Greedy Guinea Pig Club Jan 2018

Huzzah! An outstanding success.

Slightly ridiculously there was an error/substitution of every single recipe, but we still think this is one of our most successful clubs ever.

Obviously the company helps.  It’s a fabulous group who leave you with less wine, but more gin.  We like this particular upgrade in Dinner Part Guest.

It started with a Jerusalem Artichoke Soup.  Rather excitingly it included Champagne as an ingrediant.

It was also supposed to contain a 100g piece of streaky bacon.  This gets pouched in the soup, chopped up and sprinkled on top.  We could only find rashers in both the supermarket and the butchers, so Dan wandered into the Polish Supermarket and bought what he thought was a large chunk of bacon.

It wasn’t.  It was pork.

A fact we didn’t discover until after we’d cooked it in the soup.  Went in red.  Came out white.  Definitely not bacon.

Annoying, but fortunately not irredeemable.

We dragged some bacon out the freezer, chopped it very small, and fried until extremely crisp.

Then we tried the soup and added salt.  And more salt.  And more salt. Until the background taste of pork fat was gone.  Salt redeems many things.  Trust salt.  It makes things delicious.

The now delicious soup was served with bread.  Dan made two loaves.  One was a Stout Soda Bread, that sadly was still a bit doughy in the middle.  The other was a Rye and Spelt Bread which came out really well.

The bacon sunk, but the hazelnut oil shows up well.

The next course was Pork Loin with Sauteed Kale, Apple and Chestnuts.  Which was absolutely bloody marvellous.

Here we deliberately substituted Madeira (which we didn’t have) for White Port (which we did).

The crackling was amazing!

The final course was the most popular, so we’re going to post the recipe.  It does need 6 x 7-8cm stainless steel rings.  We have a set if you’re nearby and want to borrow them.

Also the left over coulis (and there will be left over coulis) is nice with yogurt on cereal.

Armagnac Frozen Mousses with Pouched Pear Coulis

Serves 6.

• 150g caster sugar
• 7 large egg yolks
• 375ml double cream
• 4 tbsp Armagnac

For the Pear Coulis

• 450g caster sugar
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 6 comice or william pears (we used comice)
• ½ tbsp lemon juice

First we’ll make the mousses.  Put the caster sugar in a heavy based saucepan with 3 tbsp of water and heat gently, stirring occasionally and gently until the sugar has dissolved.  Increase the heat and boil until soft ball stage.  This is about 118-120°C.  We’re sure there are other ways to tell, but we are somewhat married to our thermometer.  Remove the pan from the heat and set to one side.  Be careful, molten sugar burns are the worst.

Using an electric whisk (for god’s sake not a hand whisk), briefly whisk the egg yolks until just combined.  Continue whisking as you slowly pour the hot sugar syrup onto the egg yolks.  Whisk for five minutes, until the mixture is very pale yellow and resembles semi-whipped cream.  Whip the double cream to soft peaks and gently fold in the egg yolk mixture and Armagnac.  We over whipped the cream and couldn’t quite get it to fold in properly.  No one seemed to notice.

Tightly cover the bottom of the the rings with clingfilm.  Fill each ring with the mousse mixture and place in the freezer for at least 3 hours, until frozen.

Then make the coulis.  Dissolve the caster sugar in 1.5 litres of water and add the cinnamon stick.  Increase the heat and bring to the boil.

Peel the pears, add to the sugar syrup and poach gently for 10 -20 minutes (depending on ripeness).  Turn the heat off and let the pears cool in the syrup for 30 minutes.  Drain the pears, reserving 200ml of the poaching liquid.

Core four of the pears and blend with the reserved sugar syrup and lemon juice to make a smooth coulis.

To serve unmould each mousse onto a serving plate.  Slice each of the remaining pears into six and serve two slice on top of each mousse.

Congratulations if you’ve made it this far!

We are looking for two volunteers for the February Greedy Guinea Pig, then we’ll take a break for a couple of months.

This menu is all about the Chinese New Year:

Cinnamon, Orange, Honey & Rosebud Tea

Pork & Prawn Wonton Soup

Roast Sweet Potatoes & Carrots Spiced with Cumin, Fennel & Coriander

Red Cooked/Hong Sao Beef

Chocolate Chip Cookie & Rolo Sticky Rice Dumplings

 

No Photos!

Well that was a disastrous couple of cooks.

