TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

For October’s Random Recipe Challenge, I was paired with Alex of Dear Love Blog who chose a cookbook from my collection and then the page to cook from.

I was pleased when this book from the Hairy Bikers was chosen and after a quick flip through the pages I was hoping for page 208 (jam roly poly pudding) or page 111 (coffee and walnut cake).

But Alex gave me page 203, “Gerarda Minichiello’s meatballs”.  Which is fine because I have never cooked meatballs before.  A good look at the recipe told me that I also needed to cook what was on page 202 – a tomato sauce that the meatballs should be cooked in for the last 35 minutes.  Oh heck.

Another look also told me that Mrs Minichiello was obviously used to cooking for quite a crowd.  The quantities of ingredients would make an enormous amount of meatballs and sauce.  Also the sauce is said to take between two and five hours to cook !!  I thought about halving the recipe, or maybe cheating and cooking the meatballs in a jar of bought sauce.

I even thought about chickening out altogether but the idea of the Random Recipe Challenge from Bellau Kitchen is after all to try recipes that we might not normally do and learn new techniques along the way, if we’re lucky.

So I decided not to be a party pooper, to make the full quantity, freeze half the meatballs for future enjoyment and bottle half the sauce to keep in the fridge.

The ingredients for the pasta sauce.

The recipe was a bit vague in places.  For example, it just said to put four tins of plum tomatoes in the pan and one hour later they were still whole, floating on top of the pan.  So I decided to mash them up a bit, which meant I also mashed the vegetables which were meant to be removed before adding the meatballs – although I did carefully avoid mashing the bouquet garni teabag.  But that was fine, as I’m not fond of removing and discarding perfectly good and tasty vegetables from anything.

Having never made meatballs before, I was surprised at some of the ingredients, such as pine nuts, raisins, mint and grated Pecorino cheese.  I always thought a meatball was probably just minced beef, herbs, onions and breadcrumbs.

I had to wrestle my humungous mixing bowl out of the cupboard, the one that usually gets used once a year for the Christmas cake, to mix the ingredients together and form the balls.  The recipe said it made 30 but I got 52 out of it.

Sunday was the only day I would have the time to do the sauce.  This is when my dad comes round for his dinner in the evening.  He enjoys watching us cook and is pretty keen to try something new.

I was a bit alarmed when some of the meatballs started to fall apart when frying them.  If I make them again I will use less oil in the frying pan than stated in the recipe.

In the end the meatballs were yummy, the sauce was rich and satisfying and the complete dish looked exactly like the picture in the book, which is on page 205.  I confess we served them with vegetables as my dad is not much of a pasta person and in any case I am keen to give him veg on a Sunday as I have a sneaky feeling they’re the only ones he gets all week. 

There are leftovers for us to enjoy with pasta as intended in the recipe and of course, a freezer full of meatballs for if we decide to invite a few folk round one evening – I reckon the quantity made would serve between 8 and 12 people !!

Ingredients

For the sauce

5 tblsp olive oil

1 medium onion, peeled

1 celery stick

1 carrot, peeled

1 clove of garlic, peeled

3 dessertspoons tomato purée

4 400g tins plum tomatoes

1 680g jar passata

2tsp salt

1 bouquet garni

2 bay leaves

50ml Marsala wine

splash of balsamic vinegar

15-20 basil leaves, washed and torn

Method

In a very large pan, brown the vegetables, left whole, in the oil.  Add all the other ingredients except the last three on the list, plus water measured by filling the four empty tomato tins.

Bring to the boil and simmer for at least two hours.  (The recipe says ideally 4-6 hours!!)

If it reduces too much, add boiling water from a kettle.

Remove the vegetables, bouquet garni and bay leaves.  Add the Marsala, balsamic and basil leaves.  Check seasoning.

For the meatballs

100g white bread (the recipe suggests sourdough bread but I didn’t have any)

6 sprigs thyme

12 sage leaves

24 mint leaves

24 flat leaf parsley leaves

5 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped

100g pine nuts

150g raisins

3 large eggs

Worcestershire sauce – splash of

100g pecorino cheese, grated

500g minced lamb

500g minced beef

vegetable oil for frying

Method

Put the raisins in a bowl and cover with warm water.  Leave to soak for 5-10 minutes then drain.

Soak the bread in water for 2-3 minutes.  Squeeze out the water and put on one side.

