Invention Test Roadshow

Speaking of cooking shows, I really like what Masterchef has done with the invention test, where contestants are given a box of possible ingredients and have to use a selection of them to make something edible. It's the easiest bit of the show to 'play along' with, armchair chef that I am. Of course it's not the same, what with the pressure of being put on the spot and not having access to the stuff you would usually have in your kitchen, but I like to think I'd do pretty well if I had to.

Rather sounds like fun, in fact.

So this lovely Easter weekend, Pete and I thought we'd do something a little different for dinners. One of us would go out and get various ingredients, the other one would have to make something out of them.

The rules:

1) The buyer will get four ingredients, and the chef will have to use at least three in the final meal.
2) Only other ingredients that are already in the kitchen can be used (we had no meat, no cheese, a little creme fraiche, carrots, potatoes and onions for veg, and the usual store cupboard staples and spices).
3) The buyer shouldn't be too mean.

We flipped a coin, and I went up to bat first. I braced myself as Pete went to the shops. He came back with:

Brinjal pickle
Beef burgers
Limes
Ritz crackers

As you can see

I'll pause while you have a think about that.

So. I figured the beefburgers would make up the bulk of the meal, but keeping them as they were seemed a little boring, so I was inclined to cut them into bits. Flavour wise, the brinjal pickle was obviously going to lead the way (I tried some, and it was deep, salty and hot), and that left limes and crackers. Since the pickle was so hot, I thought a little cool, creamy dip incorporating limes would work well. The crackers I should have left alone, but whatever. I thought I could make a crunchy topping with them. Whatever. I don't even care.

Ideas formed. Pete watched excitedly.

Excited.

I started off by cutting the burgers into quarters, then loosely forming them into meatballs and frying them. While they cooked, I chopped an onion and softened it a little in the saucepan before adding 3-4 tablespoons of the pickle. This turned out quite gluey so I added about a mug of water, and let the whole thing simmer for about 10 minutes.

I then took some of the creme fraiche that was in the fridge (about 4 tablespoons) and added the grated zest of a lime, and a small clove of crushed garlic. The lime flavour didn't come through as much as I thought it would, so I also added the juice from half a lime. The other half I put into the brinjal sauce, because I hate waste. I made a crunchy cracker topping by crushing the crackers and mixing them with toasted sesame seeds and coconut flakes, and a good pinch of ground coriander. I put these two in bowls to serve separately.

Like a muller crunch corner

I knew the cracker topping wouldn't be nearly enough of a starchy contribution to go with the meatballs, so I also sauteed some potatoes. They took ages and I ended up burning them slightly, but whatever.

So the whole thing:

Beefburger meatballs in brinjal pickle sauce, with sauteed potatoes, lime and garlic dip, and crushed cracker, sesame seed and coconut topping.

Conclusion: Yeah, pretty good. The sauce was excellent and worked well with the beef, and the creamy dip I think was a necessary counterpart. In fact, I liked the dip so much I will probably make it again. The crackers were fine, but entirely unnecessary. Whatever.

The next day was my turn to buy. The next day was also Easter Sunday, which I had not factored into my plans, as it meant the grocers was shut and I couldn't get any weird veg, which I really wanted to do.

Buying was trickier than I thought. I didn't want to get anything that pointed in one particular direction, so my instinct of picking one thing and following up with things I thought would go with it was off the table. I finally settled on:

Gammon steaks
Butternut squash
Coconut milk
Olive ciabatta rolls

Boom.

It was terribly exciting watching Pete steeple his fingers and walk up and down with purposeful intent. I can't tell you exactly what he did, since the whole process is shrouded in secrecy, but I can tell you that it involved many pans and some swearing.

Hard at work.

This is what he ended up with:

Gammon chunks in a smooth squash and coconut sauce, spiced with cumin, coriander, cinnamon and chilli, with toasted ciabbatta rolls for dipping.

Gammon curry, basically.

It was a really delicious and warming combination, and it made the whole house smell amazing.

It's hard to say who won exactly. I think we were both more critical of our own efforts, so I preferred his dish and he preferred mine. The whole thing was good fun but is best reserved for holiday weekends since it needs a little prep work, but I'd still recommend it. And I don't doubt we'll try it again - come back again for round 2.

A word on The Great British Menu

It's back. One of the few fun shows for all the family where there is 90% probability that any given person appearing on screen is an irredeemable prick.

