I don’t want these at my dinner table, even if Design Milk thinks they’re cool!

I thought I’d publish it online, as I am beginning to get tired of typing this up every year.

1 cup Sugar
1 tsp. Baking Powder
1 cup Water
1 tsp. Salt
1 cup Brown Sugar
Lemon Juice
4 Large Eggs
Nuts
1 Bottle decent quality dark Rum
2 cups Dried Fruit

Sample the Rum to check quality. Take a large bowl; check the Rum again to be sure it is of the highest quality. Repeat. Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add 1 teaspoon of sugar. Beat again. At this point, it is best to make sure the Rum is still OK. Try another cup just in case. Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 eegs and add to the bowl and chuck iin the cup of dried fruit. Pick the fruit up off the floor. Mix on the turner. If the fried druit getas stuck in the beaterers, just pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the Rum to test for tonsisticity. Next, sift 2 cups of salt, or something. Check the Rum. Now shift the lemon ice strain your nuts. Add one table. Add a spoon of sugar, or somefink. Whatever you can find. Greash the oven. Turn the cake tin 360 s and try not to fall over. Don’t forget to beat off the turner. Finally, throw the bowl through the window. Finish the Rum and wipe the counter with the cat.

Cherry Mristmas

It took some 20 minutes longer than the sheet that came with him suggested to get it fully cooked, and perhaps I should have protected the cake a bit. But it didn’t collapse in the middle as the sheet said.

Edit: The cake is very yummy, although I wish I’d not grated the apple, or had used cookers instead of Cox’s. A little more appley oomph would have made it just about perfect.

Braised Pork Shin with Saffron Mashed Potatoes substitutes cheap, easily obtainable pork shin for veal shin, and potatoes for rice. The white wine braise is very much like in Osso Buco recipes. The resultant sauce is a match made in heaven for the saffron flavoured mash, and a slightly tweaked gremolata gives the whole assemblage a fresh, slightly acidic lift.

Anyhow, last week I ordered the pork and asked the butcher to cut it thickly across the shin, through the bone. I collected this pile of meat this afternoon:

I ordered enough for two people, and was told it would cost about £5. I got enough for six people, plus trotters and bones which I can use for stock or adding flavour to gravies. And it cost just £6!

So, with the excess bagged up and in the freezer, the ingredients for the recipe looked like this:

25g butter
2tbsp olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 chunky pieces of pork shin (osso buco), approx. 750-850g
a little flour
1 onion, finely chopped
at least half a bottle of drinkable, dry white wine (as this has so few ingredients in the braise, treat yourself to something that isn’t plonk)
a touch of lemon juice
2-3 sprigs of sage

for the saffron mashed potatoes
750g floury potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
1tsp saffron threads
1 clove of garlic, peeled and crushed to a paste with a little salt
75-100ml extra virgin olive oil

for the gremolata
zest from half a small orange (I used all the zest from a mandarin)
a small handful of parsley sprigs
1 small clove of garlic, peeled and bruised

Once more I’m not going to copy out the full method; you should treat youself to this cookbook, there’s so much good stuff there.

But to give you an idea of the method, you flour and fry the pork, gently fry the onions until coloured, then braise the meat in wine, onions, sage and lemon juice. For the mash, everything but the potatoes is infused and stirred into the mash. The gremolata is scattered over the meat when served.

I’ll add a couple of tips of my own to Hopkinson’s recipe. Make sure you cut the skin and any big chunks of fat from the pieces of shin before flouring and frying. And, although Hopkinson says the meat shouldn’t take much more than 90 minutes to cook, I’d go for more like two hours as I like my meat really tender.

And I’ve got two more attempts to get this recipe 100% to my taste sitting in the freezer. I don’t think they’ll be there for long.

Am I going mad?

Nope. Herman is a sough dough culture for cake, not for bread as is usually the case. On the tenth day, you divide Herman into five, give four pieces to your friends and use the fifth to make a cake batter. And what a cake! You’d never believe it came from a sour dough culture – there’s no sourness. And it’s kept well, too – as long as it could do in a place with two dedicated cake munchers.