Toast the pine nuts by heating them gently in a frying pan.  Watch carefully as they go from just toasted to burnt in no time at all.

Chop the herbs and mix with the garlic and pine nuts. 

Beat the eggs in a large bowl and add the W. sauce, herb mix and grated cheese.  Break the bread into small pieces and add with the raisins and the meats.  With very clean hands, bring it all together until evenly combined and smooth.

Take pieces of the mixture about a tablespoon in size and form into balls.

Heat a little oil in a frying pan and brown the meatballs a few at a time.  Add to the tomato sauce and cook for another 35 minutes.  Serve by removing the meatballs to a large serving dish and pour the sauce over.

Invite all your friends and family round and enjoy !!

PEAR AND WALNUT CHUTNEY

I absolutely love this time of year. September with its hint of autumn but the joy of an Indian summer. October with its beautiful colours and lovely sunshine to cheer us up and bolster us against the chilly evenings. Not long now before we can justify lighting our real fire in the living room and indulge in all that comfort food.

I have always loved autumn ever since I was a little girl. My mother and grandmother would make chutneys and pickles and there would be the Christmas cake and mincemeat to make in good time for the big event. This was long before anyone had a fridge and I don’t think freezers were even invented then.

I can also remember them taking chairs outside and sitting peeling pickling onions in the afternoon sunshine. There would be jars and jars of home-made pickles to enjoy with cold meat on a Sunday teatime throughout the winter. When Kate of What Kate Baked announced her autumn challenge I just knew that it was time to start making chutney !! Of course it’s not exactly baking, but it’s cooking and it’s autumn so I hope it counts !!

Many years ago, I heard a fifty-something Germaine Greer taking part in a TV programme about gardening and she said that middle-aged women take up gardening and making jams and pickles because they have passed their childbearing years but still need to nurture and be productive.

I remember feeling rather miffed that someone who had such radical ideas when she was younger should denounce women of a certain age, almost subscribing to the stereotype after all. Although at the time I was already on the brink of middle age myself I was still full of frantic enthusiasm and energy and the idea of growing anything (other than the occasional houseplant) seemed totally alien. I was sure it would never happen to me.

But here I am, pushing sixty and what am I doing…? Growing vegetables and making jam and chutney. The urge to do it crept up on me and was there before I even realised what was happening. So she was right.

I was delighted when my dad gave me his full crop of pears from his fairly new pear tree and consulted my cookbook for recipes. In it I found an interesting one for pear and walnut chutney.

I already had a stock of fresh walnuts, gathered on our walks with Lulu when we were in France in August. They just fall from the trees around the village and you help yourself.

I used a melon-baller to remove the cores from the pears and apples – a tip I read somewhere years ago.

The chutney was simple to make but you have to keep an eye on it, especially in the last stages when it is thickening up and likely to catch on the bottom of the pan. It’s difficult to rescue it if you burn it even slightly.

The chutney should be left to mature for a month before eating. Luckily it made four and a bit jars so the bit was handy just to make sure it was worth keeping. It was delicious !!

Ingredients

1.2kg firm pears

225g tart cooking apples

225g onions

450ml cider vinegar

175g sultanas

finely grated rind and juice of one orange

400g granulated sugar

115g roughly chopped walnuts

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method

Put the sultanas in a bowl with the orange juice and leave to soak.

Peel and core the fruit, chop into 1” chunks. Peel and quarter the onions and chop into similar sized chunks. Put the fruit and onions in a preserving pan or large saucepan with the vinegar.

Slowly bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 40 minutes until the fruit and onions are tender, stirring occasionally.

Add the sugar, sultanas, orange juice and rind to the pan. Cook gently until the sugar has dissolved then simmer for 30-40 minutes or until the chutney is thickened and there is no excess liquid. As it thickens, stir frequently to prevent burning or sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Meanwhile, lightly toast the walnuts by heating gently in a saucepan for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

When the chutney is cooked, stir in the walnuts and cinnamon.

Spoon into warm, sterilised jars, cover and seal.

Leave for one month before using and keep in a cool dark place. Keeps for about a year.

Makes 4 medium jars of chutney.

CHOCOLATE COURGETTE CAKE

When we were chez nous in our little French house in early October, we went out one day and on arriving home we found a food parcel on our doorstep.

This is not unusual.  When ever we visit friends in the village we rarely come away empty handed and all visitors arrive with gifts of food.  Sometimes this will be home-made jams or chutneys.  Often it will be armfuls of produce from the garden.

