Category Archives: British food

February 27, 2013

Kedgeree with Duck Egg

By Rock Salt

Felicity Cloake at The Guardian does this nice thing, now and again, where she takes a classic recipe, does a lot of research into the different ways of making it, then presents us with the ultimate combination of these recipes, creating the ‘perfect’ version of the dish du jour. I like it, it’s good to see the different ways that you can make something – low fat, whole wheat, traditional, ‘with a twist’ (has that phrase gone now? I feel like it might be a bit nineties…) – and it’s interesting to read through the variations and Felicity’s reactions to them, before the final recipe is presented. It’s nice to see someone else’s train of thought, reassuring to know that it’s not just me who can be an over-thinker when it comes to snacks.

I recently followed Felicity’s recipe for the perfect kedgeree… except that I didn’t really. I used it as a jumping off point, more than following it. Even though she’d clearly done a lot of hard working in forming that recipe. I didn’t have all the ingredients I needed, and other excuses of that nature. I’m just a natural rebel, OK? A born lever-puller.

The first person to name the film that quote comes from wins something nice. Like my eternal regard.

 

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So, the kedgeree.

This is one of those ‘I might have slightly made it up as I went along’ blog posts.

These are amounts to serve two:

  • 200g basmati rice
  • 1 tbsp rapeseed oil
  • 1 small onion, finely chopped
  • 1/2 – 1 tsp chili flakes
  • 2 crushed cardamom pods
  • 1 tbsp curry powder
  • 200g cooked, smoked mackerel
  • handful frozen peas
  • 2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and sliced or quartered
  • Squeeze of lemon juice
  • Small bunch of parsley
  • Salt and pepper, to taste

 

I did follow Felicity’s advice about rinsing and then soaking the rice. I think it helped make the rice less starchy and sticky. Rice and I have a bit of a troubled relationship, but it worked out well this time, so perhaps giving it a nice relaxing bath before throwing it into boiling water is the way to go.

To sum that process  up: rinse the rice in running water until the water runs clear, then cover with fresh, cold water and rest for at least half an hour.

Once it’s been soaked, drain it and put it over a medium heat, with 290ml fresh water. Specific, no?

Bring the rice to the boil, stir, then cover tightly, whack the heat down as low as it goes and leave for 25 minutes. Don’t disturb it. This recipe is basically like a spa day for rice. I added a teatowel between my pot and the lid, to make a tighter seal and keep more steam in the pot. Don’t ask me to describe how I wedged it in there, because right now it is quite late and I’d just use words like ‘wedged’ and ‘squished’ and it wouldn’t be helpful.

After the sauna is over, remove the rice from the heat but leave the pot lid, and any kitchen linens you may have sandwiched between it and the pot, in place. The rice is resting, again. Give it five minutes, then open and run a fork through the rice to break it up.

Heat the oil over a medium high heat, in a large frying pan, then add the onion and cook until softened. Then, add the chili flakes, curry powder and cardamom. Stir round to coat the onion in the spices, and inhale deeply as they start to smell toasty. And then possibly choke as the smell of the chili hits the back of your throat unexpectedly. Sorry about that.

Add the rice to the pan, stir well to coat, and add the peas. Then, flake the fish in – this is why it has to be pre-cooked, because you’re just warming it up, now. Heat for a few minutes, until the peas are cooked and hot, then taste the rice. Season as necessary. Add a squeeze of lemon juice.

Put the kedgeree into bowls and scatter with the parsley, then lay a sliced egg on top. I think a whole egg per person is reasonable.

I used duck eggs. Do you know what I have to say about duck eggs?

They’re bigger.

Suffice to say I was a little underwhelmed by my first duck egg. The white seemed to be more translucent, and sweeter than a chicken’s egg – but not so much that you’d really notice. It was nice, I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t the revelation I’d been hoping for.

Perhaps I should stop looking for revelations in eggs.

