Not losing recipes since 2009
8oz flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
4 oz chopped suet
3 oz sugar
4 oz currents
milk to mix
mix all into a soft dough and place into a pudding cloth, then roll into a cloth with a little room for expansion. tie at both ends. steam for 2.5 to 3 hours.
For 4 good sized Cornish Pasties
500g strong bread flour
120g lard
25g cake margarine
5 gms salt
175 gms cold water
Pastry
Mix fat lightly into flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.
Add water and mix until pastry clears and becomes elastic.
Leave to rest for 3 hours in a refrigerator
FILLING
450g good quality beef skirt
450g potatoes ( a firm waxy potato such as Maris piper.)
250g Swede
200g onion
Salt & pepper
butter
slice the filling finely then add to the rolled out circles of pastry raw. Layer the vegetables and meat adding plenty of seasoning. Put a knob of butter on top.
Cooking time – 165c for about 40 mins
I never tried this until meeting Deird & Denise. Denise used to cook a bucket of this at a time. Denise likes this cooked down, so that the potatoes are mushed in to the juices. I like it a little less cooked, with a thin ‘gravy’ and firmish potatoes. To get it right, stew the lamb for an hour or so before the veg goes in.
1/2 Leg of lamb
2lb potatoes
1lb carrots
a handful of rosemary
Cut the meat from the bone, and dice. brown the meat a little in a big pan
Add water to cover, and simmer gently for an hour
Add the potatoes and carrots to the pot
cook till the potatoes are cooked, and falling apart.
salt, to taste
Roast beef is soo English, it’s what the the French still call the English as a nick-name/ insult- “les rosbifs”- although wikipedia believes this may be because the English have a reputation for turning up in the France, and burning their lilly-white skin in the hot sun.
For a few years, you couldn’t get beef on the bone. You can now, and it’s worth tracking down, because it adds to the flavour of the beef. The other thing you need is some fat on the meat. Without the fat it just doesn’t taste, well, of beef.
The other thing it needs is a little bit of colour. Perfect beef, for me, is on the bone (beef rib) with some fat marbled through it, roasted in a hot hot oven for not quite long enough. It needs to be dark on the outside, and pink and juicy in the middle.
To the outside of the beef, before it goes into the oven, run in a mix of salt, dijon mustard and worcestershire sauce. To rest the beef on, under the beef, throw in some whole garlic cloves, 1/2 or 1/4 onions (2). This’ll help the stock flavour up as the beef roasts. Roast for 20 minutes in the hottest oven you can (240C ) then for 20 minutes a a kilo, at 190C . Less for Rare beef, and more for well done.
Once the meat is roast- AND THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT- let the meat rest for at least 30 minutes. It will be mildly warm when you carve it. If you’re serving it with gravy then carve it nice and thin- it should be mild pink and tender.
Potatoes, cream and cheese- what’s not to like. Whenever I make this I make more than I need, because it’s just sooo more-ish. It’s a cheesey potato side dish that goes really well with rich food or a steak. It takes a little time to prepare and cook up, but worth the wait.
Once cooked, the cheesey browned topping just looks great. Deird usually eats the toppng off any leftovers before it gets a chance to make it to the fridge. Dang.
Sometimes restaurants make this with a lot of cream and not a lot of potato- so there’s potato swimming in cream. I make it drier, so that you slice out a portion from a big dish, and it just about holds it’s shape. Mmmmm.
The best advice for making this is to cut the potato slices as thinly as you can. Use a mandolin if you have one, buy one if you haven’t.
1kg floury potatoes
2 Cloves garlic, crushed
Pinch nutmeg
75g gruyere, grated
300ml double cream
100ml milk
Slice potatoes thinly on a mandolin,
Butter a “lasagne” dish and layer in potatoes, with some garlic, nutmeg and cheese between layers.
Pour cream and milk over, so that it fills in the gaps, ans just covers the potatoes.
Sprinkle on remaining cheese.
Bake, for about 45 minutes- although it depends on how big a dish, and how deep it all is.
There are two schools of thought on Yorkshire puddings- those who prefer the small individual puff-balls of puddings that blow up to be the size of tennis balls, and the those who prefer the single monster big pudding that you slice up and serve. The big puddings rise just as well in the oven, but fall back flat once they’re out, leaving a fluffy and crisp edge, and a flat and dense middle. The big pudding thinkers prefer the contrast of light and fluffy at the edge, contrasting with the flat and dense in the middle. The small pudding thinkers just like the crisp lightness of the puffballs.
Personally, I sit in the middle- I like both. Although, I can’t stand the pre-made or Frozen yorkshires- they’re all dry, and lose their texture and elasticity. BTW- never use self raising flour to make these- the texture is all wrong. Yorkshire Puddings rise because when they go into a hot oven, a skin forms on the batter, and the middle bit boils up and needs to expand- so you end up with a big hollow space inside a crisp skin.
Rules of the Yorkshire Pudding:
The batter recipe:
3 eggs
115g/4oz Plain flour
275ml/½ pint milk
beef dripping if you have it, veg oil if you don’t
salt
Mix it all up so that you have a smooth batter, put into the pre-heated dish and slap into the oven.
My Dad always goes on about a steak and kidney pudding- but I’ve never made one. I found this recipe- and intend to make i one day
To serve 6
First make the filling.
Trim and cut into large cubes a kilo of beef skirt, shin or chuck.
Cut up and remove the cores from about 500g beef kidneys. Season 50g plain flour well with salt and pepper.