On this occasion it was a little box of tomatoes and peppers, some chard and courgettes from our friends Tim and Pauline who had called when we were out.

There were some round and some long courgettes.  I immediately had an urge to make a chocolate courgette cake, which I had made a few times before.  My recipe came from a friend who used to live in France but my only copy was back home in England.  So I went down to the tourist office in the village to use their public computer to find another one.

After a bit of Googling around, I found this recipe.  It was for a huge cake that serves 24.  I don’t have a baking tin of the right dimensions in my little French kitchen so I literally halved the ingredients and used a 22cm round spring-form cake tin.  It seemed to work.  I used the courgettes left for us by Tim and Pauline and windfall walnuts from the many trees around the village.

Apart from shelling and chopping the walnuts and grating the courgettes, the cake took very little time to make.  There was no beating of eggs or sifting of flour, although I did give the flour a bit of a whisk to aerate it a little.

The cake was very dark and moist.  You could not taste the courgette at all and in fact there was absolutely no sign of it – no little green flecks to give the game away.  It was just a very pleasantly chocolatey cake, not too sweet.  It would have been delicious covered in a cream cheese topping if you like it a bit sweeter but I just dusted it with icing sugar and served it au nature.

Unfortunately I was so keen to see what it tasted like that I forgot to take a picture until after I had cut myself a small slice.  But anyway, it was lovely.  And a good way to use up a glut of courgettes or fool the kids into eating vegetables.

CHOCOLATE COURGETTE CAKE

Ingredients

this makes a 22cm round cake

125g plain flour

190g caster sugar

35g cocoa powder

1 teaspoons bicarb of soda

½ teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 eggs

175 ml vegetable oil

170g grated courgette*

45g chopped walnuts

Method

First, grate your courgettes.  I read somewhere that this is best done by hand – if you blitz them in a food processor it may be quicker but they come out too wet.

Preheat the oven to 180°C.  Grease and line a 22 cm baking tin.

Put all the dry ingredients into a large mixing  bowl and stir together.

Add the eggs and oil and mix well.

Fold in the nuts and courgettes until evenly distributed.

Pour the mixture into the cake tin and level the surface.

Bake for around 40 minutes.  (The recipe for the full size cake says 50-60 minutes, so best to check after 35-40.)  Cool completely before dusting with icing sugar to serve.  Would also be nice iced with a cream cheese frosting or drizzled with water icing to glam it up.

Serves 12.

FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE TORTE and other adventures in gluten free baking.

When we were chez nous in France a few weeks ago, we invited friends round for a BBQ.  One of them can’t eat anything with gluten in it so we had to put our thinking caps on and be careful what we planned to eat.

A starter could be fairly straightforward and the main course was the usual BBQ food, no problem there so long as we paid attention to any marinades and dressings, but dessert was the tricky one.  I didn’t want to do the obvious fruit salad, meringues or chocolate mousse.  What I really wanted to do was to bake a cake.

My favourite cookbook at the moment is the “Popina book of baking”.  I had taken our local library copy with me and in it was a recipe for ”very chocolate cake”, which was gluten free, so that could be a possibility for our dessert.

However, I continued browsing through my selection of cookbooks that I keep in France ~ always a complete joy, to be sitting on our little terrace overlooking the rooftops of the village with a cup of tea and a pile of recipe books ~ and found a recipe for gluten free cherry cupcakes in “Baking Magic”.  I didn’t have any cherries but I did have some delicious raspberries which I thought would do instead.  The recipe uses ground almonds and a lot of whisked egg white.  It was a few days before our guests were coming so I decided to have a practice.  It’s a good job I did.

They didn’t work.  The cakes rose beautifully in the oven then at the last minute sank horribly, producing a crater in the middle where the raspberry had sunk to the bottom of the cakes.  They tasted lovely, but unless I was prepared to fill the crater with loads of icing they were not exactly the thing I wanted to serve to guests.  (Further reading suggested that over-enthusiastic whisking of the eggs can cause last-minute sinking.)

But I did glean an important snippet of information from the recipe.  It said:

“1tsp baking powder, or, if you want to make the recipe gluten-free, ½tsp bicarb and 1tsp cream of tartar”.

