Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

St Clement's Surprise Pudding

Looking over the web, versions of this recipe have a bad press. Just get lots of air into it and you should be fine. These are obviousy great hot, but when cold it goes to a kind of egg custard which is also very nice. I made some of the mixture intoa big puddding and the rest in to little puddings in ramakins. I adpated the recipe from the bbc website.


Ingredients
1 orange
2 lemons
100g/3½oz unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
200g/6oz vanilla sugar or plain caster sugar
4 medium free-range eggs, separated
75g/3oz plain flour
500ml/17fl oz milk
Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. Butter a 2 litre/3½ pint shallow ovenproof dish.

3. Grate the zest from one of the lemons and the orange, then squeeze the juice of all three.

4. Cream the butter with the sugar and lemon and orange zest. Beat in the egg yolks one by one. Do not panic if the mixture curdles.

5. Next beat in the flour a spoonful at a time, alternating with slurps of milk and orange and lemon juice.

6. Once that is all in, whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks, and fold lightly into the batter.

7. Pour the mixture into the baking dish, then stand the dish in a roasting tin.

8. Pour enough boiling water around the dish to come about halfway up the sides.

9. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes until the pudding is golden brown.

10. Serve hot or warm, with or without cream.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Oatmeal raisin cookies

I had a craving for oatmeal raisin cookies - and I found this recipe on http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Oatmeal-Raisin-Cookies-I/Detail.aspx. It turned out really well, really moist.

INGREDIENTS
1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons butter, softened
1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons white sugar
1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
1 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1-1/3 cups and 1 tablespoon rolled oats
1/2 cup raisins

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
In large bowl, cream together butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs and vanilla until fluffy. Stir together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Gradually beat into butter mixture. Stir in oats and raisins. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden brown. Cool slightly, remove from sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Carbonade Flamande

After a fantastic trip to Lille, i was inspired to try this typical Lillois dish. I googled various recipes and came up from this one.
http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2005/03/carbonades_flamandes.php

It is my first Clothilde recipe, so i was intrigued to see how I liked her style. The answer is, very much! I just used standard jamaican ginger cake that is very easy to get here in the UK, and I cooked it in the oven at 130C for the first two hours before reducing on the hob for the last hour. I served it with jacket potatoes, and I must admit to adding so carrotso the casserole, along with everything else at the beginning.

1.6 kg beef for stew, cut in chunks
3 large carrots
1 Tbsp (20 g) butter
5 Tbsp flour
4 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1.5 L amber beer (There are choice of several french amber beers in most big supermarkets)0.75 L boiling water
4 Tbsp brown sugar
- 6 slices (130 g) Jamaica ginger cake
400 g onions (5 small ones), finely chopped
a few leaves of bay and a few sprigs of thyme 3 cloves
salt
Melt butter in large cooking pan or casserole dish. Brown meat on all sides for 8 minutes over medium heat. Sprinkle with a little salt, add in the flour and onions, stir, and cook for 5 minutes. Pour in vinegar and scrape at the bottom of the pan to detach any bit that may have stuck. Pour in the beer and water, stir again.
At the first simmer add in the sugar, pain d'épice torn in small pieces, chopped carrots, thyme, bay and cloves. Lower the heat and cook in the oven for 2 hours at 130C, the simmer on the hob on a low heat for an hour..
Serve directly from pan

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Leek and Potato Soup

This a soup that I made to use up excess vegetables from the box.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons Butter or margarine
1 clove grated Garlic

two good sized Leeks( about 500g)
Potatoes (about 500g)
900 mls hot water with two chicken stock cubes
Salt to taste
1/4 teaspoon black Pepper
1/2 pint Milk or cream

1. First, clean and chop the leeks. Melt the butter / margarine in a pan and add the chopped leeks and garlic. Fry them over a low to medium heat until the leeks are soft. This will take about ten minutes. Stir frequently so that none of the ingredients brown.
2. Peel the potatoes and chop them into cubes. Add all the remaining ingredients to the pan with the exception of the milk / cream.
3. Bring the soup to the boil and then let it simmer (just barely boiling) for the remaining cooking time.
4. If you want the potato to stay chunky, cook for 15 to 17 minutes until the potato is soft. If you want to blend the soup, cook for about 20 minutes.
5. Blend the soup till smooth if thats the way you like it.
Just before serving, pour the milk / cream into the soup and stir well. If you plan to freeze some of the soup, don't add the milk / cream to the pan, instead add three tablespoons of milk / cream to each soup bowl.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Spicy Fish Stew

This is so quick and so easy! Low in calories too. A great midweeker! I am steadily working my way through the May Good Food Magazine, and this recipe is from there.

