Matthew's Journal

I was wasting time on the internet, and came across a blog post about Soubise, a savoury onion sauce. AIUI, it originally involved rice (Escoffier describes it thus), but more conventionally is Béchamel sauce with sweated onions added. Serious Eats suggested there was a modern, lighter, variation, which was to use cream instead of Béchamel[0]. That seemed worth a try, so I made one this evening, and it was pretty good.

Here's what I did (which was too much sauce for 2 people, would certainly have done 3, and probably 4)[1]:
25 butter
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
300ml double cream

Melt the butter over a medium heat until foaming; add the onions and cook gently (stirring frequently) for ~20 minutes, until properly soft and any liquid has gone. The aim is to avoid caramelising the onions, so resist the temptation to fry them hot!
Pour in the cream and simmer for about 5 minutes until it starts to thicken.
Blend to as nearly-smooth as you can be bothered with, season with a little salt and some black pepper, and serve.

You could choose to flavour this sauce further (Serious Eats suggest 1tsp curry powder; I'd think about chilli flakes), but it's good as-is.

[0] definite win, since I haven't successfully made white sauce in a very long time
[1] the recipe is taken from Serious Eats (an American site) which uses 2 tbsp butter (about 28g) and 1.5 cups of heavy cream (360ml, but heavy cream's a bit less fatty than double cream).

蚂蚁上树, or Ants climbing trees has become something of a favourite chez nous recently. It's a Sichuan noodle dish, and this version comes from the book of the TV series Exploring China, where Ken Hom and Ching-He Huang travelled round China, making and eating food from the various regions of the country, and well as reflecting on what it means to be Chinese living abroad. The name refers to how the mince clings to the noodles in the finished dish.

These quantities feed 2 people; it's pretty more-ish, so we never have left-overs! You can fling some quick-cook veg (e.g. sugar-snap peas) in with the noodles if you want some more vitamins. It packs a reasonable chilli kick, too...

2 tbsp groundnut oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed (and chopped a bit if necessary)
1 tbsp grated ginger (I go for a "lump")
1 red chilli, chopped [the recipe says de-seed, which makes it a bit less hot]
250g minced beef
1 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp chilli bean paste.
200ml chicken stock (hot; I just make up a stock-pot thingy)
noodles [recipe says "150g mung bean noodles pre-soaked in hot water for 10 minutes then drained"; I can never find them, so just cook some Sharwoods dry noodles per the packet instructions]
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
2 large spring onions, chopped

Start by boiling water to cook the noodles; once that's under-way, make a start on preparing the other ingredients. I usually find I've finished cooking the noodles a little before I'm ready to start on cooking everything else.

Things that say "chopped" should be chopped pretty finely. I do the spring onions first, then set them aside (before the knife gets chilli on it). You want everything ready before you start cooking, as it's pretty quick from that point!

Heat your wok over the highest heat you can manage; add oil, and let it get as hot as you dare. Add the ginger, garlic, and chilli, and stir-fry for a few seconds. Add the mince, and stir-fry until it's all browned (if it's watery, let that bubble off quickly). Add rice wine, soy sauce, and chilli bean paste, and stir well to mix.

Add stock, bring to the boil. Then add the noodles, and stir well. This takes a few minutes, while the stock is absorbed and/or boiled off (keep your hob on max). Then add the seasame oil and fling in the spring onion; stir to mix and serve immediately.

At least some large supermarkets will do Shaoxing rice wine and chilli bean paste these days; I've never found anywhere that does mung bean noodles, but I dare say some of the oriental shops on Mill Rd would...

Crème brûlée is one of the standard desserts I like to make (the fact you do most of the work the day before is a particular plus, it's nothing to do with the fire); for Easter this year atreic suggested that I try doing something a little different with it. We have some rhubarb in the garden, so this was my attempt at Rhubarb Crème brûlée.

Below are the quantities I used for my trial run (for 4 people); on Easter itself, I was too sick to cook, so atreic did a scaled-up version.

