Recipe of the week from The Big Ready Steady Cook Book: Snappy Ginger Biscuits

I had a very busy day yesterday and today is a let's-eat-leftovers day, so I decided to make something simple and easy: ginger biscuits (cookies to Americans).

Creator: Thane Prince
Found on page 177
Makes 20



100 g (4 oz) unsalted butter
100 g (4 oz) caster sugar (I used regular)
1/2 tsp ground ginger
175 g (6 oz) self-raising flour ()
Juice of 1/2 orange

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Put butter, sugar, ginger and flour in a food processor and blend until crumbly. With the motor running, pour in enough orange juice to make a soft dough.

Put teaspoonfuls of the dough onto a baking sheet with about 5 cm (2 inches) between balls of dough. Wet a fork and flatted each ball with it. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown, remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.



Review and notes:

First of all: substitutions. I used regular sugar instead of caster sugar, and regular flour, baking powder and salt instead of self-rising flour (1 1/4 cup flour + 1 3/4 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt). It took the juice of one whole (admittedly rather small) orange to make the kind of dough needed, so if you make this recipe, keep more on hand just in case.

The cookies are quick, extremely easy to make and nice warm with cold milk. There is a slight bitter flavour to them that suggests I could safely cut down on the baking powder in my self-rising flour recipe. Another time I would use more ginger and perhaps a 1/4 tsp of orange essence to get a stronger flavour of both. as it is, the cookies are mild and nice with milk, and probably great with tea. They go hard around the edges but stay soft in the center when cooled.

Recipe of the week from Salads: American celeriac (celery root) salad

This was going to be the dish of the week. I chose it because I have never (knowingly) eaten celeriac, and because it is recommended as good with ham, which is what I had decided to have for Sunday dinner. Unfortunately, availability intervened. For months I have been noticing celeriac when I have gone shopping, and thought “this I’ll have to try”, but then when I was going to buy one, it wasn’t available. I tried three supermarkets and found nothing, so I thought I would have to fall back on my second choice, potato salad.

4-6 servings.

1/2 celeriac root (about 250 g)
2 apples
50 g shelled walnuts

Dressing:
150 ml (150 g) mayonnaise
100 ml whipping cream
2-3 tsp lemon juice

Peel and julienne the celeriac and cook for a few minutes in lightly salted water. Drain and cool. Peel the apples and cut into cubes. Coarsely chop the walnuts, reserving a few whole kernels to use for garnish. Mix together celeriac, apple pieces and walnuts.

Mix together the cream, mayonnaise and lemon juice. Pour over the salad and stir to mix. Garnish with walnut kernels.

Once I have tried the salad with walnuts I will replace the photo with one that has walnuts in it.


Edit:

I went to a supermarket (a different one from the ones I visited yesterday) to get some ingredients for the potato salad after I posted the recipe, and guess what I found? Celeriac. So I decided to make this salad after all as dish of the week.

This was not the end of my ingredient problems. The ham was in the oven, getting the final glaze and the potato wedges were roasting when I began assembling the salad. The julienned celeriac was cooked and cooled, I had a nice sweet-tart apple all chopped up, the sauce was smooth and nice – and then I opened the packet of walnut kernels to discover they were rancid, a good couple of months before the sell-by date. I had no choice but to make a run to the small after-hours supermarket that is conveniently situated about 5 minutes from where I live. They had no walnuts, so I had to improvise and bought pecan nuts instead. They have a flavour reminiscent of walnuts, although they are sweeter and not as flavourful or as crunchy.

And now for the Review:

This salad is actually a variation on the classic Waldorf salad, using a slightly more elaborate sauce and cooked celeriac instead of raw celery, so the flavour is milder and the salad is not as crunchy as the original. I served it on the side with slices of smoked ham that I glazed with a mixture of ketchup and brown sugar.

The salad had a nice texture, it was mild with bursts of stronger flavour from the nuts and celeriac, but I should have used a tart apple to get more flavour. It went down well with the ham and garlic-flavoured potato wedges.

Recipe of the week: Genuine Howondaland Curry

I chose this as recipe of the week because I love curries and I liked the look of this one even more than Mrs. Colon’s Klatchian Curry. The recipe is presented here in the proportions I used, which is approximately equal to half a recipe from the book, with some tweaks. I have put my notes on alterations and some comments into the recipe and instructions.

Attributed to: Ponce da Quirm.



Serves 2.