I’m so glad I kept one of Sam’s giveaways. I’m making my Herman cake on Sunday, and unlike her chocolate chip and fudge piece cake, mine will have apples and cinnamon. I can hardly wait. Yum!

Now comes the great bit. I’ll have four pieces of Herman to give away on Saturday. So if you live in or close to Worthing – or can get here – you can have your own piece of Herman.

Either leave a message here on the blog or drop me an e-mail to reserve your piece of yummy cake culture (Herman comes with full, simple, instructions).

Edit: All four pieces have been eagerly taken by friends. There’s no more left.

However, the chicken salad is very good, and I’ll definitely make it again.

If you’re planning to cook the two recipes, I can give you one piece of advice. Joint the chicken into breast and leg quarters and put the legs aside for the salad. In this way, you’ll have the skin intact for the next day.

We’ve chosen a pair of chicken recipes that give two meals from one chicken. They’re Poached Chicken with Saffron Sauce and Cucumber for Saturday, followed by Hot Chicken Salad with Sweet Mustard Dressing on Sunday.

OK, they may be a bit summery for December, but what the heck!

This evening, Sam and I have been blown away by a fantastic recipe in Simon Hopkinson’s The Good Cook, the book that accompanied his recent TV series. Breast of Lamb Baked with Onions has just eight lines of ingredients:

1kg boned, rolled and tied breast of lamb (my butcher didn’t have any breast, so I used neck of lamb)
salt and freshly ground black pepper
a little dripping or oil (I used rapeseed oil)
1kg onions, thinly sliced
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp vinegar (I used sherry vinegar)
2-3 tbsp anchovy sauce
2 tbsp chopped parsley

The lamb, onions and bay leaves are cooked slowly in the oven in a casserole dish with a cartouche for a couple of hours or so until the the lamb is deliciously tender. The lamb and bay leaves are removed and the vinegar and anchovy sauce added to the onions and pan liquid.

The liquid is then reduced, to get a smooth, thick soupy onion gloop.

I put the gloop in the bottom of a bowl and placed the neck of lamb on top scattered with the parsley to serve, and accompanied it with plain cooked carrots and smashed new potatoes with butter and chopped mint. Hopkinson suggests mash, but I liked the idea of mint as a traditional accompaniment for both lamb and new potatoes.

The depth of flavour in the onions and the melting lamb have to be experienced to be believed.

I’ve been a bit quick with the method description here, partly because the recipe is so simple, and partly because I urge you to go out and buy The Good Cook. It’s a cookbook that should be on your bookshelf.

I’m going to cook the recipe again very soon using the right cut of lamb. Maybe it’ll be even better, if that’s possible.

One of the reasons we liked them so much is that I was a wizard with the batter – I’m really not being big-headed here, I was brilliant at them. Never a failure, and over the years I got to the stage where I never even had to measure out the ingredients.

But, somewhere along the way, something went wrong.

Over recent years, my Yorkshire Puds have flopped. I just haven’t been able to deliver. I’ve tried all sorts of different ‘foolproof’ recipes, all to no avail.

Last Sunday I was determined to nail it once and for all. I went back to my old recipe:

6oz plain flour
2 large eggs (1 will do if you like a drier, crustier pudding)
salt
about half a pint of milk (I use semi-skimmed) to make a thinnish batter

I heated some sunflower oil for 15 minutes in a baking tin in the oven with the roast – let’s not mess about with individual puddings – whacked up the temperature to 220 degC (gas 7) when I took the meat out. I put the tin on a ring on the hob and poured in the batter quickly. It sizzled a bit, but worryingly little.

Guess what?

The pudding puffed up to perfection. Light, crunchy on the outside, and soft (not soggy) on the inside.

It was simply the best Yorkshire I’ve cooked in years.

What made the difference?

My theory is I let the batter sit in the fridge for nearly an hour before cooking. I’d been listening to those people who tell me to leave it for just 15 or so minutes. Although I don’t think it’s time that’s the important thing; it’s getting the batter really cold, so there’s as much difference in temperature between the batter and the oil as you can get.

Now all I have to do is repeat my success a few times, and I’ll be back on the rails.