Last year I really enjoyed my weekly review, pointing out my favourite dishes, who was the biggest prick, the judges comments, any drama caused by pricks, the winners and losers, and the least prickish prick*.

*There are very few genuinely sympathetic contestants, so it's not a question of someone being nice, just noticeably less prickish than the others

I still love the show, but from what I've seen in this first week I fear I would largely be repeating myself if I were to do the same thing again.

So the brief this year is for the chefs to create dishes that celebrate the veterans of D-Day, evoking a patriotic, 40's wartime spirit. OK. Sure. So far, so typical GBM. But if there was one thing we learnt from last year when the brief was to make 'comedy' food, it's that chefs Do. Not. Get. Tone. And telling a group of (how to put it?) pricks with no sense of tone to make something vaguely to do with war, seems pretty dicey to me. Example: last week, dull-eyed madman Ray made a starter of pigeon (homing pigeons, geddit?) with a note clutched in its claw (so clever!) that read something like 'Beach taken, casualties light'. And it went down a storm. They loved it. Does no one else find that unutterably tacky? To serve this to veterans, who may have used actual homing pigeons and who definitely saw actual casualties, no one else finds this kind of off? No one thinks that making the actual war that actually happened and people actually died in the 'theme' for a meal is a bit disrespectful? Yes, celebrate the veterans, sure, and good job too, but I can't see how making a dish based on someone's harrowing experiences is really the best way to celebrate them.

And that's before we even get to the dick swinging. Oh, lord, the dick swinging. I was obviously braced for it (overly aggressive competitiveness is, after all, a large part of the prickish sensibility), but factor in the brief and we've got whole new opportunities for self-aggrandisement. 'I'm doing it for the veterans', they say 'I really want to win this to honour their sacrifice'. The implicit meaning that these other chefs, they might just want to win for themselves, not like me, I want to win for the heroes, and doesn't that kind of make me a hero too? I might not mind it so much if it didn't so clearly reek of insincerity. But they aren't actors. They're chefs. And chefs Don't. Get. Tone.

There are still a lot of great things. Last week Tom Kerridge was delightfully encouraging and Marcus Wareing delightfully menacing. Despite some people's best endeavours, the cooking still looks inventive and fun. And my absolute favourite aspect of the show - the editing - is still provocatively incoherent. Any laughter is cut, making it look like no one can take a joke ever, and every sentence is met with a full minute of scowling. In the episode from Friday a shot of one chef climbing a hill in his hometown was immediately followed by a shot of the other chef arriving at the kitchen, giving the impression that they were both on their way to the studio but one took a wildly divergent route and got lost in the countryside. It was so weird that I got the giggles, and then I couldn't drink my wine because my hand was shaking from laughter, and then the fact that I was laughing at something so bizarre made me laugh even harder and I started to cry a bit and had to put my glass down. And then Pete was sitting next to me with such a weary yet patient expression waiting for me to explain why I was laughing for seemingly no reason at all that I got even worse and had a bit of a meltdown. It was the editing, Pete. The editing.

So this year I'm leaving all that behind. I'll watch it, and no doubt shout at the TV, but there's only so many times I can write 'But they're all such pricks!'. It's a lot, but there's a limit.

Roast Potato Substitutes

Brace yourselves.

There's a chance I might not be the best cook in the world. Wait, now, and hush the disbelieving gasps that have no doubt escaped you. I'm pretty good, granted, but I have my flaws. I'm impatient and I'm not great at following recipes, which is why my baking repertoire is particularly limited. On the other hand, I like to think I have turned these challenges into positive attributes (I do this a lot, *ahem* potential employers) by being pretty good at improvising.

I am all about taking basic ideas and changing them to suit what you like/what you've got/what's in the discount bin. This involves categorising food, by texture, flavour, type, etc, and making sure your substitutes are appropriate. For example, my mum used to make a lovely little dish made by mixing grated cheddar, chopped onion, and egg, and baking it until it puffed up. We just called it 'cheese and onion', but I can appreciate that the name doesn't give much away, and could potentially be misleading. Maybe 'Cheddar and onion bake'? I don't know. That's for history to decide. Anyway, when I started cooking for myself I figured that the basic cheese + flavour + egg bake formula could be adapted pretty broadly, and I regularly make a feta and thyme for a greek tiropita feel, or ricotta, nutmeg and spinach for a creamier, Italian-ish version.

