Super Fast Extra Speedy Banana Steamed Pudding

Is anyone actually any good at shopping in the sales? I went out the other day to try and get myself a couple of tops suitable for work, maybe a day dress if I could find one, and three hours later came home to shout 'Clothes are stupid and I hate everyone' at my boyfriend. I tried one dress on only to find out that what I thought were frilly sleeves was some sort mini cape attached at the neck. Thanks but no thanks, mate.

I mention this only because when I intended to get something nice to wear I instead came home with a milk jug and a pudding bowl.

Pictured: Not a frock.

And since I have a pudding bowl now, I get to make my Super Speedy Steamed Pudding.

I based this on a recipe for a microwaved steamed pudding I got from a Gary Rhodes (remember him? Spiky hair, bit of a tit) dessert book. It's a useful stand by if you're, say, a teenager and your mum has some people round to dinner and thinks there's enough food so doesn't bother with anything for afters, and then the guests look around like 'Yo, where's my pudding?', so you excuse yourself for ten minutes and come back with a steamed syrup pudding for six. Major kudos, there. That one'll keep you in the good books for a while.

The original is basically a Victoria Sponge recipe cooked very quickly in a microwave, with a bit of golden syrup at the bottom of the bowl so when it's turned out the syrup runs down the sides. The only problem I found with it is that it can be a bit on the dry side. When thinking about how to rectify this, I remembered that whenever I make banana cake it turns out a bit on the wet side. Can you see where I'm going with this? Excellent.

My pudding bowl is only small (holds 450ml), so double the quantities if you have a bigger one. This will serve 4.

You will need:

Half a large banana
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 egg
75g self-raising flour
50g sugar
50g butter or marge
Vanilla essence

Mash the banana with the syrup and put half in the bottom of the pudding bowl.

Add the rest of the ingredients to the remaining banana mixture and beat until smooth. Pour on top of the banana syrup into the pudding bowl.

Cover the bowl with cling film, and pierce the top once with a knife.

Cook in a microwave on full power for 4 minutes.

Turn the bowl out onto a plate, and serve immediately. With cream.

From start to finish I would say this takes 7-8 minutes, so if someone is dying from not enough pudding and needs emergency intervention, this is definitely the one to make.

2 for 1 curry

As I mentioned before, I've been making more curries at home recently. I'll be the first to admit they're hardly authentic, but are recognisably curry-ish and pretty tasty.

The downside of making curry at home is your lack of options; if one person likes vindaloo and the other's more into korma, then somebody's going to end up shit out of luck, aren't they?

Since I live in household where there are mixed viewpoints on the correct heat level of Indian food (I maintain that eating anything that causes physical pain is tantamount to self-harm, Pete apparently disagrees), I've started making two at the same time, with a recipe similar enough that I don't get confused between the two. This makes one vindaloo-style, one slightly-spicier-than-a-korma-depending-on-my-mood-style, and about two generous portions each.

You will need:

300g skinned, boneless chicken thighs, chopped into bitesize pieces
100ml yogurt
100ml white wine or cider vinegar
4 heaped tsps of any hot blend of spices, or pre-made garam masala
1 tsp mustard seeds
2 tbsp ground almonds
2 cans of chopped tomatoes
2 large chopped onions
1-4 fresh chillies (depending on how hot you want it)
Salt and any other seasoning you may want

Mix the chicken with the garam masala and salt until the pieces are evenly covered. Split into two bowls, and mix the yogurt into one and vinegar into the other. Leave to marinade for at least an hour, prefereably longer.

Get two saucepans ready, and start cooking a chopped onion in each. Add the chillies and mustard seeds to one, and the almonds to the other. Put the vinegar chicken in the saucepan with the chillies, and the yogurt chicken in the pan with the almonds.

Add a can of chopped tomatoes to each, along with a little water or stock. Simmer for about 25 minutes. Once cooked through check for seasoning - you may want to add more vinegar/chilli/yogurt, etc.

Serve with rice.

There you have it, it turns out it's easy enough to make one delicious and one stupid curry at the same time. 

Curry Biscuits

I've been making more curries at home lately, with the help of a trusty tin of garam masala.

I was looking at the ingredients the other day to see if it might be worth my while trying to make it myself (technically possible, but I still won't), and saw that it had a number of spices in common with your standard mixed spice for cakes and such, but the cumin and curry leaves take it in a more savoury direction. So I thought to myself, I thought, 'Are there any dishes where I normally use mixed spice where I could use this instead?'. What I'd need to make it work is something sweet enough to counteract the savoury element, and could also take a bit of heat. Now it just so happens I have a good stand-by recipe for gingerbread biscuits which I use for cutting novelty shapes (sometimes boobies, mainly penises) and giving as gifts. So I gave it a go.

This makes quite a small batch as I wasn't sure if I would like them. I also decided to stick with circular biscuits for now, but it is entirely possible to cut out rude shapes too. Or shapes that aren't rude, I suppose, if that's your thing.

You will need:

200g plain flour
50g butter or margarine
50g soft brown sugar
50g golden syrup
50g black treacle (use 100g golden syrup if you don't have treacle)
2 tsps garam masala
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

First, mix everything in a bowl to form a soft dough.

Roll out on a floured surface and cut into shapes. This is quite a delicate mix, so take care when lifting the shapes. I use a fishslice.

Put on a baking tray lined with baking parchment (you may need to do several batches) and bake in a pre-heated oven at GM 5 or 190 degrees for 7-10 minutes.

These turned out very nicely, and I think would work even better dipped in chocolate or with chocolate chips. They're certainly not too savoury, and if anything I might add a little ground pepper next time to make them even hotter. The cumin and the coriander give them an oddly citrusy quality, which I might try to amp up with some kaffir lime leaves or something.