We had to pull out Greedy Guinea Pig plan Omega.  A plan reserved for the very worst of results.

Plan A is usually making a minor tweak to the recipe (more flour, slightly more heat etc.), and as the plans progress through the alphabet we make slightly bigger changes to the recipe until we get to plan Omega.

Which is; Sod it. Chuck it. Order pizza. Drink wine.

This is identical to our plan of action should a Greedy Guinea Pig Club go tits up.

So, worst case, you get pizza and wine.

The absolute disaster came from My Vegan Travels.  This is a proper 50/50 book now.  The Paella and Samosas were wonderful, the Dauphinoise and Tagine less so.

We say Tagine, but apparently it’s a “Moroccan Vegetable Clay Pot”.

Ohhh. Get you! That’s a bloody Tagine.

Or a soup in this particular case.

Far, far, FAR to much liquid and no obvious thickening agent.  Quinoa is added, but even that caused some debate.  Much like with the dauphinoise, the recipe suffered from clarity issues.  The ingredients list said, ahem, “200 g/ generous cup of quinoa, cooked for 10 minutes in 285 ml/1¼ cups vegetable stock, then let stand for 5 minutes.”

We were genuinely confused as whether the 200 g referred to uncooked or cooked quinoa.

Usually if a recipe states “200 g cooked couscous” or “150 g sliced onions” it means 200 g of couscous that has already been cooked or 150 g of onions once they are sliced.  But here the cooking method was so specific it cast genuine doubt on the whole order of things.

Our universe was thrown into chaos.

It didn’t matter in the end since we didn’t eat it.  But, still, it would have been nice to know.

The other recipe was more disappointment than disaster.

The Grilled Vegetable Soup from Plenty offered so much.  How could we not be excited by a recipe that required us to place whole aubergines under a high grill for a full hour?

And the making of it was indeed very fun and exciting.

The resulting soup however…

Really just roasted red pepper soup with some butter beans floating forlornly in it. Nary a hint of aubergine to be had.

Oh well.  Onwards and upwards.  Greedy Guinea Pig Club up next.  Hope this wasn’t an omen.

 

 

Garlic & Harissa

We were very antisocial vegans.

Not for all the usual stereotypical reason, but because of an over abundance of garlic in the office.

Entirely my fault.

There is a lovely recipe in “Plenty” for Garlic Soup & Harissa, that included a recipe for harissa.  We had to try it, and somehow I convinced myself it couldn’t actually be that strong.

We could strip wallpaper with our breathe.  But it was indeed delicious.

Another recipe that really caught my eye was Miso Dauphinoise Dumplings from My Vegan Travels.  This was the same recipe book that gave us the delicious samosas, and this was the recipe that she apparently used on Masterchef.

“John and Gregg both loved this dumpling.”

It also had the advantage that we already had most the ingredients, we just need some cashews in order to make cashew cream.

Ridiculously we already had white miso, Vietnamese rice papers, and ginger-preserved black beans.

Unfortunately the recipe did not live up to the promise.

The first clue should have been the poor instructions.  The ingredients list wanted “4 large floury potatoes”, but then it jumped directly to “layer potatoes in the lined baking dish, making several layers to fill the dish”.

So many questions.

Do we peel them? We guessed yes.  We guessed we were supposed to slice them, but how thin should we slice them?

Also the cashew cream and miso mix didn’t seem to really permeate into the potato layers

Using best judgement we cautiously ventured forth and made the dauphinoise.  It never really recovered from that point.

Fortunately the book redeemed itself with a fabulous paella recipe.  Paella with harissa roasted vegetables and paprika almonds.

Yes we used some more of the home made harissa.

One of the really standout parts of this meal was the roasted cauliflower.  We’ve heard good things about doing this with cauliflower before.  Even played with it before.

Not really got it before.  Consider us converted.

Old Favourite Veg Curry

Midweek dinners were Vegetable Mole Oaxaca, which was delicious, but looked awful.  The most ingenious part of this recipe was how it was thickened.  Mole is usually thickened with pig fat, which is clearly neither vegetarian or vegan (yep, we’re still doing that for a bit).

The frankly bizarre blending of pumpkin seeds, tinned tomatoes and tahini worked remarkably well.  It even tasted fatty.  Mostly because nuts and seeds are.

Midweek lunches were Anna Jones’ version of Ribolita. We did use Savoy (from the allotment) rather than Calvo Nero, and we cubed up the bread to make it easier for work lunches.