What I'm saying is, don't feel like you have to be constrained by 'recipes', or 'tradition', or 'common sense', or 'for God's sake Bronwen don't be ridiculous'. Well who's ridiculous now, goddammit, I'll show you all.

This slightly overlong preamble is really just to try and explain why I did something that I wasn't sure was going to work, but it totally did work, and now I'm going to rub it in all your doubting faces.

OK, so the other day I was all set up to make a nice roast chicken for Sunday lunch. I had my chicken, I had my veg for the side, all I needed was some potatoes to roast as I was down to my last one. So out I popped for potatoes. Now you tell me this; if you were a supermarket, what sort of jim-crack, shady operation do you have to be running to be completely out of potatoes during peak shopping hours at the weekend? A question for another time, perhaps, but the upshot is I was in a pickle. Potatoes with a roast is pretty much non-negotiable. I could have gone the relatively short distance up the hill to another shop where I would undoubtedly have found potatoes, but the downsides were twofold. 1) It was up a hill, and 2) I honestly never thought of this option until just now. Instead, I started to do my super-speedy thinking-outside-the-box food-improvisation thing. You know when Sherlock goes into his daft mind-palace whatsit and he's got WordArt popping up in the air all over the place? It's basically exactly like that, except with pictures of starchy alternatives. And you know what is basically potatoes? Gnocchi.

I'll give you a minute here, because presumably I've just blown your mind. Gnocchi is a starchy dough made from mashed potatoes. Makes total sense.

I got a 500g packet of regular, cheap gnocchi, and just poured it in to roast next to the chicken, as well as some onions and carrots.

Call me Wile E. Coyote: Super Genius

It didn't turn out perfectly - some of the gnocchi absorbed too much of the meat juices and disintegrated slightly. But most of the bits around the edges were crispy, chickeny, chewy, and delicious.

While they may not be able to permanently take the place of roast potatoes, I definitely think I'll be using gnocchi whenever I'm cooking for a large number of people, as it saves a massive amount of prep time.

Patent pending, so if you do it you'll have to credit me.  It's only fair.

Spicy Sweet Potato Soup

So what did you get for Christmas? Wait, don't actually tell me. As with so many conversations that begin this way, I don't care. I just want to tell you what I got.

I got this fancy hand blender!

I used to have one of those cheap, plastic stick blenders that was pretty useful as a milk frother, but required serious time and attention if you wanted to actually blend something. It disappeared after one of my many house moves (I think between Coventry and Leamington, so logically it should be in Kenilworth somewhere), and since then I've managed to get by without it by using a potato masher instead. It doesn't exactly make soup smooth, but it's at least a little less lumpy.

But now I have this guy! He is powerful. I don't know exactly how powerful, but I think it should be measured in horses. In his dormant state he is known as Prince Adam (geddit?), and he can blend like billy-o. What an odd phrase.

So that's basically what I've been up to for the last month. Blending. Blending all the things. Also taking popular songs and replacing the word 'pimping' with 'blending'. Blending ain't easy. Etc.

This is a spicy, wintery soup I've made a few times which allows me to blend to my heart's content, but by adding kidney beans post-blending it gives a bit of texture for the lumpy soup lovers out there. They are a powerful faction.

You will need:

2 sweet potatoes
1 large white onion
2 carrots
oil
1 can of kidney beans
1 1/2 - 2 pints beef stock
salt and pepper
a pinch of chilli powder or chilli flakes
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 - 2 tsp worcestershire sauce

Peel and chop the sweet potatoes, carrots and onion, and start cooking in a large saucepan with a little oil. Add the spices and salt and pepper, and stir thoroughly. Add enough stock to cover the veg, but keep a little back in case you want to thin it out later. You can use chicken or veg stock instead (the beef certainly makes the whole thing a little brown), but I prefer beef for this soup.

Bring to a slow simmer, cover, and cook until the veg is soft - maybe 30 minutes. Once the veg is soft, blend the shit out of it. Yeah. Really blend the balls off it. Cool.

Add the worcestershire sauce, more seasoning if you need it, and more stock if the mixture feels a bit thick. Drain, wash and add the kidney beans to the soup, then cover and cook for a further 20 minutes.

Of all the things I have blended recently (there have been a few), this soup is my favourite.