2 chicken breasts, skinless and cut into small bite-sized cubes
100 ml plain yogurt
1 tbs grated fresh ginger root (the recipes calls for a 1 cm piece, but this can mean 1/4 tsp or 1 tbs, all depending on how thick the root is. I obviously chose the larger size)
8 cloves of garlic (this is as much as a whole recipe calls for, but in my opinion it is impossible to have too much garlic in a dish)
Large dash of olive oil, enough to thinly coat the bottom of my frying pan
1/2 a large onion, coarsely chopped
1 fresh green chilli pepper, seeded and finely chopped (this is half of what it should be, but I thought it would be enough as I don’t like the heat of chillies to overpower all other flavours in a dish. It wasn’t enough, but the supermarket down the street doesn’t sell fresh chillies and I didn’t want to drive to another market just for one pepper. I also completely forgot that I have some powdered cayenne pepper)

Here is where things began to go wrong. I misread the instructions in the book as 1/2 teaspoon each of cumin and coriander, when in fact it was 1/2 tablespoon, which is equal to 1 1/2 teaspoon. On with the recipe:

1/4 tsp ground cumin (should have been 3/4 tsp)
1/4 tsp ground coriander (ditto)
1/2 tsp turmeric
200 ml coconut milk
150 ml water (I will reduce this to 100 ml if I make this dish again)
Salt to taste
Fresh coriander leaves

The recipe suggests that a can of tomatoes or some liquidised cashew nuts could be used instead of the coconut milk. It also allows the addition of lemon juice and a pinch of sugar when the chicken is added to the sauce. I did none of these things.

Put the chicken cubes in a bowl with the yogurt, half the ginger and half the garlic, stir to coat and let marinade for a minimum of 30 minutes, preferably overnight (I compromised and marinated it for 3 hours).

In a large pan, heat the oil and fry the chopped onion for about 10 minutes over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until it is browned (this means caramelised, not burned). Add half the chopped chilli pepper and the remaining ginger, plus the cumin, coriander and turmeric. You should now have a paste (how a paste is possible with crushed garlic (not to mention the onions which should have been finely chopped) is beyond me, but I trudged on and simply mashed everything together with the cooking spatula when the sauce was cooked). Add the coconut milk, blend well and cook for about 8-10 minutes over medium-low heat, or until you have a thick sauce. (If it gets very thick and dry looking and the oil starts to separate from the sauce, you have either cooked it for too long or at too high a temperature. I didn’t).

Add the chicken and yogurt mix, the water and some salt and mix well. Simmer very slowly (this means just enough heat to keep it simmering but not boiling). Cook for 15-20 minutes (I cooked it for 30 minutes).

Here is where the next thing went wrong:
I am informed that if cooked at such a low temperature, the yogurt should not curdle and a creamy, thick sauce should form, but I have never been able to cook a yogurt sauce without having it curdle. I know I am not cooking it at too high a temperature because the sauce was just barely simmering, so I must assume the yogurt I use is different from the yogurt you’re supposed to use in these sauces. (I’ll try home-made next time). I got the usual curdled sauce*, which, when it was reduced to the right thickness for a curry, would separate into curds and broth as soon as I had finished stirring it together.

When about 5 minutes remain of the cooking time, add the other half of the chilli pepper.

When the curry is on the plates, sprinkle some fresh chopped cilantro (coriander leaves) on top (I used frozen) before serving.

Serve with nan bread.
I think spicy chutney and a fresh yogurt-based raita would go down nicely with it as well.

* Just because a yogurt sauce curdles, that is no reason not to eat it. It tastes just as good. The texture is just not as creamy as it should be and it looks a bit soggy with the broth separating from the curds. The trick is to reduce it enough that there is little or no broth left. However, in my case I used too much water by about a third, and as I didn’t want the chicken to go dry from overcooking, I didn’t reduce the sauce that much, as may be seen in the accompanying photos. I definitely would not have got good marks for presentation in a cooking contest.

Review:
As I used too little chilli, cumin and coriander, the sauce was very mild, so mild in fact that I ended up adding some powdered garlic and a little bit of Aromat flavour enhancer to pep up the taste. Somehow it never occurred to me to add more cumin and coriander or some cayenne powder (a sure case of “out of sight, out of mind”), but I will try it with the leftovers tomorrow. In spite of too little spice, the sauce was good, and as it was so mild, I could actually taste the coconut. I think it could definitely be made better by the addition of cashew nuts as suggested in the original recipe, not to replace the coconut milk but to complement it.

Recipe of the week from Mexican Cooking: Sopa de Ajo (garlic soup)

I chose the garlic soup, Sopa de Ajo, as the recipe of the week, because I really wanted to try it and because I had so far not made a soup as recipe of the week. I also wanted to make Chiles Rellenos, either the recipe I posted on Tuesday, or the Spanish-style filled peppers which are also in the book, but I ran into problems with both recipes.

With the deep-fried Chiles Rellenos it was unavailability of ingredients that stopped me. While I found both Monterey Jack and Cheddar cheese for the filling, I could not find Anaheim or Poblano peppers – indeed the only fresh hot peppers I did find were Cayennes, which are much too hot for this recipe, plus you can only get very little cheese into them. In this case I plan to wait until next spring, then get me some seeds and grow some Anaheims along with my usual crop of Cayennes. Check back for a report on deep-fried chillies in August of 2008.

In the case of the other Chiles Rellenos recipe, there was a translation problem. The Danish translator interpreted “Mexican rice” as “rice grown in Mexico” and not as the dish of the same name, which is not included in this version of the book (it’s a shorter version of a book of the same name). Just by looking at the recipe I could see that the “Mexican rice” was indeed the side dish of that name, but there are very different versions of it to be found on the net (some mild, some hot, some with tomatoes, some without, etc.) and I wanted to review the recipe made as closely as I could to the one given in the book, so it was no go, and I ended up making just the soup.

