8 Days of Happy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
8daysofhappy) wrote2011-05-04 03:27 pm
8daysofhappy) wrote2011-05-04 03:27 pm
Originally posted 14th April 2009: Day Two: Recipes
Eight days of happy, day two!
Day Two: Recipes
I have a deep, dark secret: while I appreciate many things about food, I'm not very fond of actually eating it. I learned to cook in self-defense -- I like simple recipes with good, strong smells that make me hungry enough to eat what I've made. The following recipes are very, very simple; they are written under the assumption that if you already know how to cook, you already know (or, at least, can guess) how to make these.
(I should add, I owe a debt to many people for these, but most especially![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cealdis and fhtagn.)
-- Spinach and brie and tomato and mushroom and joy, purest joy, pancake bake
Serving size: I'm not sure how many people this would serve. Two of us ate nearly all of this and then spent an hour lolling on the couch too full to move, but it could probably serve four or five as a main dish with some steamed veg on the side, and can easily be scaled up.
Pancakes:
1 pint milk
1 pint flour
2 large eggs
Note: Imperial pints (568ml) not US pints (473ml), though if you -- hypothetically, that is -- forget there's a difference and use the US pint measure, you can thin the mixture out at any point in proceedings, including after you've made the first pancake and tragically have to eat it with ice cream because it's the wrong consistency for your masterpiece. Hypothetically.
If you have a sieve and don't mind washing it, sieve the flour into a bowl. Otherwise, just put the flour in a bowl. I won't tell. Break the eggs into the bowl, beat, add the milk a bit at a time, beating at each stage until smooth.
Leave to stand while you make everything else -- don't worry if the mixture is a little runnier than you were expecting, as it thickens a tiny bit while you're not looking.
Spinach mix:
1 large red onion
1 bag of spinach (I think mine was 9oz/250g, but it doesn't really matter)
1 clove garlic
Chop the onion and garlic, fry in a frying pan until soft and delicious, add the spinach a bit at a time, stirring occasionally, until you have a gorgeous soft, messy goop.
It's a good idea to give it a whizz with a stick-blender-magic-thing, just to make it a bit smoother and goopier. Not until it's totally smooth -- you want some texture from the onion -- but just, y'know, until you can stand back and think, "My, that's some damned fine goop I made there."
Tomato and mushroom sauce:
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tin whole stewed tomatoes (tinned tomatoes are one of those things I don't believe in being cheap on -- it's not that cheap diced tomatoes aren't fine, but good quality tinned tomatoes are surprisingly nice)
1 handful button mushrooms
1 splash dry sherry, if you happen to have bought yourself a very nice bottle of sherry as a "So, you can't drink any more, but you can cook with alcohol," present
Herbs and stuff to season -- I used herbes de provence, because I like not having to think, and pepper, because the whole thing was very sweet
Chop the onion and garlic, fry in a saucepan until soft and mm, so tender. Chop the mushrooms very finely, add to the onion. When it smells nice, add the tin of tomatoes, smushing the tomatoes for that satisfying moment when they burst like broken hearts. Add a splash of sherry. Leave, poking occasionally, to argue with someone on the internet. Come back and add the herbs when you remember.
When it is all cooked and yummy-looking, give it a whir with a stick-blender-magic-thing. A thorough, proper, aiming to get a real sauce out of it whir. And then give it a bit more of a whir, just to make sure. Yeah. Like that. Show it who's boss.
Assembly:
Everything above
1 largish piece brie
I used a cake tin for this, because we have a frying pan with a base slightly smaller than the tin, so the pancakes popped right in. But, hey, some sort of baking dish would work, too.
Anyway, yes!
Fry the pancakes! The first one's always a dud, so don't worry if you have to eat it. The mixture should make eight pancakes, and you'll want about six for the bake. Who knows what you'll want to do with the rest.
Grease the tin / dish / whatever.
Put just under half of the tomato and mushroom sauce on the bottom of the dish.
Put your first pancake down.
Marvel at how squoodgy the sauce is under the pancake.
Tell yourself you really need to stop squoodging it sometime soon.
Stop squoodging it.
No, really.
Then put a third of the spinach mix down.
Then put the second pancake down. Squoodge away, dude.
Then chop up the brie into pieces and put some down on top of the second pancake.
The pancake, then spinach, then pancake, then brie, then pancake, then spinach, then pancake.
Then dot some brie -- but less than for the other two layers -- on top of the last pancake, and pour the rest of the tomato sauce over it all.
Bake for about 30 minutes at about 350*F / 175*C / Gas Mark 3. (That is, I did about twenty minutes on 300*F, because 300 is a large number and I'm used to cooking in *C, then I did the conversion in my head and turned it up to 350*F, and left it in until the doorbell rang.)
Enjoy!
--
Steak and ale pie
I think this serves two hungry or four polite people, but it can very easily be scaled up.
Ingredients:
Filling:
-- 1 lb / 500g hanger steak (if you can get it -- otherwise I suspect neck is a good bet, or anything with streaks of fat)
-- 1 pt / 500ml ale (I used London Pride, because I'm like that, but just use your favourite beer-type-thing)
-- 1 large onion
-- 2 cloves garlic
-- "some" stock (yes, I know, I'm sorry, but I hope you realise how hard it was for me earlier not just to say "the right amount of steak, you know, so it feels good in your hand")
-- a couple of tablespoons of flour
Pastry
-- 200g / 7oz salted butter, cold
-- 200g / 7oz plain flour
-- 75ml / 2.5 fl oz water, cold
Special equipment:
-- A good pot that can go on the stove and in the oven
-- Something with which to roll pastry. We've usedfootnotetoplato's water bottle, a wine bottle, a tall plastic glass and -- at a pinch -- a rolling pin.