Sure enough, when I looked very carefully at the small print on my tub of baking powder, it said it contains wheat.  This is something the Popina book didn’t mention, in fact it said quite clearly in the recipe for “very chocolate cake” that it was a “seriously rich and creamy gluten free cake”, yet it mentions nothing about the need for gluten free baking powder.  Naughty, I thought.  I could very easily have made this cake with my ordinary baking powder, not realising it could be a problem for our guest.  It only takes a little gluten to upset the applecart.

 

In the end I decided to use another recipe for “flourless chocolate torte” which I found in this Sainsbury’s recipe book .  It uses no baking powder at all, so I decided to go with that.

If I had paid more attention to the recipe before I started, I would have noticed that it made a huge cake, baked in a 25cm springform tin.  I had nothing anywhere near that big in my French kitchen, so I filled my largest cake tin and put the rest of the mixture in a loaf tin to make a second cake.

Its appearance was not too attractive when it came out of the oven but with some icing sugar sprinkled on top and a few berries to decorate, it looked very presentable on a nice cake stand.

It was seriously chocolatey with an intensely chocolate flavour, definitely for grown-ups and not for the faint-hearted.  For myself,  I would be tempted to leave out either one of the bars of chocolate or the added cocoa powder next time.  But if serious chocolate is your thing, this is the recipe for you.

Here’s the recipe for flourless chocolate torte.

Ingredients

2 x 100g bars of dark chocolate

200g unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

5 medium eggs, separated

150g caster sugar

200g ground almonds

50g cocoa powder, sifted

icing sugar for dusting

berries to serve (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C (160° C fan).  Grease a 25cm round springform cake tin.  (I lined the bottom of mine with baking paper as well.)

Melt the chocolate and butter together in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water (or in a microwave).  Stir in the vanilla extract.

In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks with 50g of the caster sugar until pale in colour then pour in the chocolate mixture.  Fold in the ground almonds and cocoa powder.

In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.  Gradually fold in the remaining 100g caster sugar until combined.

Fold one third of the egg white mixture into the chocolate mixture.  Then gently add the rest until just combined.

Spoon the mixture into the tin, spreading evenly.  Bake for 30-35 minutes.  Let the cake stand in the tin for another ten minutes before turning out.

When cool, dust with icing sugar and serve.

Serves 8-12, depending on how much you like chocolate!

WINDFALL MUFFINS

I have made raspberry and banana muffins before, see here, and they turned out very well.  I had some very overripe bananas going begging so I decided to make them again for my dad’s mates at the club.

We have few raspberry canes in our garden that produce a handful of fruit every day all through the summer and often until early October.  I don’t know what variety they are and they wouldn’t win any beauty contest but it’s nice to have a few fresh berries on our cereal every day if we can be bothered to go and pick them.  Those that go unpicked are no good the next day.

 

 The recipe came from “the sweet life” by Antony Worrall Thompson.

All the recipes in the book use a sugar substitute called Splenda but I use proper sugar instead.  It works if you replace 8 tblsp Splenda with 100g sugar.

However, while I was out with Lulu for her morning constitutional, I picked a few blackberries.  It was a lovely warm and sunny morning, just how it should be in September, and all was well with the world.

Lulu with friends and a young bull watching us pick the blackberries.

When I was looking at the recipe, I thought if it works for raspberries and bananas, I wonder if it would work for blackberries and apples?  So I decided to have a go.

I used some eating apples that we were given by my friend Elizabeth when we were last in France.  She gave us loads and we brought a lot of them home with us.  They’re absolutely delicious and I think possibly cox’s  orange pippins. 

I considered doubling up on the ingredients and then dividing the mixture in two, adding raspberries to one half and blackberries to the other.  I then decided it was just as easy to make a second batch with blackberries whilst the raspberry ones were cooking.

The raspberries turned to mush.

The recipe suggests using frozen raspberries and in fact they are better as they hold their shape in the mixture.  Mine turned to mush when I started to combine them with the other ingredients, whereas the blackberries stayed in one piece beautifully.

 

The blackberries kept their shape.

I decided to cook the apples slightly before putting them in the mixture, just in case they might be still firm when the cakes were done.  It seemed to work.

I also decided to sprinkle the blackberry ones with some crushed sugar cubes, just for a change, before baking.  I bought these in France and have never seen them for sale in the UK ~ not in my part of the UK anyway.

Both types of muffins were scrummy.  I would definitely do the blackberry and apple ones again.