--
The Sopa de Ajo:

Recipe originally posted on Wednesday, October 31, 2008.

I love garlic and have a tendency to always use of it more than is stated in recipes. This recipe looks like it could satisfy even the most demanding garlic lover.

This appears to be an originally Spanish dish. Most of the Spanish recipes I have seen for it include ham and use sweet paprika powder instead of hot sauce.

To make 4 small portions:

10 garlic cloves
1 tsp flour
2 tbs butter
1 litre beef- or chicken bouillon
Hot pepper sauce, for example Tabasco
Salt and pepper
4 eggs
Croutons or toast cut in small cubes (may be left out)
2 tbs grated cheese for decoration
1 tbs chopped parsley for decoration (and to prevent garlic breath)

Chop the garlic as finely as you can and then crush it. Mix with the flour and fry at low temperature in the butter until transparent. Add the bouillon and bring to the boil. Cook for 15 minutes. Strain through a fine sieve, adjust flavour with salt and pepper and a few drops of pepper sauce.

Return to the heat and bring to a gentle boil. Break the eggs and drop them into the soup and poach them for a couple of minutes, or until they are cooked (this presumably means the whites – I think the yolk is supposed to be runny). The soup is now ready.

Add croutons or toast cubes, sprinkle with cheese and top with parsley before serving.

Another suggestion is to put the soup in small warmed soup bowls, add the egg yolks and let stand for about 2 minutes. Decorate with croutons, cheese and parsley and serve.



Notes:
The soup was delicious, and I will definitely make it again. It turned out richly flavoured but not overpoweringly garlicky, and the cheese, egg and croutons gave it a nice blend of tastes and textures.

I made half a recipe and the only thing I changed was that I omitted the parsley because I didn't have any on hand. The garlic made me weep copiously while I was frying it, and there is now a pungent smell of garlic, not only in my apartment, but probably in the whole stairwell of my apartment building as well. I used a commercial beef bouillon cube to make the stock, and it was salty enough that no extra salt was needed. I added a little pepper and dribbled hot pepper sauce (Tabasco-style) into it until I could just taste it in the soup. The recipe didn’t say whether the egg was supposed to be fully cooked or just poached enough for a firm white and runny yolk, but I chose the second and let it cook just 3 minutes. For the cheese I sprinkled some grated Mozzarella over the soup and also put in a slice of another cheese, mild and rich. I think the next time I make it I will use stronger flavoured cheese. I used cubes of toasted Italian bread instead of croutons. They softened very quickly, so next time I will use genuine croutons.

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A note on the book:
I don’t know who to blame: the author, the Danish translator or the Danish editor who shortened the book, but some of the recipes are not easy to follow, simply because they are not detailed enough. A beginner home cook would definitely be stumped by some of them. The instructions sometimes don’t say how to prep the ingredients before cooking (for example whether to chop or slice an onion and how finely/roughly), or important parts of the instructions are left out and the cook is expected to just wing it. Not good, but I will persevere, since there are a number of promising recipes in it.

Recipe of the week from Small dishes…: Cheese soufflé with celery butter

Originally posted on October 9, 2007, as a sample recipe from the book.



Servings: 4
Time: 90 minutes.

2 tbs butter
4 tbs flour
300 ml milk
4 eggs
300 ml cheese, grated
Salt, sweet paprika
2 tsp cornflour

Celery butter:
75 g butter
Salt
50 ml chopped celery

To make soufflé:
Melt the butter. Stir in the flour and then add the milk, little by little, stirring in between to mix well. Cook gently for a few minutes, stirring constantly. Separate the eggs. Break the yolks and add them and the cheese to the flour mixture. Adjust flavour with salt and paprika. Let the cheese melt completely into the batter and stir in the cornflour. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold carefully into the batter. Pour the batter into a greased oven-proof soufflé dish that takes bout 1,2 litres.

Bake the soufflé on the bottom rung of the oven for about 40 minutes.

It is best to serve the soufflé immediately, but it can stand for 5-10 minutes in the closed oven after the heat is turned off.

Serve with the celery butter.



To prepare celery butter:
Prepare while the soufflé bakes. Butter should be at room temperature. Stir until it is smooth and add salt and celery. Refrigerate until it is needed.



Notes and review:
As usual I made only half a recipe. I couldn’t have made a full recipe anyway, as I have no soufflé dish or casserole dish big enough. I made no changes other than halving everything.

Although it doesn’t say in the recipe, I assumed the celery had to be finely chopped.

It doesn’t say what kind of cheese to use, so I ended up using a mixture of Mozzarella and Gouda that is sold pre-grated as “gratin cheese”, and added a bit of a more flavourful local cheese that I love on toast. I think a touch of Parmesan would be good too.

Soufflés are reputed to be temperamental food that will, at the least provocation (such as opening the oven at the wrong moment), subside into an unappetising blob, and it is true that a soufflé will fall shortly after being removed from the oven, so it needs to be served immediately.

