Batter – 22/10/2016

Today is not a day for low cholesterol.  Or the lactose intolerant.

We started with a Jerusalem Artichoke & Nettle (spinach in our case) Gratin from the River Cottage Everyday book.

This is a pretty simple dish assuming you have:

1. Jerusalem artichokes
2. A sous chef or mandolin

We try to make sure the first JA recipe of the season is on a weekend.  The resulting flatulence makes for an awkward day at the office, but fortunately we find you quickly adapt and after the first dish we’re generally fine.

This is an amazingly good dish, and Hugh says you can substitute the JAs for a combination of celeriac and potatoes if that’s easier.  We sometimes use hazelnut oil for frying and greasing, which we find works rather well, for obvious reasons.

First make the filling.  To do this heat a splosh of oil and a knob of butter in a frying pan and gently cook two finely sliced onions and three sliced garlic cloves until soft and starting to show a little colour.  Add 500g of thinly (about 3mm) sliced JA’s and a tsp. of chopped fresh thyme and season well.  Cook for five minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add 200ml of double cream and 100ml of veg stock or water and simmer until reduced by half, then stir in 100g of fresh greens and transfer to a greased gratin dish.

To make the topping just combine a handful of porridge oats, three slices of bread reduced to rough crumbs, half a handful of toasted, bashed hazelnuts, 25g of melted butter and 30g of grated hard cheese (although not parmesan, we used the remains of some gruyere this time).

Sprinkle the topping on top of the filling and cook in a 190°C oven for 25-30 minutes.

It is exceptionally good.

Dinner was a bit more basic.  We wanted to experiment with gluten free Yorkshire Puddings before serving them to the niblings at a later date.

Turns out they were quite successful on a first try.  You simply have to replace the flour with a mixture of corn flour and rice flour.

For toad in the hole reasons we served it with sausages.

Dessert was a little more exciting.

Mama Lowe gave us a basket of fruit and flowers for our fourth anniversary, and that included a variety of pears.

So we dug out a recipe by Diane Henry (she writes for the Telegraph) for Pear, Blackberry and Eau de Vie Flaugnarde.  We’d never heard of a Flaugnarde before, but the recipe appeared to show fruit marinated in alcohol and covered in a rich sweetened batter.

In hindsight we should have looked it up.  Turns out it’s very similar to a clafoutis and we should have cooked it in a shallow dish rather than a deep one, and then it would have been a firm batter rather an unphotogenic floppy mess.

It was nice, but we probably won’t do it again.