1 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp ground cumin
½tsp paprika
200g can chopped tomatoes
1 red pepper, deseeded, cut into chunks
450g white fish fillets, cut into chunks ( I used coley)
handful coriander,
roughly chopped 1 lemon, cut into wedges

Heat oil in a saucepan. Tip in the garlic, cumin and paprika and cook for 1 min. Add 100ml water and the tomatoes. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat. Add the pepper, simmer for 5 mins. Add the fish, simmer for 5 mins. Serve with coriander and a wedge of lemon

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Christmas baked ham

I used this recipe for our baked ham for Christmas Eve, which I found on the bbc website, but which I modified a little. It was delicious. I got all our Christmas meat from Harveys, the organic butcher in Norwich...http://www.puremeat.org.uk/. It was just as good, hot as cold..

Ingredients
4.5-5.5kg/10-12lb gammon joint - unsmoked
1 pint of dry cider
2 carrots, chopped into chunky pieces
2 onions, peeled and studded with cloves
4 bay leaves
2 cloves garlic
2 tbsp brown sugar
12 peppercorns
1 orange, cut in half
For the glaze:
cloves for spiking
8 tbsp shredless orange marmalade
juice of half a lemon
Method

1. Soak the gammon joint overnight.
2. Drain and discard the water and pat the gammon dry. Place the gammon in a large pan and then pour over the cider and enough water to cover the joint.
3. Add all the other ingredients to the pan. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and gently simmer for 3 - 3 ½ hours. Skim off any scum during the cooking.
4. When cooked, remove the ham from the pan and place in a roasting tin. Let it cool slightly and then peel away the skin.
5. Preheat the oven 190C/375 F / Gas 5.
6. Score diamond shapes on the fat and stud each diamond with a clove.
7. Heat the marmalade and lemon juice in a pan for a few minutes until it thickens to a sticky glaze. Brush the marmalade glaze over the surface of the ham.
8. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes until the glaze has set.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Rabbit stew with lentils

This sounds a bit worthy but is actually really great - big strong flavours- perfect for autumn. People who won't eat rabbit can use chicken pieces instead...Double all the ingredients apart from the rabbit if its for 3 or more people. You could put in turnip, buttersquah,swede or mushrooms in this too



a sectioned piece of rabbit ( leg, shoulder) per person
2 tbsp flour
500ml vegetable stock
several sprigs of thyme
1 bayleaf
1 large onion
2 carrots
1 clove garlic
250ml red wine maybe a merlot?
3 tablespoons creme fraiche
60g green lentils per person

Method
1.Chop the onion in to small pieces and cook in a little oil until softened in a large casserole dish or saucepan with a lid. cook the crushed garlic for a minute
2.Peel and roughly chop carrot
3. Lightly brown the rabbit all over in the same pan as the onion.
4.Add the stock and red wine into the pan and leave to simmer.
5. Add the carrot and herbs to the pan.
6.Stir in the flour until most of the lumps have gone. Dont worry about the rest - they will go when cooked
7. Cook at a barely simmer on the hob top for 1hr- 1hr and a half, until the rabbit is cooked through and the sauce has thickened. Alternatively You could also cook it at 130C in the oven for 2hrs.
8.After 1/2 hour start cooking the lentils by boiling them in water. when they are cooked ( still firm but not hard) rinse them and add them to the casserole dish.
9. Just before serving take the casserole off the heat and add the cream and stir in.
9. Serve a rabbit piece per person, with lots of the sauce and the carrots and lentils and the the same red wine you used in the casserole.