The first time I made a soufflé, it was an apple-almond dessert soufflé, but this is a more robust kind that can be eaten as an appetizer or a small meal. I was interested in seeing how a soufflé would do in a convection oven, which is why I chose this as recipe of the week.

I had a bad moment when the dough was ready, when I realised I had forgotten to turn on the oven, but I was able to heat it quickly by turning on the grill for 5 minutes and put the dough into a slightly underheated oven. When it had not begun to rise after 15 minutes I got worried, but then decided not to let it bother me, and started reading a book. After 30 minutes of baking I took a peek, and the soufflé had risen beautifully (see first photo). I gave it another 5 minutes to develop a nice brown crust, and then took it out of the oven, photographed it quickly and then ate most of it.



The soufflé was light and fluffy and the taste mild. The texture was ever so slightly grainy. I don’t know if cheese soufflé is supposed to be that way, or if it was the types of cheese I used, but it didn’t matter. Another time I would use more flavourful cheese.

The celery butter added an interesting flavour to the soufflé, but as I mentioned above, I think another time I would purée it to give the butter more flavour kick.

Verdict: Quite good, but not something I’m interested in making again.

Meal of the week from Quick Dishes: Beef patties with onions served with Saffron mashed potatoes

When I was growing up my family went camping together every summer. Mine and my brother's favourite camping treat was canned beef patties in brown sauce with instant mashed potatoes. My mother could do magic with these humble dishes, or so it seemed, because after I moved away from home I once bought the same brand of beef patties in brown sauce and heated them for dinner, but they didn't taste the same. Some questioning on my behalf revealed that she would add some spices and other ingredients to the sauce to make it better. I already knew she completely disregarded the instructions on the instant mashed potato package and did it her way, which included using milk or cream instead of water, and some other little touches that improved it immensely.

In memory of many evenings sitting outside a tent, eating beef patties with mashed potatoes, I decided to choose the two dishes below. While the patties, which Icelanders call hakkabuff, are made from scratch, the mashed potatoes are supposed to be instant.


Just look at all those onions!

While I have included the serving suggestions from the book, I of course served the two together, with the addition of this fresh tomato and cucumber salad which my mother sometimes serves with fried fish and crumbed fried lamb cutlets:

1 medium tomato
1/4 cucumber
mayonnaise, to taste

Cut the tomato into thin slices, cut slices into strips and halve the strips. Do the same with the cucumber. Stir into the mayonnaise and chill for 20 minutes or so. Serve with fried meat or fish.

I have fleshed out the instructions a bit. As usual, any recipe alterations are shown below the recipes.

Beef patties with onions

Prep time: 30 minutes
1-2 servings

2 onions
225 g minced beef
1 egg
75 ml water or cream
Salt and pepper to taste
1 1/2 tbs butter
Water

Slice the onions into rings and fry over low heat until they are soft and golden. Remove from pan.

Mix together the minced beef, egg, water or cream, salt and pepper. Form into 2 large, flat, oblong patties. Melt the butter and fry the patties for 2-3 minutes on each side. Remove from pan and keep warm. Deglaze the pan with a little water and pour the gravy over the patties. Finally, warm up the onion rings in the pan and top the patties with them.

Serve with poached potatoes and corncobs or a fresh salad.
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Saffron mashed potatoes

Prep time: 10 minutes
1-2 servings

2 portions dry mashed potato flakes
As needed, water or milk
As needed, butter or margarine
1/2 sachet saffron (0,25 g)

Make the mashed potatoes according to the instructions on the packaging and add saffron. Serve warm with cooked vegetables, e.g. broccoli or peas, fried meat, and fried or poached fish.



Alterations to the recipes:
I made the beef patties pretty much according to the recipe, except I only used one onion and added a bit of garlic. I also fried the patties a bit longer than what the recipe calls for, to get them cooked all the way through. While I prefer my steak still pink in the middle, the only mince I will ever eat raw or pink is mince I have made myself, especially if eggs are also involved as in this case. Although there has not been a public case of food poisoning caused by either eggs or minced meat here for as long as can remember, I'm not taking any risks. Having once had serious food poisoning, I do not relish getting it again.

To make the mashed potatoes, I started by heating up some milk in a saucepan, took it off the heat and added a healthy pinch of saffron strands, which I let soak in the milk for about 10 minutes. Then I added the fragrant, bright yellow milk to the mashed potatoes.

As to those, I could not bring myself to use instant mashed potatoes when I had the fixings to make some from scratch, so I made mashed potatoes with fresh potatoes instead of flakes. At least that was the plan. Actually, what happened was that when I started mashing the potatoes it turned out they were too gummy to make good mash, meaning the mash would be dense and heavy and stick to the roof of my mouth. Therefore I used an old trick I have used before when I needed to stretch mashed potatoes and had no time to run to the supermarket for more: I took some dry potato flakes (a kitchen staple useful for other things beside making mash) and added them to the mash (sorry, no measurements are available, as only experience can tell you how much to use), along with some more milk, and whisked the two gently together, adding more milk as the flakes expanded and soaked it up. I ended up with mashed potatoes that were lighter than what I would have got had I used the potatoes alone, but which still had the flavour of the made-from-scratch product. The saffron turned the mashed potatoes a bright, lovely yellow and they smelled heavenly.