Next time you have someone round for a cup of tea, put some of these on a plate for a proper 'wait, whut?' reaction.

Aioli

I've been trying to think what would be the perfect recipe to kick this whole thing off. I've got some biscuits in mind that I want to have a go at making, but since I don't bake that often it might be a bit misleading. I'm still kind of full from Christmas so I don't want to do anything too extravagant, and I definitely don't want to do anything too light and 'healthy' because 1) it's cold outside, I'm not eating a salad, and 2) I don't want to inadvertently encourage people to do the whole January diet thing, as it always creeps me out a bit. I mean, it's fine if you want to, but the idea that you're supposed to is everywhere you look right now, and bollocks if I'm going to contribute to that.

Finally I decided to just write about what I've got in my fridge right now, and right now I'm working my way through a large tupperware tub of aioli.

Aioli (garlic mayonnaise) is something I've only started making recently. I used to be put off by the fact that you can really only make it in quite large batches, and I didn't think I'd use all that much of it. I have now got around that problem by using it on everything. I have it in sandwiches, on toast, as a dip, and over poached eggs. Almost every snack I've had recently features it in some way. It's also great to have with breakfast, partly because the punchy garlic really wakes you up, but mostly because it feels like you're making a liberating anti-social statement. 'Screw you, the world, and deal with my garlic breath for the whole day. Mwahaha'.

You can make this by hand with a whisk, but a food processor is easiest.

You will need:

250ml vegetable oil
250ml olive oil
1 egg
2 - 3 garlic cloves
2 - 3 tbsp cider or white wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to season. You may also like to try adding a little mustard powder, or some chopped herbs.

Blitz the garlic in the food processor until roughly chopped. Add the egg, and blitz until foamy. Add the vinegar, and start up the processor again. As it runs, add the oils in a long thin stream, going especially slowly to start. Once it's all incorporated stop and check for seasoning.

And that's it. As I said before this makes quite a lot, but I've always managed to finish it within two or three weeks, so let's say that's how long it lasts, shall we? I adapted this basic recipe from a Cordon Bleu cooking techniques book, but they use a lot more oil. Since I prefer it a little thicker and richer (and also I was running low on oil) I found that this amount works for me but by all means add more if you want to. Obviously this contains raw egg so avoid it if you don't think you should eat raw egg.

There we have it, the first recipe of the new blog! It tastes good, and it encourages people to avoid you. Symbolic, I guess.

A new blog for a New Year

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the dawn of a new era. If you were lucky enough to be one of the many charming and sexy readers of the haphazardly formatted and rarely updated Eat It, then you'll love this Food Blog 2.0. But things have changed since then. Oh yes. Time makes fools of us all. For one thing, I have moved from Leamington Spa, the quaint Georgian bosom of the West Midlands, to Bristol, the jiggling, in-your-face cleavage of the South West. I like it. So, for this first post of the new blog, I'm going to write about a few of the local foodie joints I've found and started loitering around.

The Thali Cafe

Right away I'm establishing myself as an outsider here, because it seems that all the locals I've spoken to already know and love this place. 'Oh, you like the Thali Cafe? Well, duh, of course you do. What's wrong with you? Hey, here's a tip, if you're stuck for something for lunch, why don't you try a bit of ham or cheese between two slices of bread! We call them sandwiches*'. For the benefit of anyone out of the Brizzle loop, this is one of the best Indian restaurants I've ever visited, but the take-away is where they really come into their own. The first time you visit you have to buy a Tiffin box (around £20, if memory serves - it comes full of food, so I don't think it's exhorbitant), but every time you go back you bring the tiffin box with you for a cheap refill that'll easily serve two people. There are four compartments, filled with rice, dhal, a vegetable curry, and your choice of main curry. The lamb would be my regular choice, but the paneer is also excellent.

*Other than the glib 'we call them sandwiches' remark, that is a genuine tip that I once read in a Woman's Own magazine. I swear to God.

The Star and Dove

This pub/restaurant (I'm not keen on the term 'gastropub', so you'll have to indulge me the use of the less aesthetically pleasing forward slash) is something of a curiousity. From the outside it looks like a standard pub. From the inside, it also looks like a standard pub. Sneaky, aren't they? Really lulling you into a false sense of security. There's a nice cosy fire, a good range of decently kept beers, pork pies at the counter, and board games at the back. From the look of it you absolutely wouldn't think that the restaurant upstairs produces fabulous recreations of medieval to renaissance era recipes like 'Roajied ham' or 'Crabbe with hippocras', would you? Yeah, weren't expecting that one, were you? The bar food isn't like that. That would be ridiculous, can you imagine? No, the bar food is based on the 'Tavern' food of the 18th-19th centuries, obviously. When I visited, our group shared a number of different little plates - the goats cheese with nuts and wild honey was fantastic, as was the black and white sausages, and the lamb shoulder croquettes. Dessert was a platter of different tasters, including fiery hot little ginger meringues, chewy orange and chocolate brownies, a frozen orange jelly, a room temperature red wine jelly, a clean tasting just-set bay custard, and a number of other bits and pieces that reduced our table to silence as we picked it apart like vultures. Classy, highbrow vultures. I'm going back for my birthday.

Graze Bar and Chophouse

'Graze' is a great example of a place doing one thing very, very well. The menu is short. They do steak. There are a couple of other things (I think I spotted a single token vegetarian main course), but they mainly consist of things to have before you have your steak, after you have your steak, or as a side. To your steak. The only downside is they are not cheap, but as an occasional treat I still say it's worth it. Order a rib-eye, rare, with bearnaise sauce. Usually I would qualify that statement with 'if you like' or 'in my opinion', but not this time. Just do it.