Not the best Ribolita we’ve ever made.  We think that award is still with River Cottage Veg.

We started the weekend with a frankly delicious Green Pea Curry courtesy of Leon Ingredients.  We’ve done it before and thought it very nice, and it didn’t disappoint a second time.

It’s a quick fry of a tablespoon of mustard seeds in two tablespoons of sunflower oil until the seeds crackle and pop.  The two sliced onions, 2 tbsp of grated ginger, a finely chopped red chilli. 1.5 tsp of ground cumin, a tsp of turmeric and a healthy dose of salt is added and cooked for about 10 minutes over a high heat.

After that 4 ripe tomatoes worth of wedges, 2 green peppers worth of chunks and a tin of coconut milk are added and the whole mess is simmered for another 15 minutes.  400g of frozen peas are added and all heated through.  Finally a tbsp of creamed coconut is added.

 

Pump up the spice

We start with an utter disaster.

The kind of disaster where we go to Subway instead.

Dan was listening to the Food Programme on Radio 4 (of course he was) and they were doing a special on porridge (of course they were) and Levi Roots came on.

We’re big fans of Levi Roots.  He’s responsible for much of our interest in Caribbean food.  But his porridge recipe was pretty inedible.  More allspice flavour than is at all sensible despite the seemingly meagre half teaspoon.

We then moved onto some much more sensible lunches from Anna Jones – a modern way to eat.

First was the Californian Miso, Avocado and Butter Bean Salad.  A glorious fusion of bright green and Asian flavours.  Broccoli, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, salad leaves, avocado and butter beans dressed with a miso/yoghurt mix.  We used soya yogurt in the spirit of experimentation and were pleasantly surprised.  Dan had the left overs on his shreddies (well, malted wheats)

There’s an interesting typo in the dressing recipe where it gave us the choice of ponzu or soy sauce.  Since ponzu is a form of citrus, soy sauce seems an unlikely substitution.  We suspect it was actually referring to the lime juice on the line below.

We stuck some brown rice on the side to bulk it out.

We followed that with some simple packed lunches of Roasted Squash with Chilli, Dukkah and Lime.  Dukkah is a delicious mixture of hazelnuts and spices.  Apparently this recipe makes way more than you need to serve four.

Seemed just right to us.

In direct contrast to the simplicity on the squash and dukka we went full on for the next meal.

One of my colleagues is about 75% vegan.  His girlfriend, who he lives with, is vegan, so almost everything he eats at home is animal free.  He kindly brought in a couple of vegan cookbooks for me.  One of them was “My Vegan Travels” by Jackie Kearney, which has some excellent looking recipes in it.

One of which was Punjabi Pie and Gravy.

Better translated as Dal and Samosas.

We’ve never made samasas before.  Not sure we have yet as in the interest of health we baked rather than deep fried these.  But we made something pretty close, very tasty and very spicy.  Like needles on the tongue spicy.  It was amazing.

It was also nice to pull some of our less used spices out of the larder.  The joys of Bedford means we had methi, asafoetida, ajwain and amchoor already in stock.

We are definitely making the samosas again.

Miso Soups

This week was particularly Anna Jones and soup dominated.

Between weekend lunches and work lunches we managed to cycle through no less than three different Anna Jones soup recipes, all with a distinctly East Asian flavour.

The first (and best) was a Walnut Miso Broth with Udon Noodles…although we used Soba.  Because we like them.  This one is actually in her book A Modern Way to Eat.

It’s a heavy two person mixture with toasted walnuts, honey and dark soy added to dark miso.  Then the general broth has mushrooms, green and noodles in it.

It was bloody delicious.

After that we went for the first two recipes here.

The first was borderline unpleasant.  We will hold our hand up to purchasing terrible supermarket tofu, which appeared to have been reconstituted.  The stuff from the local Chinese market is considerably nicer.  But we couldn’t just blame it on the ingredients; the peanuts took on a distinctly unpleasant texture.  Not great.

The second was lovely after some modifications.  We used Gorchajang paste instead of chilli miso.  Although Gorchajang (a fermented chilli paste that also contains soybeans) is not dissimilar from chilli miso.  We tried the broth and it seemed a little “thin”.  So we added a tbsp of dark miso and another tbsp of Gorchajang to excellent effect.

The soup was bloody delicious.