Verdict:
This was a good, very greasy and extremely oniony everyday sort of meal. In fact, my whole apartment smells like fried onions, and it's lucky I haven't got a date tonight, because I ate every morsel of that onion. The beef was juicy and I got the spices just right, and the saffron mashed potatoes were delicious, although another time I would use only half the saffron. In the original recipe the saffron strands are meant to be added straight to the mashed potatoes and would not have time to release as much flavour as they do when they are soaked first, so to save on saffron, use less and soak it first. You will also get stronger colour that way.

250 g. of beef is enough for two regular eaters or one big eater. I finished one patty and half the mashed potatoes. The rest I will have for dinner, along with half an onion I plan to fry up to eat with it.

Recipe of the week: Pasta Carbonara

The recipe of the week is for a simple and delicious Italian dish that I have eaten in restaurants but have only ever made once myself. In that recipe, like in the Silver Palate recipe below, pancetta (Italian bacon) was replaced by regular bacon. I was unhappy with that recipe and decided to try the Silver Palate version.





The recipe:

Serves 4-6.

500 g (1 lb) thick-sliced bacon, diced
2 tbs salt (I am inclined to think this is an error and it must be 2 tsp)
500 g (1 lb) spaghetti or linguine
3 eggs
1/3 cup chopped Italian parsley
Grated Parmesan cheese (optional)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Sautée the bacon in a skillet until crisp. Remove and drain well on paper towels

Bring 4 liters (4 quarts) of water to the boil in a large soup pot. Add the salt and drop in the pasta. Stir to separate the strands. Cook until al dente (tender but not mushy) according to instructions on packaging (if you make it yourself, you will know best yourself when it is cooked).

While the pasta cooks, beat the eggs well in a serving bowl large enough to take the cooked pasta and other ingredients. Have the bacon and parsley at hand.

When the pasta is cooked, drain quickly in a colander and shake briefly to get rid of excess water.

Pour the drained hot spaghetti into the bowl of eggs and immediately begin tossing it. Toss until the pasta is coated with egg and the heat of the pasta has cooked the eggs.

Add the bacon and parsley, toss again to mix and serve immediately. Grated Parmesan is delicious with this dish, freshly ground black pepper is essential.


My alterations and substitutions:

The book mentions that in the original authentic dish pancetta or proscuitto would be used, and I decided to try it with Proscuitto di Parma: dry-cured ham from Parma. Knowing that Parma ham is both saltier and more flavourful than the local bacon, I used less of it than I would have of bacon. Additionally, I was unable to get Italian parsley, and had to use curly parsley instead. I used a lot less salt than the recipe calls for, since I knew the ham would add to the saltiness of the dish.

Since there were only two of us, my mother and myself, I made half a recipe. The final recipe I used looked like this:

160 g Parma ham, thin slices cut into small squares and sautéed until cooked through but not crisp (about 1 minute)
1/2 tsp salt
250 g spaghetti
2 small eggs
About 1 1/2 tbs curly parsley
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste (as you can see in the photo, I had not added the pepper when it was taken – in fact we had started eating when I remembered the pepper and added it, and we agreed that the pepper was a good but not necessary addition)
Grated Parmesan cheese (we tried it, but decided the dish was better without it)

The instructions are the same as for the above version.




Review:

Magnifico! This is such a simple dish, and it is so good. I like it with bacon, but with proscuitto it it is simply delicious.

The halved amount of proscuitto was just right. If I had used more the dish would have been too salty. The rich, salty flavour of proscuitto, the freshness of the parsley and the mild flavour of pasta and eggs combine beautifully and deliciously and this dish will definitely be going in my recipe notebook for further use.

My mother is already "threatening" to make me cook it for her again.



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More information about carbonara

Recipe of the week: Strawberries Romanoff (liqueur-marinated strawberries)

Named for the Russian royal family, so it is at least 90+ years old, quite a bit older if this website has the story right (check out the variations they give).

This is a classic dessert dish that can be found in a number of different variations and seems to be quite popular – at least considering that I got more than 50 thousand hits when I googled it.



Original recipe: (as it is in the book – I make no claims to its being the authentic original recipe)

Serves: 4 persons.
Prep time: Under 15 minutes.
Standing time: 30-40 minutes.

1/2 kg (1 lb) fresh strawberries
2 tbs sugar
200 ml (approx. 4/5 cup) freshly pressed orange juice
3-4 tbs Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur (e.g. Cointreau or Curaçao)
100-200 ml (2/5-4/5 cups) whipping cream

Wash the strawberries and reserve 4 large ones. Hull the rest. Cut the hulled berries into slices, sprinkle with sugar and divide between four tall dessert glasses or highball glasses.

Mix together orange juice and liqueur and pour over the strawberries. Cover and refrigerate for 30-40 minutes.




Whip the cream until it is thickened but not stiff and top the dessert with it. Decorate with the whole berries and serve.

Review:
I only made 1/4 recipe, which was enough for two small dessert glasses.

