Playing with: Desiccated Coconut

It's a tale as old as time. Girl needs small amount of ingredient. Ingredient is only available in large bags. Girl buys large bag, uses small amount, abandons the rest in the cupboard for ages. Haven't we all seen this old cliché play out before?

Why won't you just... die

But not this time. I have a big bag of desiccated coconut and I'm determined to use it. Here's what I've been doing:

Toasted sesame seeds and coconut.

I'm not going to insult your intelligence by listing the ingredients for this one. The clues are in the title. Dry toast the sesame seeds in a frying pan until they start to turn brown, then add the coconut and stir through. The coconut toasts quite quickly so it won't need long. Mix thoroughly and pour into a little serving bowl to sprinkle on the top of stir fries or other noodle dishes.

I'm a big fan of coconut in a savoury context (especially with chillies), but I think that desiccated coconut in sweets is dangerous territory. The slivers of coconut are chewy and dry the mouth out, so combining that with sugar can make quite a cloying, drying texture (See: coconut liquorice allsorts. Bleurgh).

On the other hand, with the right texture, a bit of coconut can be a subtle, fancy addition. I like to add coconut to white chocolate rice crispy sweets to class them up a bit. I use:

2 cups of rice crispies
100g white chocolate
2 tbsp desiccated coconut

Melt the chocolate and mix the rice crispies and coconut in thoroughly. Put a teaspoon each in a little cake or petit fours case and leave to set.

The favourite recipe I came up with involves mixing the coconut with breadcrumbs to give a little extra crunch and flavour to breadcrumb coatings.

To make Thai-style chicken goujons, you will need:

2 chicken breasts
Seasoned flour
1 egg
4 tbsp breadcrumbs
2 tbsp desiccated coconut
2 tbsp olive oil
1 small chilli, diced
1 tsp minced garlic and ginger

Slice the chicken breasts into even sized pieces, about a finger in length. Dip them first in seasoned flour, then beaten egg, and finally the breadcrumbs mixed with the coconut.

Cook on a high shelf at 200C or GM 6. In the meantime, mix the oil, garlic, ginger and chilli together. After 10 to 15 minutes, take out the chicken and pour a small amount of the oil over each piece, then put back in the oven for a further 10 minutes.

Serve with something appropriate - I had mine with a salad of coriander and spring onion.

Well, that's about me exhausted recipe wise, and I've only used half the bag, so suggestions welcome. I don't like it seeing it everytime I open the cupboard, judging me.

You son of a bitch.

Proustian Apple Muesli

I have a very distinct memory of standing in my Gran's old kitchen while she made apple muesli. My grandparents (now passed away) were living out in the sticks in Dorset at the time. Their whole house smelled of woodsmoke and Grandad's snuff, and whenever I make this muesli I can smell that house all over again.

If you haven't encountered snuff before, it's powdered tobacco that you're meant to take a pinch of and snort through your nose, except with Grandad's arthritis affecting his pinching abilities, his preferred method was to just throw a handful at his own face from time to time. It. Got. Everywhere. Little brown clouds of dust would rise at every footfall. The very atmosphere was 0.05% snuff. The secret ingredient in a lot of Gran's cooking would have been snuff, just because she couldn't keep it out. Feel free to add a little pinch to this recipe for authenticity's sake, but for the love of God don't do that.

But to the muesli. Gran would make big bowlfuls of the stuff and dish it out to everyone in the morning, but since I'm the only one eating it at home I've adjusted the recipe so you can make just one serving at a time.

For the dry muesli base:
500g oats
100g raisins, or other dried fruit
50g chopped or flaked almonds
1 tsp mixed spice

For the night before:
Eating apples (1/2 apple per serving)
Lemon juice
Apple juice (optional)

Mix the dry ingredients together, and store in an air-tight jar where no snuff can get in.

How pretty. A bit faux-vintage and twee as fuck, though.

The night before you want muesli for breakfast, take two to three tablespoons of the oat mixture and no snuff, and mix in half a grated eating apple and a little lemon juice, then add enough water or snuff-free apple juice to cover it. Leave in the fridge overnight, and by morning the oats will have soaked up the juice and be all nice and soft. This is also a good point not to add snuff.

Now eat your breakfast and stop complaining about snuff, there's a good girl.

Wine tasting at Majestic

I am officially an old woman. You know that beautiful bank holiday we just had? The one where everyone was outside, enjoying the sun and life and finding inner peace and joy and all that bullshit? Well I had a bad back. Yeah. Initial plans of a walk and picnic were quickly downgraded to staying in and sitting very, very still. Even my 'occasionally turning my head to look at something' ideas became impractical. I was not happy, to the point where I began cursing the happiness of others, and that may well have led to my descent into misanthropy and super-villainy if I hadn't remembered one very important fact: alcohol. It exists.

On Tuesday my local Majestic had their Summer Wine Tasting to showcase the new wines they have in stock, and even though my back wasn't entirely better there was no way I was missing it. So off I hobbled to find some nice summer drinks and anaesthetise my back. Two birds, y'see.

