Stuff yer bake

And that’s a hell of a lot as I have a very big mouth, and eyes bigger than my belly (perhaps I should join the circus as the freak act). I have had a feeling of deep foreboding in the pit of my stomach since I enrolled for the cake decorating and sugar craft course. I found out a while ago when the courses ran and rang them to get information. All the courses were very popular and I was told that I was going on a waiting list at one place and with the other place I was told to ring back in December. I decided to ring them tonight to see if I could enrol and was told I needed to go there to do that. I arrived at the college after a bit of arguing over directions and ringing back to get instructions and after filling in the form to enrol was told there were two different courses for different abilities. One was an absolute beginners course (the one I need to be on) and one for more experienced decorators (i.e. not me). The only problem is, the beginners course starts when I’m at work. So being me, I decided the small matter of me having zero experience with decorating wasn’t a problem. Thirty-eight pounds later I’m all signed up, oh God!

The stupidity of what I’ve done is starting to slowly sink in. Why can’t I ever be patient? Phoning the other place again might have been an idea also, but after driving out there it seemed a shame to come away with nothing. Well, wish me luck! I’ll just have to flutter my eyelashes sweetly and hope they take pity on me, that and buy a cake decorating book immediately and get making cakes from now until January!

We cooked the pork last night and it was very nice. It was a tad overcooked as we wanted to get really good crackling. I think next time I might put the temperature up higher initially to get the crackling going or take the crackling off at the end and cook it separately for the last while. The taste of the pork was really nice and the stuffing worked out well too. I won’t be buying a joint of meat from the supermarket again if I can help it and if everybody tries to buy free range it will hopefully become cheaper for us all :-).

Technorati Tags: cake, decorating, pork, crackling, course, free range, gloucester old spot, stuffing, roast, cooking

It’s becoming an expensive habit going to Berkswell farm shop (for some reason we always go when it’s my boyfriends week to pay for food, hahaha) but I think I would rather have a really good free range, rare breed joint of meat less often than something not nearly as good every Sunday. We bought a boned loin of Gloucester Old Spot pork and I intend to stuff it with a mixture of apricots soaked in orange juice and brandy, bread crumbs, walnuts, a little sausage meat, a chicken liver or two to enrich it and a cooking apple. I’m not sure how it will turn out but you’ve got to try these things. I will tell you how it turns out anyway and hopefully get my trusty photographer to take some yummy pics of it.

My boyfriend has been bugging me to make a Bakewell tart for ages. For all those people who don’t know what it is, it’s a pastry base with jam spread on top of the pastry then an almondy batter is poured over and cooked in the oven. The result is a moist nutty tart that I absolutely love. I got the recipe from Tamasin Day-Lewis’ book, Tamasin’s Kitchen Bible. I was intending to make it with raspberry jam, but I spotted some Morello cherry jam while I was at the farm shop and had to have it. Cherries and almonds go so well together.

This was my first attempt at making it and I hope you’ll agree that it turned out rather well (for all you know it tasted like crap). I haven’t really made much pastry before but like my Mother, who is also good at making pastry, I have cold hands, which is apparently the key to great pastry. I heard a really good tip for rolling out the pasty and safely transferring it into the tart tin. Once you’ve made the pastry put it in the fridge for half an hour wrapped in cling film. Then take it out put the ball of pastry onto a sheet of cling film and press it till it’s a bit flatter. Put another sheet of cling film on top of the pastry and roll it out to it’s required size. Peel the cling film off the top of the pastry and transfer the pastry, pastry side down with the other sheet of cling film uppermost into the tin, easing it in gently. Once the pastry is pressed well into the tin, remove the top sheet of clingfilm and then refrigerate the pastry again for half an hour before use.

When I get into the kitchen, being a couple of contestants short of a game show, I normally do something stupid, and today was no exception. Having taken the tart out of the oven, I thought it might be nice to have some icing sugar dusted over the top. I got the box out of the cupboard without looking at the front and proceeded to lovingly dust the top of my tart with cornflour (I’m convinced I was blonde in a former life). So it looked lovely for the pictures but wasn’t exactly a stunning addition to the taste. Despite the cornflour with a little actual icing sugar mixed in, it tasted lovely and it won’t last long (back to aerobics tomorrow then!).

Technorati Tags: Bakewell tart, Berkswell farm shop, pork, icing sugar, pastry, stuffing, jam, almonds, pictures

I’m on a mission to lose weight before Christmas. I have given up on fad diets, I’ve done them all and they don’t work in the long term. I tend to eat healthy food normally (I can tell you’re thinking that all the food I’ve talked about in this blog doesn’t sound particularly healthy, and you’d be right), but when I decide I’ve got to lose some weight, I seem to spend the whole time thinking about the stuff I can’t have (the staff in the local cake shop with my tongue marks on the window can vouch for that).