After 1 hour and 30 minutes, which is about triple the marinating time given in the recipe, the tastes of Grand Marnier, orange juice and strawberries had not blended well. There was a strong, almost raw taste of cognac that didn't at all go with the rest of the ingredients. I also thought the dessert could do with a touch more sweetness, so I added a teaspoon of sugar to the other glass, lightly bruising the strawberry slices when I stirred in the sugar. Then I gave it an hour more to marinate.

After the extra hour the taste at first seemed the same, but when I stirred up the mixture and tasted it again, it became evident that the cause of the overly strong cognac taste was that it had begin to separate and the Grand Marnier had floated to the top while the orange juice sank to the bottom. Stirring melded the flavours and the result was quite good: not too strong a cognac flavour like the previous serving, and a little sweeter. Quite good, in fact. There did seem to be an awful lot of marinating liquid left in the glass when I had finished the strawberries – another time I would reduce the liquid.

Alterations that suit my tastebuds:
Increase the sugar to 3 tbs (for a whole recipe), or reduce the liquid by 1/4. Marinate for 2 hours minimum. Stir up the mixture before adding the cream and then serve immediately.




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Here's another good recipe that pairs strawberries and Grand Marnier: Drunken Strawberries:
Inject whole strawberries with Grand Marnier or other liqueur of your choice (go in under the hull so the hole will not be seen), dip in melted chocolate and cool for at least 2 hours before serving. Will keep for up to 24 hours.

Recipe of the week, part 2: Murg Vindaloo (Chicken Vindaloo: Goan vinegar curry)

1 roasting chicken, about 1,5 kg (3 lbs), or equivalent weight in mixed chicken pieces
4 tbs oil for frying
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Curry paste:
2 tbs cummin seed
1 tbs black mustard seeds
3 tsp chilli powder or to taste
1 tbs chopped ginger
1 tbs chopped garlic
1/2 cup vinegar (this means regular white vinegar, not any of the flavoured kinds)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground cardamom

Cut the chicken into small serving pieces: drumsticks, thighs, and divide the breast into four parts.

To make the curry paste, grind the cummin seeds, mustard seeds, chilli (if using), ginger and garlic in a blender with the vinegar. The spices should be finely ground. Add the cinnamon, cloves and cardamom.

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. The pan should be steel or enamel, not iron, because it can react with the vinegar (aluminium would be too light). When the oil is hot enough to cook with, remove the pan from the heat and add the curry paste. Stir for a few seconds to heat the paste (it will not blend well with the oil, so don't try), then add the chicken pieces to the pan and stir to coat well with the paste. Let stand for an hour or longer to marinate (although Solomon doesn't mention it, do refrigerate the chicken. You don't want to risk getting food poisoning).

After an hour or more of marinating, return the chicken to the cold pan and bring to the simmering point over low heat, add salt and pepper and simmer, covered, until the chicken is tender. Stir from time to time to prevent the spices from sticking to the pan.

Serve with plain white rice.


Alterations and substitutions:
I only used half the amount of chicken given in the recipe, but made a full recipe of spice paste to ensure I had enough. I used chicken wings instead of a whole chicken. I cut the wings into three parts and discarded the tips, as these have very little meat on them.
I had to use brown mustard seeds because I couldn't find black.
Neither substitution should matter where taste is concerned, as the chicken is supposed to be chopped into pieces anyway and brown mustard tastes very similar to black.
Instead of 3 tsp of chilli powder, I put about 2 tsp of cayenne pepper.

There was one ooops! moment: I made up my mise en place before starting and didn't keep the little bowl of salt and pepper separated from the rest, so I accidentally added it to the paste (it's not good to be absentminded when working in the kitchen. At least there was no blood this time). This shouldn't matter much, except pepper tends to lose its kick when cooked too long, so I added a little more near the end of the cooking time.






Recipe review:
Knowing the tart taste of vinegar, it can be daunting to start using it as a cooking ingredient, but millions of people the world over can hardly be wrong, so I decided to give it a try.

The spice paste smelled lovely when ready, and I could not smell any trace of vinegar. When I put the chicken in the pan, the paste was so thick that it looked as if it would immediately stick and burn to the pan once it got hot, but after a few minutes of simmering, the juices started coming out of the chicken and the spices and juices formed a sauce in the pan. At the same time, the spices would slip off the chicken and sink into the sauce, so I stirred the chicken well every few minutes to make sure every side of the pieces got to soak in the sauce and absorb its flavour.
I cooked the chicken for 30 minutes, which is enough for wings, but would give it another 15-20 minutes if mixed chicken pieces are used.

The end product was tender and spicy, but not too hot. While I like the taste of chilli in food, I prefer it not to be very hot, because I want the rest of the ingredients to be more than just texture, i.e. I want to be able to taste them. 2 tsp of cayenne was just right, but think I would like to try making the recipe with no chilli at all, just to taste the full richness of the other spices. There is a slight sharp aftertaste, no doubt due to the vinegar, which gives an extra flavour note to the dish.
Serving it with plain white rice was good, as the clean taste of the rice made a good compliment to the spiciness of the chicken.