 

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4 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Other people's recipes, Gluten free, Indian Food, British food, Dairy free, Spicy food

January 30, 2013

Cranachan Verrine

By Rock Salt

January 25th is Burns Night in Scotland. Let me rephrase: it’s Burns Night everywhere, it’s just that not everyone knows it. We celebrate the life and works of Rabbie Burns, one of our smashing poets, and we do it by eating and drinking – so often that is the best way to celebrate something, don’t you think? Burns was born on January 25th so it’s kind of like a big birthday party for him, except he doesn’t get to eat any of the cake, given that he died in 1796.

The traditional thing to have is a Burns supper, which is a plateful of haggis, neeps and tatties. I know a lot of people – many Scots among them – have a bit of a shudder when someone mentions haggis. I am not one of those people. I love haggis, and even tried to make my own, once. In fact, that was my first Rock Salt post, three years ago! You can read all about my ‘hoxxis’ here. You can do a lot of different things with haggis if you stop thinking of it as various organs mashed up and stuffed in a sheep’s stomach and start thinking of it as another kind of meat. I understand that some do find the first part difficult to get past; I can’t think why. Anyway, like I said, you can use haggis in lots of different ways, but sometimes it’s best just to stick with something simple. Meat and two veg – it doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Oh – neeps are turnips.  You might call them swedes. We do things differently in Scotland.

Um, and tatties are potatoes. You probably knew that. In a Burns supper you have both neeps and tatties mashed. Another word for mashed is ‘champit’ – as in ‘champit tatties’. There, you have learned a Scots phrase today.

So, for Burns Night this year, a friend and I had three courses of Scottish inspired food, the main of which was your basic, time-honoured Burns supper – it looked like this:

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I snipped some chives over the turnip; this was my only nod to fancification.

To warm up our appetites before embarking on the filling adventure that is haggis, we had some little canapes. On the right, blinis and (sustainably sourced) Scottish smoked salmon. On the left, mini oatcakes and Black Crowdie cheese. Crowdie is a thick, tangy cream cheese made in Scotland, which I’ve just found a recipe for and may have to attempt to make myself.

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Side note: said recipe requires ‘freshly sour’ milk. Does that sound like a contradiction in terms to anyone else?

Anyway, I’ve had Crowdie before, but never Black Crowdie – I was excited to give it a try, and this seemed to be the perfect time. Black Crowdie is a log of  Crowdie rolled in cracked black pepper and pinhead oats. To serve it, I just sliced it as best I could – it is crumbly but just about do-able if you use a sharp knife and take care.  Add some little oatcakes and there you have it – an easy canape.

Crowdie Log

Black Crowdie

Now, to pudding. The main feature of this post, allegedly, and yet I’ve spent all these words without mentioning it once. I was keeping you in suspense, you see. Though if that’s really what I was doing I’d have done well to name the post a bit more mysteriously… Yes, cranachan verrines it was, and I must say I was so pleased with how they turned out. This was a first attempt at the recipe, and I’ve tweaked it a little to present to you here, so be warned: here be dragons. And by dragons I mean, of course, an untested recipe.

Cranachan Verrines (makes two):

For the base:

For the sweet cheese layer:

  • 140g Skinny Crowdie
  • 1 tsp your favourite whisky or whisky liqueur (like Drambuie)
  • 5 tbsp golden caster sugar
  • 2 tsp double cream

For the raspberry layer:

  • 150g raspberries
  • 3 tbsp jam sugar

To finish:

  • 4 tbsp double or whipping cream
  • 1 – 2 tsp granulated sugar
  • 2 tsp oats
  • 1 tsp granulated sugar

Now, this may have begun to look complicated, but it’s not really. Each layer is easy to put together and it can all be done in the space of an hour, then put aside to chill for a few hours, or overnight.

So, let us begin. I started with the Dean’s Oat Biscuits. I used their stem ginger ones, but the original plain ones might have been a better choice in retrospect. They are oaty and buttery and delicious, and I smashed them up with a hammer to make crumbs.

Oh alright, I put them in the food processor.