WINDFALL MUFFINS

Ingredients

200g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

100g caster sugar

100g frozen raspberries, briefly thawed, or blackberries

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

50g butter, melted

100 ml semi-skimmed milk

1 ripe banana, mashed, or two small eating apples

crushed sugar pieces (optional)

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C.  Put 9 muffin cases in a muffin tin.

If using apples, peel, core and chop them in small pieces.  Put in a saucepan with a splash of water and cook gently until beginning to soften.  Allow to cool.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl.  Stir in the sugar and raspberries (or blackberries).

In a separate bowl, beat the egg with the vanilla, melted butter and milk.  Stir this into the dry ingredients with the banana (or apples).  Avoid over mixing and stir until just combined.

Divide between the paper cases.  Sprinkle with the crushed sugar if using.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until risen and golden.  Cool on a wire rack.

Makes 9 muffins.

APRICOT AND GINGER MUFFINS

Dom at Bellau Kitchen has posted an interesting Random Recipe Challenge for September.  It is to randomly take a recipe from your stash of magazine cuttings and other clippings and cook what ever turns up.

Not that long ago I ruthlessly disposed of most of my old magazine clippings.  I had a whole box file stuffed full to bursting with them, some dating back to the 1980’s and one or two to the 1970’s.  I started out by looking at every one, but then decided that if I hadn’t used a recipe at all in the last 30 years, it probably wasn’t worth keeping.  I ended up throwing most of them out without even glancing at them.  And I don’t miss them at all, not one bit……..sob……..

I was left with a few magazine cuttings, some favourite handwritten recipes copied from friends’ cookbooks ~ some of them still dating back to the 70’s ~ and quite a number of A4 pages printed more recently from websites and blogs.  I had put them all neatly in plastic covers in a ring binder – which is unusually well organised for me.I flipped the pages and came up with a recipe published by Craig in his blog” Boris in Ayrshire” a few months ago, for APRICOT AND GINGER MUFFINS.  I had been meaning to make them for ages and now I had a reason.

My other reason / excuse for baking regularly is that my dad has rejoined Derby Model Engineering Society.  He is in the process of building a model steam engine himself (something called a Speedy) and is at the stage where he will soon be finishing it and hopefully running it around the little track at the club.  In the “station” at the club there is “buffet car” and I promised him I would bake something for him to take with him whenever he goes, which is most Sundays.

My dad’s Speedy locomotive, on the back yard, ready for a trial steaming.

  A member of the club giving rides on his own engine on a Sunday afternoon.

I digress !!

The muffins were as usual easy and quick to make, except that it took quite a while to gather together a record number of ingredients.

(Mental note to self – must re-organise cupboards so that all baking ingredients are in one place.)  (Reply to self – that would be such a marathon task that I can’t see it happening for some time yet!)

 

I adopted a tip I found in a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe for whisking the dry ingredients together in a bowl to aerate them instead of sifting.  It seems to work well, so far as I can tell.

I used another tip I once read somewhere, to use an ice-cream scoop to fill the muffin cases, making it easier to put the same quantity of mixture in each – and it’s less messy too.  That works well as well.

Just before I put them in the oven the phone rang.  It was my dad, checking what time the “buns” would be ready.  When he rang off, I was so keen to get them in the oven that I forgot to do the last bit of the recipe, which is to sprinkle some brown sugar and place a piece of crystallised ginger on top of each one.  Rats !!

But, even without the decoration, they turned out very well.  My dad and his mates at the club really enjoyed them.

Here’s Craig’s recipe for APRICOT AND GINGER MUFFINS.

Ingredients

250g plain flour

120g caster sugar

60g dark brown sugar

2 teasp baking powder

1 teasp ground ginger

1 teasp ground cinnamon

¼ teasp salt

142 ml crème fraiche

125 ml vegetable oil

1 tablesp honey

20g crystallised ginger, chopped small

2 eggs

200g dried apricots, cut into small pieces

extra brown sugar for topping

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C.  Line a muffin tin with paper cases.

Mix together the flour, sugars, baking powder, spices, and salt in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl whisk together the crème fraiche, oil, honey, and eggs.  Fold this mixture into the dry ingredients.

Gently add the apricots and ginger pieces and combine without over mixing.

Divide the mixture between the muffin cases.  Sprinkle a little brown sugar and place a piece of crystallised ginger on top of each muffin.

Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes 12 muffins (I found it easily made 14)