Heat a little fat or oil in a large, heavy frying pan until fairly hot but not smoking. With floured hands, toss a couple of handfuls of beef in the seasoned flour, then put it in the pan. Brown well on all sides, then transfer to a large saucepan.
Brown all the meat like this, including the kidneys, in batches to avoid overcrowding the pan.
When all the meat is browned, deglaze the empty pan with a glass of red wine, stirring and scraping up any burnt, crispy bits with the edge of a spatula.
Add the deglazed juices to the meat in the casserole. Heat a little more fat or oil in the now-clean frying pan, add 1 large or 2 medium onions, sliced, and sweat for a few minutes, until softened.
Add to the meat. Add a scant tablespoon of tomato ketchup, a teaspoon of good English mustard, a bay leaf and about 750ml beef stock or water (it should barely cover the meat). Stir gently and bring to a gentle, tremulous simmer. Cook for about 11/2 hours, until the beef is fairly tender but not ‘finished’. It is going to get another couple of hours in the pudding. Note that skirt and shin will take a little longer than chuck steak. Check the seasoning towards the end of cooking and adjust as necessary.
At this stage the filling can be left, covered, in the fridge for a day or two. Or it can be very successfully frozen. If you like mushrooms in your steak and kidney pudding, gently fry about 250g whole button mushrooms or sliced larger mushrooms in a little fat or oil for a few minutes to let the juices run, then add to the filling before you make up the pudding (they will cook through in the pudding).
Now make the suet crust. Mix 250g beef suet with 500g self-raising flour and a pinch of salt. Add cold water by degrees (up to about 150ml may be necessary) until you have a workable dough that is not too sticky. Set aside about a third for the lid and shape the remaining two-thirds into a ball. Roll out on a floured surface to about 1.5cm thick and use to line a greased pudding basin of about 1.5 litres capacity. Pile in the meat with its gravy. Roll out the lid piece. Wet the edges of the lining crust and place the lid over it, pressing firmly with your thumb to stick the lid to the lining.
Tie a double layer of pleated greaseproof paper over the top of the pudding basin, then tie up the whole basin in muslin or a cotton cloth, if you like, to make it easier to raise and lower into the pan. Place on an upturned saucer inside a large pan of simmering water that comes a third of the way up the basin. Steam, with the saucepan lid slightly ajar, for 2 hours, topping up with boiling water from the kettle to stop the pan boiling dry.
Unwrap the pudding basin and run a palette knife carefully around the edge to loosen the pudding. Place a warmed plate over the top and invert the basin. Give it a shake to turn out the pudding. It should hold its shape – at least until you cut the first slice!
Serve with steamed seasonal greens, such as Savoy cabbage, winter greens or Brussels sprouts, and good English mustard. On a cold February day a real trencherman could no doubt manage a dollop of good buttery mash as well.
Apparently, this is a little like slow gin.
I borrowed this recipe from the The River Cottage web site.
Ingredients:
2kg / 4lbs blackberries
225g / 8oz sugar (or less according to taste)
1 bottle whisky
Place the fruit, sugar and whisky in a large screw top or kilner style jar. Shake every few days until the sugar has dissolved.
Place in a dark cupboards for three months, turning slowly to mix once every two weeks or so.
Strain and bottle. The whisky will have turned a deep, dark purple. It can be drunk straight away, but the flavour will continue to improve for up to 2 years.
• 250g fresh pig’s liver
• 250g fatty pork scraps
• 1 fresh pig’s heart, split in half and rinsed
• 100g ham or bacon scraps
• 100g fresh breadcrumbs
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• Salt
• Freshly ground white pepper
• ½ tsp Mace
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp all spice
• a handful of chopped fresh parsley
• a few sage leaves, finely chopped
• small sprig of rosemary, finely chopped
• small chopped red chilli (or dried chilli)
• Caul fat or streaky bacon for wrapping (optional)
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4.
2. Roughly chop then coarsely mince all the meats and combine in a bowl.
3. Add the breadcrumbs, onion, herbs, spices and some salt and pepper and mix together thoroughly
4. Shape mixture into six balls.
5. Wrap each in a square of caul fat. Cut it large enough to overlap – it will bind on itself to hold the faggots together.
6. If you’re using streaky bacon, stretch each rasher with the back of a heavy knife, making them as long and as wide as possible (approximately two per faggot).
7. Flatten the balls slightly and place on a baking sheet or in an ovenproof dish into which they fit snugly and roast for 50 to 60 minutes, basting once or twice.
Not made these, but I saw the recipe, and thought it was worth a pop. Let me know how it is.
1kg wholemeal spelt flour, plus extra for dusting
10g powdered dried yeast
20g fine salt
600ml warm water
A little sunflower oil
Combine the flour, yeast and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the water and, with one hand, mix to a rough dough. Adjust the consistency if you need to, with a little more flour or water, to make a soft, easily kneadable, sticky dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and clean your hands.
Knead until the dough is smooth, stretchy and no longer sticky – about 10 minutes. Shape the dough into a tight round. Oil the surface of the dough, put it in the wiped-out mixing bowl, cover the bowl with cling film and leave to ferment and rise until doubled in size, which should take about an hour.
Pre-heat the oven to 250C/500F/Gas Mark 9, or as high as it will go. Deflate the dough by tipping it onto the work surface and pressing all over with your hands.
Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces. Shape into tight rounds, coat with flour and press flat with the palm of your hand to about 5cm high. Lay them on a lightly-oiled baking tray, so they are just touching each other. Leave to prove for about 30 minutes, or until nearly doubled in size.
Put the tray in the oven, and close the door as quick as you can. Bake for about 15 minutes, until well browned, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.