We also made Patience Gray’s Bean Stew.  We substituted the tin of tomatoes with some frozen plum tomatoes and pasatta, but otherwise abided to the written word.  It was delicious and filling, but missing a little pep.  That’s where the hot sauce or Tabasco came in.

The final recipe was a firm favourite, from long before we were attempting vegan January.

Yes, we are attempting to make January mostly vegan.  Hadn’t you noticed?

This one is a extremely nice Aubergine, Chickpea and Tamarind Stew from Leon’s Ingredients.  We’ve done it before and we’ll definitely do it again.

It’s just not very pretty.

 

Everyday Cooking

We are back on regular cooking, even on a school day.

Or rather Dan is.  I went to work and he stayed at home to deal with the staff.  During the day he also cooked up a little bit of a storm.

First he made a very sweet, but hearty soup from River  Cottage Veg called Porotos Grandos.

No wait.  First he made some veg stock.  Emptying the bottom drawer of the fridge anything looking even slightly sad.  Because apparently he’s too good for Swiss Bouillon.

I would never do anything like that (hides the home made ice-cream/cheese/ketchup/jam/pickle/doughnuts/corned beef behind her back)

But back to the soup.  As the link says it’s a slight twist on a Chilean squash stew, and is filled with beans.

Excellent for that ever painful return to work.

He also made a delicious Aubergine and Bean Curry.

I mean it looks terrible, but have you every tried to take a decent photo of a curry?

It’s a nice easy stir fry like assembly.

Fry up some onion, garlic and chilli, then add a good tbsp of curry paste. We used Massaman, but Thai Red would be better.  Give it a couple of minutes, then add a diced aubergine and cook until softened.  You’ll probably need a splash more oil given the absorbency of the aubergine.

Add some green veg.  We used a big handful of peas, a big handful of broadbeans and a big handful of green beans.  All frozen of course.

Once the veg is defrosted (or just warm), add some stock (about 300ml), and sufficient creamed coconut to make a sauce.  Add some soy sauce, a few shredded kaffir lime leaves, and  some palm sugar to taste.  Cook until the coconut has dissolved.

So that, and a couple of freezer meals, kept us going until the weekend.

Then we decided to experiment with a tasty little recipe from Anna Jones’ Modern Way to Eat; Avocado and Lemon Zest Spaghetti.

We even bought some wholewheat spaghetti as suggested.

It was pretty tasty, although I thought it was a little summery for January.  I like thick saucey pasta dishes in winter.  Think bolognese or carbonara.

The pasta dishes that are more just an assembly of ingredients seem a lot more suited to sunshine and white wine.

New Years Day 2018

We are nothing if not consistent.

Just before we started this blog, for the New Year Eve party at the end of 2015, we made some pretty epic cocktails and canapes.

So obviously for a 2018 New Year’s Day canape party we dragged out the big hitters again.

Only without the cocktails.  It was lunchtime, and there were miniature people in attendance.

This time they were improved by homegrown sweetcorn and chillies!

This was all we were originally going to bring, but I foolishly left Dan unattended in the kitchen for an hour and suddenly there were cakes!

Okay I may have left him alone for a little longer.  And I may have abandoned him to make the sweetcorn cakes whilst I did other stuff.

But still.  I’m impressed.

Apparently it’s a Delia Smith recipe called “Wholewheat Griddle Cakes”, but everyone agreed they looked, and tasted, suspiciously like Welsh Cakes.

Steak and chips

We started New Year’s Eve by making a very healthy soup of dried porcini mushrooms, chickpeas and spinach from River Cottage Veg, and Dan made some wholesome rye bread from Paul Hollywood’s 100 Great Breads.

It quickly went down hill from there.

We had initialled planned to go on a lovely long country walk, then consume a vast quantity of steak with home grown potato wedges.  Unfortunately when we woke up the weather was vile, so instead we stayed in, drank beer, watched TV, and made triple cooked chips.

Triple cooked chips are a fantastic invention by Heston Blumenthal.  They are delicious, but they do take all day.

It’s a boil, chill, fry, chill, fry kinda deal.

That last bit of high temperature deep frying is a little bit fraught when also cooking steak.  Especially when both of these are usually Dan jobs.

Fortunately he had some help.

There are two cats in that image.  Usually it’s just Bolly singing the song of his people, but Lullah decided to add her two cents as well.  Such is the allure of steak to all species.

The finished meal was exactly as good as it should have been and provided an excellent base for the midnight bubbles.