Then I heated up the honey and mixed it through, then split the mixture and pressed gently into the serving glasses. On my original attempt, I added too much honey and pressed down too firmly, and accidentally created biscuit cement. I’m sure it’ll come in handy for something in the future, but it did cause us some dessert difficulty.

Next, the cheesecake layer. Scoop the Crowdie out of it’s wee tub and put it in the food processor, which you have wiped the biscuit crumbs out of, or put it in a bowl and prepare to use a wooden spoon and brute force. Add the cream, whisky and sugar, and process or stir until fully mixed and smooth – the Crowdie is a little grainy to start with. You can play with the measurements of the booze and the sugar until you get the taste you’re happy with. Split this mixture between the serving glasses, on top of the biscuit base, and smooth over with the back of a teaspoon.

The raspberry layer is probably the most complicated, and that’s really only because you’re heating them up and keeping an eye on them until they form a loose jam. Reserve eight of the nicest looking raspberries, then tip the rest into a small pot and add the jam sugar.  Heat at medium high until the fruit has all broken down and you just have red soup with seeds in. It will be thick and sticky and ROASTING HOT so be careful. Strain the rasbperry puree into a bowl through a fine sieve, pressing all the fruit through with a spatula until all you’re left with in the sieve is the pips. Place the reserved raspberries round the edge of your serving glasses, on top of the cheesecake layer, then spoon over the raspberry puree.

Finally, whip up the cream and sugar together until thick and holding soft peaks. Spoon enough into each verrine to fill the serving glass, or until you think you have enough – this depends how much you like whipped cream, I suppose.

Then, put the oats and sugar in a frying pan over a high heat, and toast until the sugar caramelises and the oats are brown and fragrant. They will probably form little clumps, which is absolutely fine. Let them cool down, then use a spoon to sprinkle them over the top. Do not pick them up out of the pan with your fingers. This is important.

Let the verrines rest in the fridge for a couple of hours, or overnight, then serve with love and a cry of ‘heeeeee-ooooch!’. The heeooching is optional but I quite like it, and you don’t get a lot of opportunities to do it in everyday life.

Cranachan Verrine

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in British food, Dessert, Original recipes, Scottish food, Vegetarian

November 28, 2012

Guest Post: Celeriac Soup with Walnuts

By Rock Salt

Today’s guest post is from Becky at Veghotpot - a blog about inventive, interesting and above all gorgeous veggie food. I am often inspired by posts on Becky’s blog so I was delighted when she offered to write one for me! It is a very seasonal recipe (I’m rubbish at being seasonal) and I think you’re going to enjoy it. Without further ado…

 

 

When Carol Anne said she was looking for people to write Guest Posts whilst she took part in NaNoWriMo I jumped at the chance! Not only are we both from the UK but were both into our Rock music and we both love good food :) I decided for this post I would make my first soup of the colder seasons and I instantly thought about my current favourite vegetable, the celeriac. It is really quite an ugly looking thing but it tastes delicious, especially when roasted it tastes just like a parsnip! The other great thing about celeriac is that they are very low fat, low calories and low carb (unlike potatoes) and it is high in Iron and Vitamin C.

This soup has a wonderfully creamy texture without any added cream and I have made a porcini and chilli dust which adds a little kick to the soup (and I think it looks cute and sparkly like glitter), just use it sparingly if you’re not into your spice! This porcini dust is also great as a steak rub!! It gives the steak tonnes of flavour and if griddled it helps give it a slightly chargrilled finish.

 

 

Anyway back to the soup … I wanted this soup to be really rustic so I added porcini mushrooms to the flavour blend and also I used walnuts as croutons, not only are they much healthier than having bread croutons but they add a lovely rich flavour and a nice bit of crunch! If you’re not a fan of nuts you can use walnut bread as croutons for a similar effect. Finally I also added a big dollop of plain yoghurt, I’ve always seen this being done with soups but I’ve never tried it before. I’ve been joining in with the Vegan MoFo over on my blog and now it’s over I realised I can go back to using a little bit of dairy here and there so this was a perfect time to give it a go :)

 

 

 

Serves 6

  • 800g Peeled Celeriac (unpeeled weight is roughly 1.170kg).