P.S. It is even better cold.

Recipe of the week: Birds' Nests

I decided to make the Birds' Nests for various reasons, not the least of which is that I have never made pastries topped with glazed fruit before, and I love them. It is also by far the fiddliest of the 6 recipes. You can get excellent ones from the Danish bakery which is located a couple of streets away from where I live: little bowls of pastry filled with vanilla custard and topped with glazed strawberries. I have a clipped recipe somewhere for those, but the Birds' Nests will be good practice. As to the other recipes, I have put them on my To Do list, especially the Napoleons which I want to make for my mother (who loves them) the next time she visits me.

Results:
Written as each stage was completed.

1.
I began yesterday by making some pastries. It didn't start well: I nearly burnt them. Marzipan pastry should ideally only be baked to a light golden colour, retaining a chewy, almost raw, centre inside a crisp shell, but I ended up with brown ones. Fortunately they don't smell burnt and are not hard through. This is entirely due to a little bit of carelessness on my part: I started doing the washing-up while the pastry was baking and lost track of the time. This wouldn't have mattered so much if I had a regular oven, but I have a temperamental convection oven where seconds can decide whether baked products will turn out just right or too much. I lowered the temperature to 180°C, as you don't need quite as high temperatures when using a convection oven, but forgot the time and at 13 1/2 minutes the pastries were darker than they should have been, meaning that 12 minutes at that temperature would probably have been about right. Lesson learned for next time.

2.
Next time being today: I only made a half recipe yesterday, but I wanted to do this just right, so today I made another half-recipe of pastries. As yesterday's pastries were a bit larger than the recipe states and also somewhat uneven in size, I made circles of the right size on the baking paper with a pair of compasses and piped the dough inside the circles to get even sized pastries. These turned out much better, although they were unevenly coloured, which I blame on the convection oven. Since the dark patches were on the sides this could not be fixed by turning the cookie sheet around in the oven. Just as well they will be covered with icing and chocolate.

A pastry base:

3.
The butter icing had a somewhat raw sugar taste when ready, so I added a little vanilla which gave it a smoother taste. It was still too sweet for my tastebuds, but I figure the chocolate will temper the sweetness.

4.
The chocolate stage went well for the most part, except the chocolate didn't hold very well onto the icing so there were little pockets of white icing showing through here and there. I tried redipping one pastry, but then part of the previous coat of chocolate slipped off, so I didn't bother with the rest. I quickly had 19 pastries covered and cooling in the refrigerator.

4.
I ended up using canned mixed fruit in light syrup to top the pastries. Unfortunately there were only 2 cocktail cherries in the entire can, so 17 pastries only have whitish, orange and yellow fruit pieces on them (pears, peaches, pineapple) but no splash of red to give them a bit of ooomph, but this is only an experiment so it will do for now.
I had my usual problem with the gelatine: I thought it would never gel, but when it finally did it happened so rapidly that I had problems getting it to cover the last few pastry toppings evenly, but it worked even if it was a bit bubbly from my vigorous whisking.

These are not the prettiest pastries I have ever made but all in all I think they turned out rather well for an amateur's first attempt. Of course the taste test is left. I'm off to visit some friends to get a final judgement.

6.
My friends pronounced the pastries "very good", and I agree. They are a bit oversweet with preserved fruit and we agreed that fresh strawberries and darker chocolate would improve them. You really only can eat two or three in one sitting, and I strongly recommend serving coffee with them to counteract their sweetness.

7.
Now for how I would change the recipe for future use. Firstly, I would make the rim of the nests from piped pastry, not icing, and make them a bit deeper. Then I would cover the rim in chocolate and fill the nests, not with icing, but with custard or vanilla pudding, top with fresh strawberries or peach slices and cover with a glaze made from sugar syrup rather than fruit juice. They could still be called Birds' Nests, since the shape would be retained.

Recipes 1 & 2: Birds' Nests & Honeycake squares

Birds' Nests
Time: about 70 minutes + cooling time. Makes approx. 20.

Almond layers:
200 g baking marzipan (almond mass)
8 tbs sugar
2 egg whites

Grate the marzipan and mix with half the sugar. Whip the egg whites until stiff and add the remaining half of the sugar to them, a little at a time. Add the egg whites to the almond mass a little at a time and mix into a smooth mass.
Put the almond mass into a pastry bag and squeeze with a circular motion into individual portions about 4 1/2 cm across (it doesn't say how thick, but 1 1/2 cm should be about right. These cakes do not expand during baking) onto a baking sheet covered with baking paper. Bake at 200°C for 12-15 minutes. Pick the baking paper up with the cakes still on and put on a rack to cool.

Butter icing:
100 ml sugar
3 tbs water
2 egg yolks
125 g butter, soft

Cook a clear syrup from the sugar and water and cool. Pour over the egg yolks and whip until light and fluffy. Put the butter in a mixer and add the egg mixture a little at a time until you have a smooth paste.
Remove the pastries from the baking paper and smooth a little icing on top of each pastry. Put the rest of the icing in a pastry bag with a small nozzle and pipe a rim all around the edge of each pastry. This rim will hold the fruit pieces so they don't slip off. Refrigerate until the icing is firm.