330g trimmed rhubarb [about 3 small stalks; see below for more discussion of quantities]
2.5 tbsp caster sugar

300ml / 1/2 pint double cream
1 vanilla pod (split) or 1.25 ml vanilla essence
2 large egg yolks
7.5ml / 1/2 tbsp caster sugar

caster sugar plus blowtorch for topping
4 ramekins

Pre-heat the oven to 180 centigrade (150 fan). Start with the rhubarb - trim off leaves, wash well, chop off the woody ends, then slice into slender bits (about 1cm). Mix well with the sugar, then spread onto a baking sheet. Put in the oven for 15-20 minutes, turning half-way, until the rhubarb is very soft. Make a layer of rhubarb in the bottom of each ramekin, then put them in the fridge. Surplus rhubarb can be eaten :) It's worth rinsing the baking sheet in hot water PDQ, otherwise you'll have a mess to deal with later.

Turn the oven down to 150 (135 fan), and start on the custards. Heat the vanilla and cream, bringing it slowly to the boil. Cover, and leave for 30 minutes to cool and infuse.

Beat the egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl. Pour in the vanilla cream, and mix well. Strain into a jug, and then pour into the ramekins (not right up to the brim - you want to leave a bit of space to make caramel on later).

Put the ramekins into a roasting tin, and fill that to about half-way up the ramekins with hand-hot water. These go into the oven for 30-35m - if they start to colour on top, then they're probably done! You don't want them too solid. Take them out of the hot water, and once cool put them into the fridge overnight.

Finally, make the caramel topping just before serving. There's a knack to this that is hard to describe in text, but I'll have a go. Basically, you make a layer of sugar on top of the custard (thick enough that it looks white rather than yellow), and then play the blowtorch over the surface, creating little molten balls of sugar. As you get more and more of these, they begin to run together, and you can use the flame to "fill in" the bits that haven't yet melted. Don't worry if you brown the sugar quite a bit (do worry if you burn the custard, though!), and you can tilt the ramekin a little to get the molten sugar to run into any holes. Don't touch the rim, it gets very hot! Once you've got a good layer, put the ramekin in the fridge to chill; you want to serve them chilled but not fridge-cold, otherwise the caramel layer is too hard to get through.

These quantities resulted in rather too much rhubarb, and just enough custard - so adjust depending on the size of your ramekins. The custard ingredients scale neatly with integer numbers of egg yolks; rhubarb-wise, go with 3 tbsp caster sugar per 400g of trimmed rhubarb.

A foody post again, I'm afraid. Firstly, the recipe for Bananas Foster. This is just a straight adaptation of the recipe from the restaurant that invented the dish in 1946, because I'm fed up of doing the units conversion every time I want to make it!
( Bananas, booze, and fire - what's not to like?!? :-) )
Secondly, there's a very unhealthy risotto that I knocked up the other day; I mostly record it here so I have a record of the quantities of things I used.
( bacon and blue cheese risotto )
Finally, I want to recommend a cook book. It's The Whisky Kitchen, which we picked up at the Dalwhinnie distillery. I have quite a few cook books, some of which I never use, and others of which are very unreliable. This one, however, has been really on the money with everything I've made. Some of the recipes are pretty fiddly, but they are well explained, and seem to "work". When piqueen came to stay, I made spicy Laphroaig smoked salmon pots followed by peppered pork fillet, and both were very good. I've also made the Dundee lamb chops with Jura sauce (the orange flavour really worked with the lamb and whisky sauce), and the Drambrulee (dreadful pun, good twist on a classic). One of the authors has won awards for his cookery with whisky, and I have to say it does show - the whisky flavour is incorporated very well in to the dishes, so they often don't end up tasting "of whisky", but you can discern flavours from the malt in the end result. An added bonus The down side is it's easy to end up buying a lot of whisky :-)

These are a couple of quick notes to myself, as they're things I always find myself struggling to locate properly.