Keeping the diet in mind, when we went to Leamington Spa on Saturday, we stopped in a little Italian restaurant that we have been to a few times for lunch. The lunch menu used to have some lovely salads on it which I thought I would have, but they only had pasta, and large sounding main courses. I would love to have the pasta but I’m pretty sure I’m intolerant to wheat (I know it’s very fashionable these days and anyway, if some kind person placed a large slice of chocolate cake in front of me it would be rude to say no) so I couldn’t have those. The only other thing I thought I might like was Risotto, and lovely as it was it’s not generally accepted as being low fat. At least I tried, that should count for something, although my knicker elastic says different!

Well I’m having something reasonably healthy tonight. It’s a sort of adapted recipe from Jamie’s Kitchen with a chicken stuffed with cous cous, and yes cous cous is made from wheat but I’ve found a special barley cous cous which tastes pretty much the same. We put almonds, sultanas, mint, orange and lemon zest and juice and olive oil and packed it into the chicken. The only thing I would suggest with the recipe is that you need to weigh your chicken once you have stuffed it and work out how long it needs to cook (20 mins per half kilogram plus an extra 20 mins) as we have fallen fowl (oh how clever, foul, chicken hehe) of the cooking time on occasions. So the diet continues…. just after I have these chocolate biscuits!

Technorati Tags: cake, chicken, cous cous, diets, wheat intolerance, Christmas, Italian

I paid a visit to the lovely Berkswell farm shop again this weekend. We decided to do a Jamie Oliver dish (from his most recent book Cook with Jamie) that we have done a couple of times now, which is slow-roast duck pasta. They didn’t have any fresh duck unfortunately, but we got a frozen one which was a little pricey at £10, but the skin actually crisped up a bit better without any wailing or sacrificing of virgins (I retract my obsenities hurled at chefs, all I needed to do was get a hold of a decent duck). 

I also made an Irish stew (I’ve got to uphold the stereotype somehow) at the weekend so I asked for some cheap cut of lamb, neck or something like that. The butcher said he had some North Ronaldsay lamb chops (the world renowned seaweed eating ones from the Orkney Islands, which are off the North coast of Scotland) but that it was more like mutton so could do with a bit of stewing. The flavour was lovely and he gave it to us for the price of neck so it was all good.  We also got some of their own dry cured bacon and old fashioned thick pork sausages, both of which went down very nicely for lunch (the diet starts tomorrow).

Technorati Tags: North Ronaldsay Lamb, Irish stew, sausages, dry cured bacon, duck, pasta, Jamie Oliver

Well this weekend I went to the Cake 2006 show at the NEC in Birmingham. What a mistake that was! It just showed me the huge amount of patience and money you need to get started in cake decorating seriously, both of which I have in short supply (and you still want to take up a career in this?)

I was intending to take some photos of all the amazing cakes on display but it was wall to wall bodies (most of them post-menopausal) and of course I have a memory like a mentally institutionalised goldfish so I forgot to take a camera. The amount of equipment available was mind boggling. I half expected to see a machine that baked the cake, decorated the cake and picked your nose for you at the same time (I’m saving up for that one). I think it might be a bit premature to start buying any of this stuff as I can’t even decorate my face without screwing it up and I’ve had years of practice!

Talking about cakes, I made a christmas cake this week. It sounded like a really nice recipe, with sultanas, dried pears, stem ginger, dates, glace cherries all soaked in whiskey overnight. Some of it was blended and put in the cake mixture with the rest of the soaked fruit. It needs to mature for a bit (apparently an apple put in with the cake helps it to mature quicker) so I’ve got a few weeks before I cover it in a lovely smooth whiskey icing (slap it on and hope for the best). Hopefully if I remember, photos will follow.

Technorati Tags: cake, decorating, Cake 2006, Christmas cake, whiskey, icing

Well it’s been a few days since my last post. My parents were over this weekend, which seems to take much organising, cleaning and tidying accompanied with an over indulgence of food and drink, followed up with some necessary cleansing and purging of ones body (hence why I’m having pasta and healthy tomato sauce for dinner on a Sunday night).

It was worth it though, as I discovered a few good places in Coventry. Someone in work told me about Berkswell Farm Shop, just 8 miles away from where I live in Coventry, that sold free range meats and game and rare breed pork. I thought that my parents and I should go and see what there was and maybe get something for dinner for the two nights they were eating here.

