butter, but that's a matter of personal taste). Tea. Can't be bad...

Here's the recipe:

Big heap of dried fruit (about 500g or just over 1 lb, for those who, like me, still use imperial measurements- I like them, it makes me feel all powerful like Darth Vader). Most of this is usually raisins or something raisin-related, with whatever else happens to be knocking round the dried fruit box. Apricots are good, figs are good, dates are wonderful. You could also use various nuts but not too many because they don't soak up the tea and the cake goes soggy. Dried pineapple and glacé cherries are also acceptable but I find it tends to get a bit too sweet- both are treated with sugar and that's not really what we're aiming for here, now, is it?
Slosh of orange juice (slosh= about a mouthful. Can't think of any other way to describe it)
1/2 pint, or about 225 ml, hot tea, plus enough for an extra mug
12 oz, or 300g, self-raising flour (or normal flour with 6 tsp of baking powder)
1 egg

Instructions:
1. Pour self mug of tea.
2. Tip rest of tea and orange juice on fruit. Drink your tea while the fruit enjoys its bath. Ideally you would leave the fruit to soak overnight. I'm rarely that organised. Failing that, leave it as long as you can.
3. Tip in flour and egg. The mixture should be quite dense. If you're not struggling to move the wooden spoon, add a bit more flour.
4. Dollop into loaf tin or other suitable receptacle. Stick in oven at Gas Mark 2 (erm... about 100°? In any case, low enough that you don't need to worry about pre-heating) for a good hour and a half. At the end of this time, poke it a bit, and if it wobbles, stick it back in the oven for a while. 'Tisn't critical. If you feel that way inclined, you could brush the top of the loaf/cake with a small amount of honey let down with hot water. If you don't, then don't. No big deal.

I'm afraid I don't have any pictures of this one, for the simple reason that I'm not allowed to make any more desserts until we get through all the stuff Mam and I made this weekend. I miss ze boy, he never complains about having too much food.

Best of British No. 1: The Cornish Pasty

Firstly, please understand that the title of this series of posts- "Best of British"- is not meant to be taken seriously. This is not a Murdoch-owned newspaper, nor is it an outlet for any kind of jingoistic patriotism. The idea of a British-themed series of posts comes partly from the fact that most of the people who read this site aren't, well, British, and partly from my own attempts to come to terms with major bouts of culture shock every time I come back. As for the title...well...I kind of like alliteration (looks ashamed and shuffles towards cupboard).

Titles and disclaimers aside, the idea for this series of posts is to look at British oddities, otherwise known as "stuff you can't get in France". As ever, there will be food, and there will be gnomes. There will be very little factual information and, in all likelihood, an Awful Lot of Silliness.

The Cornish Pasty was my first candidate for inclusion, not because of any personal preference, but because I had an idea, and, being completely unable to resist the oportunity for a parody...well... you'll see.

So, without much further ado (about nothing... now there's a clue...)

To a Cornish Pasty

(with apologies to William Shakespeare)

Shall I compare thee to a chicken pie?

Thou art more juicy and more succulent.

Rough winds may shake the flaky crumbs of crust

And pastry's life hath all too short a lease.

Some time too hot the fire of oven shines

And then is pastry's gold complexion dimmed

And every pie from pie some time declines

By chance, or waiting, willing teeth untrimm'd

But thy eternal flavour shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that sauce thou ow'st

Nor shall bin bag brag thou lurkest in his shade

When in his bulging gut wise man pie stow'st

So long as man can taste, and smell, and see

So long live pasties- Cornish, just like thee.

I'm sorry, Mr. Shakespeare. Really I am.

I'll go back to my cupboard now.

Cake, again

After a week or two of (vaguely) snow-related disruption, I'm back with a whole list of things to post over the next couple of weeks. There may even be some kind of organisation involved (ooo! organisation!) in the form of series of posts, but more on that later. For the time being, though, no big changes around here- just more of the same, or similar, in the form of cake.

The Smallest One was thirteen the other day, and so cake was in order. I considered making the now-somewhat-notorious Broken Glass Cake (no real glass involved, honest, I'm not really evil) but that would have required a trip outside in search of ingredients, and, well, I had other things to use up.

It turns out that, last week, I spoke too soon and there was another penguin waiting for me at home.

Well... at least I think it's a penguin. In any case, it was full of marshmallows.
Incidentally, the cookery book in the picture is Valentine Warner's What to Eat Now. My mother approves of him as "a bloke who eats", hence her possession of the cookbook. Having flicked through it, he reminds me somewhat of ze boy in his determination to eat anything with four legs.

The red plastic thing is the penguin's boater hat. Why yes, my marshmallow-filled penguin has a boater- how else is it meant to keep the sun off its face? Honestly, some people!
In any case, the opportunity to make cake with marshmallows could not be passed over.