Firstly, timings for roast lamb [credit antinomy](this is fast+hot, so only use it for good bits!):
20 minutes at as hot as your oven will go
15 minutes/lb @ 190C (around gas mark 5.5-6; use an oven thermometer!)
+15 minutes for medium or +30 minutes for well-done

Secondly, the proportions to use for a balsamic vinaigrette: 1 part balsamic vinegar, add in 3 parts olive oil (stir vigorously at each addition), and some black pepper. This works much better with good oil and vinegar, you'll be surprised to hear :-)

I ended up combining several recipes, and then faffing some. Here is what I did:

200 ml espresso[1]
500g mascarpone
3 eggs
6 tbsp marsala
4 tbsp caster sugar (or around 50g)
~20 Savoiardi biscuits[2]
dark chocolate to grate over the top
Time: circa 1 hour.
Warning: contains raw egg, and alcohol
I strongly recommend you use an electric whisk for this...
You'll want a flat-bottomed dish to assemble the result in - mine fitted 9 biscuits on its bottom layer

Make espresso, set aside to cool. I doubt anything else coffee-wise will do. I found by the time I came to need the espresso it had cooled enough. At about this point, put the chocolate into the freezer to cool (it grates better this way)

Separate the eggs (keep both whites and yolks). Beat the yolks and the sugar together until it has formed a pale yellow mousse. Soften the mascarpone a little with a spoon, beat in the yolks gradually, then beat in 3tbsp of the marsala (1 tbsp at a time seemed fine to me).

Clean and dry the whisk thoroughly (I find running it under a tap is quite good at this, if a tad messy).

Whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Using a spoon, mix these quickly into the mascarpone mix - don't over-do it, though, or it'll lose its volume.

Add the other 3 tbsp marsala to the espresso, and put into a flat-bottomed container you can fit a Savoiardi biscuit in. Dip the biscuits in, sugar-side up, one at a time, and remove immediately (any longer and they'll disintigrate); place sugar-side down in the assembly dish, making a layer. Cover with about half the cheese+egg mix. Make another layer of the biscuits in the same manner, then cover with the rest of the cheese+egg mix.

Dust the top with cocoa, or grated good-quality dark chocolate. Keep in a fridge overnight, and serve chilled.

[1]Our 9-cup espresso maker made about 410ml, which was around 400ml after cooling. With the marsala added, there was about 450ml, and I had around 200ml left. I'd make more espresso than you need, rather than too little.

[2] aka Lady's fingers. In Tesco in Coventry, these were with the ice-cream toppings and cones, not with cakes nor biscuits nor home-baking. I started with a 24-pack, and had 5 left over.

ETA: This was Very Good Indeed. I reckon there are about 6 servings in this, or 4 portions for hungry people.

ETA: We tried this with own-brand sponge fingers, and it was noticably less good - they don't absorb enough of the coffee+marsala mix.

ETA: the mixture curdled on me once. My best hypothesis is that this was because the ingredients were room-temperature when I started, rather than fridge-temperature...

This is mostly a place-holder to point at this post of mine over in snake_soup describing a quick dinner I made for atreic and I, since I think I might want to do it again :-)

This is a variant of a recipe that I have posted previously, but this one uses a slow cooker:

1 1/2lb pork sausages
1oz butter (or margerine)
8oz leeks, washed & sliced
1 lb cooking apples, peeled, cored & sliced
2 1/4 oz packet instant potato
salt & freshly ground black pepper
8 fl oz dry cider

Cut each sausage into 4. Melt fat in frying pan and cook sausages and leeks for 10 mins until browned. Cook apples in boiling water for 1 minute; drain well.
Place sausage mixture and apples in electric casserole/crock pot/slow cooker/whatever you want to call it.
Sprinkle instant potato and seasoning on top, pour over cider and stir well.
Place lid in position and cook on high for 2-3 hours or low for 4-6 hours.

Traditionally my family serve this with baked beans. I always end up using more cider than that, too...

Yesterday, I tried making raspberry sorbet. I used the following to make 1l of mixture:

5x150g raspberries
250ml water
100g icing sugar
splosh lime juice

The result was quite pleasing, but a bit viscous; sieving it to remove the pips might have improved that.

atreic and I made our Christmas puddings for the year today. The last couple of years' have turned out really well, so I thought I'd share the recipe (since at least one person has asked about it). You want to make them about this time of year (or maybe a little earlier), and "water" with brandy every month or so until Christmas. IMAO, the result is much nicer than anything you'll buy in Tesco.

This makes 2 puddings (each about 2 pints / 1kg) which will comfortably feed 4 people with leftovers, or one giant pudding of doom ;) A pudding basin with a sealing lid makes the process easier.
( Mmmmmm )