The easiest way to peel a celeriac is to slice the bottom off so that you have a flat edge to place the celeriac down on your chopping board. Then take a sharp knife and run it down the edge of the celeriac to peel off the rough skin.

  • 1 Large Leek
  • 1 Large Onion
  • 2 Garlic
  • 30g Dried Porcini Mushrooms (put 2 mushrooms from the pack to one side to make your dust)
  • 1.2 litres Vegetable Stock
  • Handful Walnuts for each bowl
  • 1 Dried Red Chilli
  • Natural/ Plain Yoghurt

Soak the dried mushrooms (except the ones you’ve put aside for your dust) in 200ml boiling water and put to one side. In a small blender add the dried chilli and the dried mushrooms that you kept aside and blitz. Put this to one side to sprinkle on the finished soup.

Dice/ Slice your leek, onion and garlic. Leeks need to be washed really carefully so I slice it then wash it to get the grit out of all the layers! Chop the celeriac into 1inch pieces. In a large saucepan heat some oil and add your onions and leeks and soften for 4-5 minutes then add your garlic and celeriac and cook for a further 5-7 minutes.

Strain the soaked mushrooms but keep the soaking water and add the mushrooms to the pan. Pass the soaking water through a sieve to remove any sediment then add to the pan with the vegetable stock and stir well.

Put a lid on and simmer for 15 minutes, after that time check if the celeriac is soft and if not then cook for a further 3-5 minutes until the celeriac is soft and breaks with a fork.

Blend the soup, if it looks a bit mushy then a great tip is to pass the soup through a sieve. This smoothes the texture out and gives it a lovely gloss! Serve the soup into bowls and place a dollop of yoghurt in the middle of each bowl, sprinkle with the mushroom glitter and scatter walnuts. Done!

Thank you again to Carol Anne for letting me do a guest post, I hope you have all enjoyed it :)

 

 

Thank *you* Becky, this soup looks amazing! I love the sound of mushroom glitter – anything mushroom related is a big hit with me. The walnuts really make this soup interesting, too, and so perfect for the freezy weather we’ve been getting. Maybe along with a giant wedge of fresh bread…

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in British food, Gluten free, Healthy, Original recipes, Other people's recipes, Spicy food, Vegetarian

November 16, 2012

Guest Post: Home Cured Bacon

By Rock Salt

Today’s post is from the sweet Lucy at OffallyGood. In the last year, Lucy has been investigating the extent and impact of meat consumption, and all the issues surrounding eating meat ethically. She has, in fact, spent most of this year eating offal in place of more standard cuts of meat, and creating new and interesting recipes with it. She also cooked a whole pig’s head once. He was called Arthur. She is also consuming the correct amount of fruit and veg as any health-conscious adult should, and is at the time of writing starting to learn about sustainable fish: what kinds they are, where the acceptable fishing spots are round the world and other factors that you or I might never think about. She is also a Superhero Numismatist and as such is extraordinarily busy. I”m really grateful that she would take time out to write me this guest post, and would encourage you to pop over to OffallyGood when you’re done here.

 

Thanks for letting me guest-post, CA, I will mostly be discussing how to cure your own bacon at home…

 

Curing your own bacon

 

There! I said it. The B-word. Bacon.

 

This year of 2012, I took it upon myself to exclude regular and ordinary meat from my diet, in order to relieve my holistic meat debt. Too many chicken breasts had been chomped and too many pork chops over-grilled. Now was time to get friendly with the kidney and love the liver. Great fun and full of interesting ethical dilemmas. But no bacon. Not a single rasher.

 

So I did what any sane and sensible person would do after nine months baconless. I cracked. And cured my own pork belly into an imitation of streaky bacon. More like pancetta really.