We arrived at the shop which is surrounded by outbuildings and lots of chickens and a few sheep and a pony (there was a rabbit too, but unfortunately he was hanging by the door like a furry bell pull). We went into this quite small but welcoming shop, which was packed to the rafters with preserves and cheese as well as fresh fruit and veg. We ended up getting a brace of pheasants and a shoulder of pork which were both delicious. My Dad cooked the pheasants with dry cure bacon and served it with a brandy cream sauce and I slow roasted the pork, which is probably the best way of doing it as it’s quite a fatty cut of meat.

The pork had wonderful crackling which we haven’t really properly achieved before, and I think that is partly due to the quality of the meat. I think it’s really important to buy these old breeds but even more important to buy free range food and support this method of animal rearing. The meat you get is so much better, and the little piggies and other animals get to root about the place happily.

We cooked the pork to a recipe that I have seen many chefs and cooks do. I don’t know who did it first but I saw it in one of the River Cafe books. The pork skin needs to be scored, which is better done by your butcher as they are tough skinned little buggers, and then the whole joint is rubbed with quite a few cloves of garlic (they suggest 8-10 but use however many you like, remember the garlic will mellow with cooking and it is cooked for a long time) crushed with salt and a good handful of fennel seeds ground in a pestle and mortar. They also suggest putting a crushed dried chilli in with it but I leave it out. Finally drizzle the joint with olive oil and put it in a oven as hot as the very fires of hell (as high as your oven will go, about 240 degrees centigrade) for half an hour to get the skin crackling. Then the joint is taken out of the oven, turned over so it’s skin side down and lemon juice is squeezed over (a couple of lemons will do). It is then returned to the oven which has been turned down to about 130 degrees centigrade and it will roast happily for anywhere between 8 and 24 hours. I turned it over again towards the end to crisp the skin up a bit more. We served it with roast potatoes cooked in duck fat and braised red cabbage Delia style.

The other place we found was a really good nursery in Baginton called Smith’s. My parents got me an apple tree and my Dad got a Hazelnut tree, but they had a huge array of plants, all beautifully kept and presented and the staff were very knowledgeable and helpful. So hopefully sometime maybe next year I may be getting my own eating apples from the garden, but I won’t get my hopes up, I seem to kill plants with the greatest of ease.

Well I will finish now and attempt to digest the remainder of the weekend’s food. Keep rootlin’ and tootlin’ happy pigs!

Technorati Tags: pork, free range, organic, rare breed, recipe, game, pheasant, farm shop, nursery, plants, trees, gardening, cooking, cookery, delia smith, red cabbage

I can tell you are waiting with baited breath to see if the duck came out as crisp as newly fallen snow. In short, did it hell! I followed Tamasin Day-Lewis’ fool-proof, you must be a cretin if you can’t get it crisp (of course I’m misquoting the lovely Tamasin somewhat) method. It involved rubbing with salt and pepper, browning it all over in the pan and then putting it in at 220 degrees centigrade for half an hour and then the rest of the time at 200, taking it out a couple of times to prick it all over with a skewer. Despite it being disappointingly limp-skinned, the actual duck was lovely (besides a little less duck skin would keep my control knickers in service for a while longer), and served with beautifully crisp roast potatoes cooked in duck fat, so I can’t complain really (I can hear faint ranting in my ear about children in Africa and they would appreciate it crispy skinned or no!)

Aside from the duck there were some triumphs this weekend (and no it wasn’t sliding neatly into my slim jeans. Haven’t a hope in hell with the stuff I’ve been eating these past two weeks). Despite the less than glowing reference I gave her duck skin taming method, her book, Tamasin’s kitchen bible, is actually very good and full of nice, easy to follow recipes and lots of pictures (pictures are very important to me). We made her banana bread, which was so good it didn’t even last twenty-four hours (the Kitchenaid is getting some good use). I think the incredibly ripe bananas helped but it also had sultanas, walnuts and honey in it (Pooh bear utopia!)
Wine featured heavily in last night’s duck skin drama, leaving me a little tired and emotional so I will go to bed early and dream of a large chocolate cake.

Technorati Tags: duck, banana bread, wine, Tamasin Day-Lewis

That’s my philosophy when things go a shape resembling a spherical english fruit (pear-shaped if that went a little north of your noodle). Well the pilaff was all ok, the chicken wasn’t too dry but it doesn’t seem to matter too much with that dish as it’s all cooked in chicken stock which might inject a little more moisture into it. We tend to do that dish quite a lot really, as it’s simple and tasty.