Black Pudding Sauce

I'll admit, black pudding isn't for everyone. Quite apart from the mental pause it'll give most people when they remember they're essentially eating blood paste, the spicing can be a little heavy and the texture is a bit cloying.

A little while ago I had a black pudding bread sauce at a restaurant, and it was lovely. The spice was more mellow and the texture unctuous without being gummy. In retrospect I could have asked what they put in it or how they made it, but where's the fun in that? And when I saw that you could get a four slice pack of black pudding in my local Tesco for the grand price of £1.29, that pretty much clinched it. Here's my attempt at a recreation.
 
You will need:

300g black pudding (1 full four slice pack)
1 medium sized onion
100g breadcrumbs
1 pint beef stock
1/2 pint bitter
salt and pepper
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp sugar

Chop the onion and black pudding into small pieces, and start frying in a large saucepan until the onion is just about cooked and the black pudding starts to soften. Add the breadcrumbs and stir thoroughly. Add the hot beef stock and beer slowly, stirring as you do so. Keep simmering on a low heat, stirring occasionally until thick and glossy (about 10-15 min).

Once the basic sauce is complete add the salt, pepper, vinegar and sugar to taste. You'll want to be quite generous with the salt and pepper especially.

Sausage, mash and blood. Classic.

This makes about a pint and a bit of sauce, and, full disclosure, it's not the prettiest thing in the world. I believe the colour can be described as 'brunge'. However, it is thick, meaty, and tasty.  I generally use it instead of gravy, especially with mash, but you can also add more hot stock to make a delicious soup. Just remember that it is delicious, and you're not just eating blood soup.

Dining Alone at Harvey Nichols

I'm not great at updating social media with all the changes in my life, so for those of you who know me I'll try to catch you up.

If the last thing you heard was that I was living in the Midlands, you're out of date: I moved to Bristol about a year ago, and I like it very much.

If the last thing you heard I was living in Bristol and going out of my mind looking for work, you're out of date: I found a job, and started working in Bath a couple of months ago.

If the last thing you heard I was working in Bath, you're out of date: just like bloody buses, you wait for ages for one then two turn up in quick succession. I start a new job in Bristol on Monday.

All of which means I am now ending a year of tumult, confusion, and oppressive 'free time'. The past couple of weeks I've been twiddling my thumbs a little, not quite knowing what to do with myself before I start the Next Big Chapter, so I decided to treat myself. I took myself to lunch at the Second Floor Restaurant at Harvey Nichols in Bristol.

I've never been for a fancy meal on my own before, so I did what I always do and put on an air of confidence that clearly said 'I do it this all the time, and what are you looking at, Mr Big Stuff?'. I was able to practice this beforehand by wandering around the make-up counters on the first floor looking for all the world like someone who would spend £25 on a single tube of lipstick, and definitely wasn't there to play with the testers then bugger off.

To their credit they hardly looked surprised at all when I asked for a table for one. The restaurant is spacious, with tall windows looking out over Quakers Friars and Cabot Circus, and decorated entirely in various shades of gold. The last time I was there the temperature was a shade too warm and the music had an intrusive thumping bass that made the whole atmosphere a bit weird and oppressive. This time the cooler temperature and far more agreeable Jazz standards being played meant the whole 'total gold' thing didn't feel nearly as aggressive as it did before.

I went for the Set Menu for September, which is a very reasonable £20 for three courses.

I started with a duck terrine, with a nicely dressed salad, thin, crisp bread and plum and ginger chutney. The duck was tender with decently sized chunks of meat, and each ingredient was exactly in the right proportion to the others. The chutney was pleasantly sweet, but I could have done with more of a gingery punch.

My main was slow cooked pork belly with rainbow chard and what the menu said was 'pickled apple puree' but turned out to be slices of apple poached in something like mulled wine. The portion was a little smaller than I was hoping, but I guess rich people don't eat much. The pork belly was delicious, but it is, as you know, a salty meat. The chard was earthy and well cooked, but a little oversalted. The sauce was rich and would have tied the whole dish together if it hadn't been slightly over reduced, leaving it a little salty. Salt was a theme, is what I'm saying. The three small slices of sweet apple were the only thing that saved the dish. It had clearly been made by someone who knew what they were doing, but took their eye off the ball where seasoning was concerned.

Pudding was a cider brandy parfait with 'apple and olive oil crisps'. The crisps turned out to be thin triangles of pastry, about the texture of a poppadom, sprinkled with cinnamon. I can't say I could discern either apple or olive oil, but they were very tasty nevertheless. Both the parfait and and the apple caramel it was served with were delicious - the highlight of the meal.