Covering:
125 g dark chocolate
2 tbs coconut oil

Melt the chocolate over a water-bath and add the oil. Mix well. Dip the icing-covered part of each pastry into the chocolate, to coat. Cool the pastries before adding the topping.

Decoration:
Preserved fruit, for example mandarin orange sections, pineapple and red cocktail cherries
200 ml liquid from the preserved fruit
3 sheets of gelatin (about 5 g)

Remove the fruit from the liquid and keep the liquid. Drain the fruit well. Cut the fruit pieces into smaller pieces if necessary and put three pieces of different fruit into each "nest".

Soak the gelatine in a little water for 5 minutes. Squeeze out the water from the gelatine and melt it in 2 tbs of the fruit liquid (heat in a saucepan over low heat and beat gently with a whisk). Add the rest of the fruit liquid and cool in a cold water-bath, stirring constantly until the mixture begins to stiffen. Brush a thin layer over the fruit on every cake and refrigerate.

Honeycake Squares
Time: about 100 minutes. Makes approx. 20 pieces.

250 g honey
100 g dark brown sugar
100 g butter
2 eggs, beaten
300 g flour
2 tsp hartshorn powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp ground cloves
12 tsp ground ginger
Grated peel of one orange
50 g coarsely ground almonds
2 tbs preserved orange peel, chopped

Warm the honey, brown sugar and butter in a saucepan, stirring constantly until mixed. The mixture must not boil. Cool until lukewarm. Add the beaten eggs, a little at a time. Mix together flour, hartshorn, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and grated orange peel. Add to the honey mixture and mix well. Add the almonds and preserved orange peel.
Line a small oven-pan or shallow square baking pan with baking paper and put in the dough, smoothing it well. Bake at 165°C for about 45 minutes. Cool a little, then remove from the pan and cool completely on a rack. Cut into squares with a sharp knife.

Chocolate glaze:
75 g dark chocolate, grated
75 g sugar
3 tbs boiling water

Melt the chocolate over a water-bath. Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water and add to the melted chocolate. Stir over the hot water-bath until smooth and well mixed. Glaze the cake squares.

This week's recipe: Rice with leeks and mushrooms

Cup and spoon measurements in this recipe are for American size cups and spoons.



2 cups rice (white or brown)
4 1/2 to 5 cups hot vegetable stock, chicken stock with the fat skimmed off, or water
1 tsp salt
2 tbs olive oil
1 tbs unsalted butter
4 leeks with most of the green removed; split lengthwise, rinsed well and sliced crosswise into 5 mm (1/4 inch) slices
2 cups sliced mushrooms
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

To make vegan: use veggie stock or wate, leave out the butter and increase the olive oil by 1 tbs.



Put rice, 4 cups of the stock/water, and the salt in a thick-bottomed saucepan, cover and bring to the boil over medium-high heat. When the stock/water boils, reduce heat to medium low. Cook rice as indicated on packaging. It should be cooked to the al dente stage (firm but fully cooked).
While the rice is cooking, heat the olive oil over medium heat in a pan or skillet. Add the sliced leeks and sauté them for about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the mushrooms and toss to mix with the leeks and sauté for about 3 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Add 1/4 to 1/2 cup stock or water and adjust the taste with salt and pepper. Reduce heat to medium low, cover and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

When the rice is cooked, add it to the pan/skillet with the vegetables and toss well. Add what's left of the stock and adjust the seasoning. Serve hot.


For variety, the authors recommend using 50/50 rice and wild rice, using chanterelles or morels instead of button mushrooms, and/or adding a little wine (white or red) to the stock near the end of the cooking time.
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As I live alone and the recipe serves 8 persons and I hate seeing food go to waste, I made it smaller. I halved the amount of olive oil, butter, leeks and mushrooms, and used 1/4 of the given amount of the other ingredients, as I was going to eat the dish as a main course and felt the ratio of rice to vegatables was too big. (Sometimes I just can't help changing recipes). I used vegetable stock, as I am not fond of chicken stock.


The outcome was a dish which would have been indistinguishable from a risotto if I had used Arborio rice instead of Basmati. Using Basmati lent the dish a slightly nutty flavour that complemented the leeks. The taste of the leeks was rich but not overwhelming, even with double the amount of leeks to rice from the original recipe. While I can not say I tasted the mushrooms pieces much, the mushrooms did lend an extra dimension to the cooking liquid and texture to the dish. Both rice and mushrooms turned out perfectly al dente, while the leeks ended up so soft that they melted on the tongue. I did use what some might say was a little too much pepper – I like pepper but must remember to be careful when I make the dish again, as it will in all likelihood be for company.

Yes, it was that good. Next time, though, I am going to take Dille and Belsinger's advice and use wild mushrooms and add some wine to the broth. I am undecided whether I will try it with a different kind of rice, as I liked how the nutty flavour of the Basmati combined with the leeks.

While I did change the proportions in the recipe, I think the dish will be just as good using the original proportions, but more suited as a side dish than a main dish.