They had about a dozen wines out. I would have preferred a bigger selection, but it was respectable enough. I recall a wine tasting which had about 80 wines out, and even though I limited myself to the ones I really wanted to try I was still pissed as a bastard by the end of it. I ended up being half carried home and drunk texting some friends my opinions on Lethal Weapon. So I guess 12 wines is fine.

My highlights were:

Greywacke Sauvignon Blanc, £19.99 or £15.99 each when you buy two.

I'm a big fan of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, so I was kind of hoping that this wouldn't be much better than the cheaper versions which are my standard. It is, goddammit. It's got a beautiful, big, fruity, grassy taste, all tomato vines and lemons and apples. I could drink this all day.

Amarone, Cantina Negrar, £22 or £18.99 when you buy two.

This was rich, smooth and deep; almost fortified. It had a spicy, dried fruit finish, and a bit of honeyed sweetness. A very nice special occasion wine, and probably a good match for a cheeseboard.

Nyetimber Classic Cuvee, £23.99

English wine! I know, right? I've tried a couple of English whites which I have enjoyed very much and I want to try more, but there's still only limited availability and they're generally on the dear end. Nyetimber, as the enthusiastic chap at Majestic was telling me, have a vineyard in Sussex that almost exactly matches the soil and climate of the Champagne region, and as the wine is made by the same method it's about as close to champagne as you're likely to get. I can't disagree. It has a lovely honey-on-toast yeastiness and a really deep, full flavour. A real celebration wine.

As you can see, all of these are a bit expensive, so even though these were my favourites the likelihood is I'm not going to get them. I might treat myself to the Greywacke one day, but that's about it. The one wine I tasted that I almost certainly will get is the (drumroll please):

Mister Shiraz, £8.74 or £6.99 each when you buy two

This was rich, smokey and tasty, and not nearly as drying and tannic as I often find with beefy Shiraz's - it went down smooth. I think this would be a great food wine, and my tasting guide even recommended it for a barbecue. I reckon a couple of grilled steaks, chips, some good company and a bottle of this will suit a Summer's evening down to the ground.

You'll be pleased to know my back is much better now, but if it strikes me down again and my movement is limited to sitting in one spot and raising a glass, well, I'm prepared for that eventuality.

Quick Lemon Curd

I have an awful lot of affection for old cookbooks. I'm not talking antique Mrs Beeton era books, more the weird 1970's '100 Food Processor Recipes' style books.

Not even joking

I love the way recipes veer from practical and tasty, to wildly, offensively wrong. You'll get a good, basic recipe for cheese sauce, then they'll tell you to pour it over a curried banana. Again, not joking.

Thinking about it, I'm going to have to devote a whole separate post to just how much I love old cookbooks (Note to self: do that), but the pointI'm making this time is I got this excellent recipe for quick lemon curd from an old 'Recipes to use with your Microwave' book. It was probably one of the only edible things it featured, but was totally worth it.

You will need:

250g sugar
2 lemons, zest and juice
50g butter
2 eggs.

Put the sugar, butter, zest and juice into a microwave proof bowl, and heat on high until the butter has melted (probably between 30 seconds and a minute). Remove, and whisk in the eggs until smooth. Put back in the microwave and cook for a further minute on high, then remove and whisk again.

Continue cooking for a minute each time and then whisking until the mix has been cooked for a total of five minutes. Strain it, and store in sterilised jars. This quantity will make about a pound of curd.

You can try this with other citrus fruits, but remember they have to be as sharp as the lemons. I made orange curd once and it was waaay too sweet, but grapefruit works quite well.

Another thing you can try making is ice cream. The eggs and sugar in this make it a good base for ice cream, so all you need to do is mix it through some lightly whipped cream or (as I prefer) creme fraiche. The high sugar content means it stays quite smooth, so you don't necessarily need an ice cream maker, just whisk it together and stick it in the freezer.

I'm going to leave this batch as it is though, and have it nice and simple on my curried banana.

Beef Shortribs

Just a quickie today (fnyar fnyar), as this recipe is ludicrously short and also I forgot to take any pictures. But I'm still going to write about it because oh my god you guys this shit is tasty.

You will need:

2lbs or 1kg beef shortribs
1 500g carton of tomato passata (chopped tomatoes are fine)
1 pint beef stock
100ml red wine
2 crushed cloves garlic

Put the ribs in a casserole dish, and pour everything else around it. Cook it on a low heat (GM 2-3 or 150C) for 3-4 hours. Let the meat rest, then shred it. Check the sauce for seasoning. Whatever you do, don't season it before cooking, the sauce will reduce leaving it waaaaay too salty and you'll have to faff about for ages trying to fix it. So, cook it first, add salt if it needs it, even a little sugar if it's a little too bitter.

Serve the shredded meat with the sauce, and some mash.

And done.