I'd be happy to recommend this place to anyone, and the set menu which varies month by month is excellent value, but the 'simple food cooked well' ethos doesn't allow much room for error, and I can't say this was error free.

I very much enjoyed my sole dining experience, although I did feel a little rushed. I guess the wait staff would usually wait for a lull in conversation before clearing plates, but since I was on my own (and the restaurant was largely empty), plates were cleared as soon as I was done and the next course brought out soon after. I barely had time to touch my bread rolls (which were clearly home made and very nice). I sat down at 2pm, and had finished my dessert by 2.40. I was hungry though, so I didn't mind too much.

So don't be put off eating on your own. Just bring something to read, and work up an appetite.

Creme de Mure

I must admit, I've been lazy recently. No particular reason, I've just gone through one of those periods where I don't feel quite so much like cooking something fancy, and I'm more likely to fall back on an old reliable recipe rather than something interesting or new.

But! Spells of apathy can't last forever, and time changes all things. Tides turn, seasons change, sunrise, sunset, circle of life, like the circles that you find, in the windmills of your mind, etc. The thing that has brought me out of my slump is the coming of blackberry season.

I moved to Bristol about this time last year, which meant that when blackberry season came around I had no idea where to find the best spots to pick them. But I play the long game, and I've been keeping my eye out for months. This time around I knew exactly where to go, and have successfully cleaned out, like, so many blackberries. If blackberries were a new species of human/vampire type deal, I would be the I Am Legend guy. They would speak of me in hushed tones as the Bringer of Death, Maker of Pies.

And now I finally have enough for me to make Creme de Mure, or blackberry liqueur. Ages ago Pete gave me 'How To Make Your Own Drinks' by Suzy Atkins (her off Saturday Kitchen) that had a recipe for Creme de Mure in it, and this is the first time I've been able to try it out.

Her recipe requires:
1 1/2 kg blackberries
2 litres red wine
1kg sugar
70cl vodka or brandy

This is meant to make 2 1/2 litres, and she recommends drinking within 6 weeks. However. As you know, I prefer to treat recipes as the opening offer in a negotiation, and therefore subject to amendments. My thoughts on this recipe were as follows:

1) 2 1/2 litres of a liqueur is a lot to get through in 6 weeks.
2) Blackberries are free.
3) Wine and vodka are not.

My conclusion was to use about the same amount of blackberries, but only one bottle of wine, and amend the amount of vodka and sugar as I saw fit. That way I'd produce less liquid over all, it would be more blackberry-y, and it would be cheaper. This is how it went:

Creme de Mure (Bronners Style)

You will need:

1 1/2 kg blackberries
1 bottle of red wine (Suzy says to use something decent, but then she would say that, wouldn't she?)
50cl vodka (actually, next time I'll probably up this to 70cl)
350g sugar

Wash the blackberries, getting rid of any twigs and bugs. Put them in a large tupperware box or any other receptacle large enough that can still fit in the fridge. Mash with a potato masher and add the whole bottle of wine. Stir a little, then put on the lid and keep in the fridge for a day or so. Suzy says 48hrs, but I'm a busy woman and only left it a day.

After they've macerated pass the wine and blackberries through a sieve into a large pan and add the sugar and vodka. I think I worked the blackberries through the sieve a little too hard so I did get a lot of extra liquid and some pulp in the final mix, but it doesn't seem the worse for it.

Heat through without boiling until the sugar is dissolved and the liquid has thickened and turned slightly syrupy. Store in sterilised bottles.

This ended up making 2 litres,  but as I said I may have forced more blackberry juice into it than perhaps I should. It has a little warmth of alcohol but is a bit weak, which is why I'd recommend upping the vodka. Or, you know, following the original recipe. Either way. On the other hand, I've mainly been drinking this in cocktails where I add more spirits anyway, so it all works out in the end.

Speaking of which...

The Bramble

You will need:

2 measures creme de mure
1 measure gin
dash of lemon juice (optional)

Pour everything over a tumbler of ice and stir. Drink. Drink it up.

Ooooh, this is nice. Not too sweet, fruity and refreshing. I've seen and tried a number of other cocktails that use Creme de Mure, but in my opinion nothing really matches up to this. Go. Drink it up.