 

The inspiration from this came from the blog Plate Britain, where the unenviable task is to eat only things grown on these shores for a year. British bacon a-go-go! I couldn’t believe how easy it sounded, so took it upon myself to have a go. The results were awesome (isn’t all bacon awesome), but I feel I still undertook it in a pretty sensible and boundary-flexing manner.

 

 

First of all to the belly pork. It was reduced in the shop and I intended to freeze it for when I can be all meaty again. But, then, bacon. One of the farms that produces this very Waitrose pork is in Norfolk near where my Mum lives and the pigs do look very happy in the fields, so I didn’t have a conscience about buying it. It may not be organic, but I have definitely seen the pigs playing kiss chase in the field.

 

Curing meat is it appears kind of easy. Mostly you rub it with salt repeatedly. It is the making of the cure that turns belly pork into something spectacular!

 

Do look at Plate Britain’s recipe because I amended it to suit the ingredients I had. My cure was made up of:

 

  • 350g salt (the cheap stuff)
  • 150g granulated white sugar
  • 10g agnus castus spice crushed in a pestle and mortar
  • Several sprigs of lovage, ripped up, with some rosemary too.

 

It looked like this:

 

 

Basically what you then do is coat it in the cure every day. Keep it in a Tupperware in a cool dark place – I used the fridge. The cure makes a lot of liquid leak out the meat, so you need to tip that away when you re-cure the meat each day. I cured my belly for seven days. Then you wash the remains of the cure off and you have bacon. Pretty salty bacon. Pretty delicious bacon. If you have cure left that hasn’t touched the meat, keep it for next time you get down on the curing!

 

 

Doesn’t that look effing amazing? And it is sooooooooo simple to do. I chose lovage, because I love it and am super proud of the plant in my garden. I chose agnus castus (chasteberry) seeds because they taste like a fruity black pepper. Mostly they were both chosen because they are new herbs to me. I am a sucker for novelty.

 

 

I was soooooo excited for the bacon, I had a fry up! I put maple syrup on the bacon. Heaven!

 

Even better, however, was the toad in the hole I made with the bacon cubes in.

 

 

I even did a decadent thing and just fried some and mixed it with some olives and cheese! So salty! So good!

 

 

However, flushed after my baconing success, I did feel a bit bad.  The idea was offal for a year, and despite my best ethical endeavours – it was really a little bit of a cheat. However, I do now know how easy it is to cure stuff. Could you cure a kidney do you think? I might do some experimenting, so keep checking OffallyGood.

 

Making bacon is really easy, so next time you go to the overpriced pancetta, pick up some belly pork and have a go at home. FYI when it fried NONE of that suspicious white shiz came out! What does that tell you?

 

 

Thank you Lucy – it has taken me twice as long as it should to upload this post because I just kept looking at the photo of the cured bacon. Amazing, and you do make it sound easy. Really well done pet, and I cannot wait to see you soon and chat about all things food and drink several drinks. Huge bacony love x

 

 

 

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in British food, Dairy free, Gluten free, Original recipes, Other people's recipes

October 29, 2012

Review: Rose Veal from John Penny Butchers

By Rock Salt

Just so that you know, this is a review of a product of which I was sent a free sample. The opinions in the post are, as ever, mine, and the review is honest. Please note my Patrick Stewart-worthy sentence arrangement in the first line there.

 

Veal is a meat subject to a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding. It’s understandable, too – the cruelty of the veal trade has been well publicised, with consumers hearing the story of calves being kept held in constrictive crates that don’t allow them to move, in order to produce a white coloured meat. What many people don’t know is that these crates were outlawed in the UK and Europe in 2006, and in fact the welfare standards for veal calves in the UK has been considerably higher than that of the EU since the 1990s. In the UK, veal calves must have sufficient space to move around, a proper diet including roughage, iron and fibre and proper bedding to rest on. The results of this better welfare is a pink meat, rather than white, which is known as rose veal. The Freedom Food website has an excellent document, giving more information on this, and you can find it here.