I have bought a duck to do for tomorrow’s dinner and as always I am in search of the holy ‘crispy duck skin’ grail. It is one of those things that, until you have mastered it you wouldn’t dare call yourself a cook (possibly a slight exaggeration). I have seen so many recipes for crispy duck and pork crackling that are advertised as fool-proof, never fail methods but they never seem to work. Well not for me, and I’m speculating here and you may call me a liar and slap my wrist if I’m proven to be wrong, it doesn’t work for a large proportion of the general duck roasting public.

Aside from digging the bicycle pump out of the garage (ok, I live in a mid terrace and don’t have a garage, but I’m trying to paint a picture here!) pumping it up to resemble some sort of culinary rugby ball and glazing it lovingly with an oxyacetaline torch, I don’t know the inside secrets of crispy skinned perfection. Maybe these overpaid, premadonna chefs keep fobbing us off with these half-baked (see what I did there?) half-soaked (God I’m hilarious) recipes that don’t deliver the crispy goods, so that they can retain all the glory.

If anyone out there has some pearls of wisdom and feel they want to divulge this closely guarded secret I would appreciate it, as would my father. There have been many nights when in the Bell household, the air has been a tinge of blue when yet again the duck has come out of the oven and the skin is sad and limp. This is when you marinate yourself in a few glasses of wine and it will all be fine.

Technorati Tags: duck, crispy, roast, wine, pilaff, recipe, advice

As it turns out, not only am I clumsy, I am also forgetful and bad at reading things like recipes, but lets gloss over that for now. I unwittingly left two chicken breasts in the oven for about 47 mins at 200 degrees centigrade. Remember boys and girls don’t try and write a blog entry when you’re meant to be keeping an eye on the dinner! So the result was that the flesh is as dry as the Sahara but the upside is that the skin is lovely and crispy (shame we’re not using the skin in the pilaff it’s going into). As for the Delia dish , it was actually quite nice, so I don’t screw things up that often. The aforementioned pilaff is tonight’s speciality, which is quite simple, tasty and conforms to some of the rules of the accursed Weightwatchers. I am quite proud of the fact that my own flat leaf parsley will be added to the finished dish, a plant that a mentally challenged, physically handicapped chimp could grow if he was blind folded, but I’m proud none the less, as my fingers are distinctly ungreen, but turning a sort of shade of lime as I continue to learn. Hopefully some purple sprouting broccoli should be sprouting in my direction come the start of next year, so I will keep you posted.

Technorati Tags: chicken, parsley, broccoli, gardening, pilaff

I have found it and I have bought it!. I have purchased the zenith of all kitchen electrical equipment, the artisan Kitchenaid food mixer (hopefully some nice attachments are winging their way to me with this plug, Kitchenaid). “You cannot have possibly bought that on ‘your’ NHS salary” you may exclaim, but don’t worry I got it on ebay for no less than £120 from a nice lady who lives in Birmingham (it made all the arguments over directions to go pick it up worth while). Sure it’s American made, I need a transformer to plug it into the mains and I have a slight worry that the difference in wattage may blow up my house, but it was a bargain!

I’m officially in love! I haven’t really made a hell of a lot with it as yet, but it’s so pretty it wouldn’t matter if I never made anything in it ever again. I will of course be using it again because not only is it pretty, it’s sturdy and does lots of cool things, like beat stuff (without the elbow grease, blood, sweat and tears).

I haven’t as yet managed to jam any appendages in it yet, as I am likely to do at some point, as I am one of, if not the, clumsiest person I know (and I want to go into cake decorating ’cause that won’t all end in tears, and a small but essential amount of swearing).

This all leads me to cooking with a disability. Last night, on the way out to aerobics (I’ve gotta work off the cake somehow) I slammed my middle finger in the, rather hefty, wooden front door (my boyfriend still maintains it was to get out of aerobics). Some stamping and tears ensued and now a rather bruised chippolata-like finger has emerged, rendering me somewhat impotent in the culinary department. You may think that calling it a disability is something of an exaggeration, but you trying jointing a chicken with an insanely sharp Japanese chef’s knife and an essential finger out of action! But, as the ever faithful Goddess, of the domestic type, (well just cooking really as I don’t scrub my front step nearly as often as I should) I struggle on and have managed to rustle up a chicken and tarragon Delia Smith dish for tonight’s dinner (I’ll let you know how that goes).

Technorati Tags: Kitchenaid, chicken, tarragon, disability