Step 1: One chocolate cake. Photo demonstrates my ineptitude in the realms of both food photography and even slicing of cake into halves. Also, I hadn't tidied the kitchen table. Bad Dobby.


Step 2: Marshmallow gunk. Very pink. Actually, most confectionary items can be made into a satisfactory gunk for cake filling by melting them in cream, in case you were wondering. I had to take this outside to get the full effect of the Barbie-pink-ness to register in the photograph.

"Hi, George? It's Tony. We seem to have found the Weapons of Mass Destruction...
No, wait, it's just really scary-coloured cake filling".

Step 3: Assembly, crème ganache and the rest of the marshmallows. I took the cake outside, where it made friends with an ornamental frog.

Cake with Frog. Sounds like a Heston Blumenthal recipe, n'est-ce pas?

Off back to the cupboard now, possibly with what remains of the cake.

Epiphany

Yes, I know it was yesterday, but had I stopped to post photos of what follows there might not have been any left.

J'aime la galette, savez-vous comment? Quand elle est bien faite, avec du beurre dedans...
(Ok, ok, I'll stop singing now)

This, for those who don't recognise it from the mugshot or genuinely don't know what it is, is a Galette des Rois, traditionally eaten in France on 6th January and at any point between this date and the beginning of Lent, from what I gather. Since ze boy and I may well not be in France this time next year and we'll both miss it, I decided I should try making my own this year as a practice run. The ingredients weren't too hard to find, except I forgot to buy a fève- small ceramic figure/object/thingummywotsit that plays the same rôle, more or less, as the sixpence in a Christmas pudding, so I put a dried bean in the galette instead. The person who finds the fève is king for the day and has to wear a daft hat/crown/strange tinfoil object, in our case, for the rest of the day.

Strange tinfoil object, as modelled by the pot plant, who, incidentally, did not find the fève so is sort of cheating, really

Sidenote: Someone, somewhere in the world, is making an absolute FORTUNE from the production of ground almonds. There are 5 euros' worth of ground almonds in there, and that's the supermarket own-brand ones. Maybe I should become an almond farmer when I grow up. Then I could make lots and lots of macarons. Mmmmm. Food. (Trundles off to kitchen in search of biscuits to dunk in tea).

Right. 'mback, I'll try not to get crumbs everywhere. What was I saying? Ah yes. Galette des Rois.

The ladies and gentlemen of the MDL (aka ze boy and his flatmates) decided we should do the whole galette thing properly, meaning I, as the youngest, had to go and sit under the table (what is it with all the confined spaces? First the cupboard, now the table...) so I couldn't see the fève if it escaped during the cutting. I then had to decide, from my position of power under the table, who got which part. See? A fair way of deciding who gets to be king. Très français, methinks.

As it happened, there were leftovers. Leftovers! The fève has not surfaced yet, meaning that a) the galette has won, gets to be king, and there will be a regicide this evening when we finish it off (in true French style), b) someone has swallowed it, or c) it ran off somewhere in the interests of democracy. Hmmmmm. Eeeenteresting.

Happy Orthodox Christmas!

Return to Mass Catering

I'm back.

Did you miss me, chocolate mousse? Did you?

I doubt it.

The problem with chocolate-love is that it never loves you back. That said, I thought Green & Black's Butterscotch and I were developing a pretty strong relationship, but then I moved to France, where it's hard to find, and let's just say the distance thing didn't work out.

I took this mousse out in the snow to try and make friends with it. It somehow looked more willing than the other 29. Alas, a friendship between girl and chocolate product cannot last long.

Om nom nom.

Only joking. I don't eat my friends.

Not between meals, anyway.

Fairy Tale of the Kitchen

Once upon a time, there was an evil jellybabivorous hedgehog. He (for it was indeed a he- the female of the species prefers jellytots, the older siblings of the jelly babies) roamed the Frozen North committing heinous crimes of gelloinfanticide. But, one bright and sunny afternoon (why does it always have to be dark and stormy? There will be no pathetic fallacy here) the beast met his match...
















The valorous, chivalrous, and otherwise greatly respected knight Zog slew the beast, moved by the cries for help of a jelly damsel in distress (yeah, she's the pink one. How did you guess?). The damsel, as damsels are wont to do (wonton damsels, at least) rewarded her rescuer with a kiss. In doing so, further woe befell her as she fell (lots of falling!) foul of the knight Zog's betrothed. Where hedgehog failed, girl succeeded. The jelly damsel is no more.

HA.

The knight Zog, whilst pretending to be chivalrous, in fact only slew the beast because it was on his jelly-baby hunting territory.

Jelly babies were hurt in the making of this blog post. So was the hedgehog.