The other common misconception is that veal is from baby cows. People, we eat lamb like nobody’s business, and a lamb is slaughtered at about five or six months. Chickens are in for the chop at just 46 days, and nobody seems to mind that. Rose veal is from animals at about eight months old, making it practically a teenager by cow standards. On the flip side, the situation at present is that male calves from dairy cows are killed at a day old, because they can’t be raised for either meat or milk, and as such they’re a ‘waste product’. A living, breathing waste product. If you drink milk, eat cheese or enjoy any other branch of the dairy industry, you should be eating veal.

I think that’s probably enough of the heavy stuff, but here are some links if you’d like to find out more you can visit the RSPCA Freedom Food website, or read this article on the John Penny site, on the case for veal. These people are more knowledgable than I am, and the Freedom Food website also gives you the option to ask any questions you might have.

 

So, let’s cut to the chase here, shall we? I got involved in a chat with Kate from John Penny on Twitter. John Penny and Sons are a farmers and wholesale butchers – selling to retailers for you and I to buy – from Yorkshire. The upshot of our conversation was that she asked if I’d like to write a blog post as part of their Meat Crusade. I was interested to learn more, and once I had I was very excited to take part – and flattered to be asked. Here’s their description of the Meat Crusade’s goal:

to put quality butchers meat back onto every dinner table in Britain by raising awareness in quality and taste and offering a greater understanding of how ethical meat operations work.

 

Sounds reasonable to me! Now, it’s important for me to be honest here and say that I am frightened of going to the butchers. I find it intimidating, as though they will know I don’t know what I’m on about. I fear that I’ll get tongue tied, and ask for the wrong amount of meat and go home with half a cow. I know that this isn’t sensible, but it’s the truth. At present, I do most of my shopping at the supermarket. I’ve been meaning to change this for some time, and with the advent of the Meat Crusade I feel more inspired to do so. Butchers are people too, you know. In times like these, it’s more important than ever to support local butchers and farmers – I’ll make a point of it. I hope you do too – please send me your success stories!

To get back to the story at hand, John Penny sent me a glorious joint of veal to try and to blog about, and here it is:

 

 

Just look at the colour, and the marbling of fat:

 

 

Outstanding quality – you can tell even before you roast a joint like this that it’s going to be a treat.

I kept it very simple and made us a Sunday roast. First, I seasoned and massaged the meat all over with Cullisse rapeseed oil, salt and pepper. Then I rested it on a bed of sliced shallots and branches of rosemary and sage.

 

 

I roasted the meat at 180C for an hour and forty-five minutes, then rested for fifteen while the G man and I scurried around finishing off the rest of the dinner – Yorkshires, gravy, veg, roasties, mash. The works.

When we carved the meat, it was just blushing inside – I’d say medium-well done – and so, so moist. You can see this in the photo below; the juices were literally trickling out of the meat, like an advert on TV, but completely real.

 

 

The flavour of veal is somewhere between pork and beef, and you can see how much paler than roast beef it is. It still has an appealing pink hue, though, and unlike pork you can cook it to medium quite safely. The texture of the meat is so soft, which is another benefit of cooking gently at a low temperature. I can’t recommend it too highly, it was the best roast dinner we’d had in ages.

 

 

We had the leftover meat in sandwiches, which was a luxurious lunch and no mistake.

 

With veal, as with all other meat, you cannot assume that the product you are buying, especially from the supermarket, meets the high welfare standards you would hope for. If, like me, you tend to do our shopping in a supermarket, check the labels, and make sure that if you are buying veal, it is British veal. In fact, check all your labels for any meat for the Freedom Food stamp. The best way to make sure you’re getting ethically reared meat, of any kind, is to make friends with your local butcher and chat with them about where their meat comes from, or buy at farmers markets where you can meet the producers. I take a pledge to do so now, or at least to make a conscious effort to try to. I hope you’ll join me.

 

Thank you again to John Penny, and in particular to Kate. The veal was delicious, a real treat, and you’ve inspired me to shop properly from here onwards.

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in British food

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