To make the filling:
Chop the steak into nice, bitesized lumps (maybe an inch cubed, if you insist on instructions) and fry it gently in the pot with, let's be honest here, butter. I think the only reason to use low fat cooking spray at this point is an appreciation for gentle irony.
While the steak is frying -- with the lid on, for preference, as this will store more of the fat'n'stuff -- chop the onion and garlic coarsely. When you're done and the steak is lightly browned, add the onion and garlic and continue frying until the onion is translucent and the whole thing smells like happiness.
Add the ale. Om nom nom. Let it fizz up, marveling at the Science, and then simmer.
This should actually smell a little off-putting at this point, as if the mad fool giving you your culinary advice has gone crazed with power and just told you to combine as many awesome ingredients as you can in one pot and stir. That's where the stock comes in.
Once the steak and ale have been simmering together for a while, add, I'm sorry, I really am, "some" stock. It's best to add it a bit at a time, tasting at each stage until you've hit what you think is the right balance.
Now simmer for a while, occasionally adding a sprinkle of flour (and stirring lots until the flour is all mixed in) to bring the mixture up to a nice consistency. Aim for slightly thinner than your end goal, because the last step is to put this in the oven for half an hour with your beautifully prepared pastry.
Your beautifully prepared pastry
This works best when the ingredients, equipment and work area are cold, but, um, how can I put this? While we're hoping for deliciously light and crisp puff pastry, when I've really, really messed this up times-past, I've still ended up with deliciously moist and flakey short crust pastry.
One warning! If your butter is unsalted, you really do want to add a pinch of salt to this. *nods*
So, anyway, yes, sift the flour (or, at least, pour it from high up -- this will achieve two of the three main goals of sifting flour: getting some air into it and making a mess), and cut up largish cubes of butter.
Then mix the butter and flour together using the blade of a sharp, cold knife -- I think this is called cutting the butter into the flour. Don't worry if you have lumps of butter that are just coated on the outside; the aim is to get all the flour buttery, not all the butter floury.
Add the water a bit at a time, cutting it in, until the mixture just sticks together into one big clump. You will probably get this wrong and add a little too much water, but don't worry, the next step involves more flour.
Sprinkle flour on a clean, flat surface. Make sure to have plenty of flour to hand (either in a bowl, or in the form of a friend who will happily pour flour into your hands as and when you require; if this friend does so without getting in your way and they happen to be of a gender you enjoy sexing, marry them).
Get lots and lots and lots of flour on your rolling pin.
Roll out the pastry into a vague rectangle until it is about half an inch thick. Don't worry if bits get stuck to you / the flat surface / the rolling pin / your willing friend-cum-fiance(e); there's nothing the careful application of more flour can't fix.
Divide the longer side of the rectangle into three, and fold the two outer thirds in, so you have a new, smaller but thicker rectangle. Use the rolling pin to press down on the two shorter ends of the new rectangle, sealing in all that wonderful air. Now use the rolling pin to make a couple of dents parallel to the longer side of the new rectangle, so you end up with three pockets of air.
Um. If that's not clear, I made a beautiful diagram! Here!
Now! The process begins again. Roll the whole thing out, trying not to squeeze the air out (but not worrying if you do), fold, press, dent...
Do this maybe five or six times. At this point, you should have something that looks a lot less like blobs of flour and butter and a lot more like delicious, delicious pastry.
Now roll out to a thickness of maybe a quarter of an inch, and use the lid of your pot to cut out a circle of pastry.
Fold the remains together (gently) and roll it out to see if you can get another circle of pastry.
Put one circle (I recommend the first, but it doesn't matter) very gently on top of your steak and ale mixture; put the other on a tray.
Roast / bake everything in the oven at 200°C / 390°F for about half an hour, until the pastry looks done-ish.
The pastry on the pie will be soggy and gorgeous, the pastry off the pie will be crispy and divine.
...wow, that took rather more words than I was expecting.
-- Greenstuffs risotto
This is not really risotto. This is a dish made with risotto rice and whatever green things you have in your freezer that aren't pistachio ice cream.
Serves one hungry person or up to three people as a side; even easier than the last dish to scale up
Ingredients:
1/2 cup / 100 ml risotto rice
1 1/2 cups / 300 ml stock
1 medium onion (hark at my precision! it really doesn't matter)
1 clove garlic
1 splash sherry, optional
3 handfuls of frozen green veg (I tend to use spinach, because spinach is awesome and so am I, and peas, but go wild. It doesn't even have to be frozen.)
How to
Chop the onion and garlic coarsely. Fry with a little oil until translucent, then turn the heat down, add a little more oil and the rice. Fry the rice until the rice is coated in oil (about half of the typical grain should be translucent) then add the splash of sherry.
While the sherry is sizzling away merrily, realise you haven't put the kettle on to make the stock, panic briefly, take the pan off the heat while you boil the water.
You're allowed to circumvent the above step if you really must, but please try not to feel too smug about it.
Add the stock to the rice (which is back on the heat by now) and stir gently. Once it's up to a simmer, add the veg and give it a good stir.
Bring it back to a simmer and let it stay there until the rice is soft, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom. You may have to add more hot water, every now and again, because you really don't want the bottom to burn. The best way to test if the rice is soft is to bite a grain or two and see.
But Katy, I hear you cry! I careful scaled up this recipe to feed four hungry people, and we didn't finish it! Perhaps four onions was a little ambitious, after all. What on earth should I do with my boring, stuffy old leftovers? I want to do something . . . decadent! Something that makes a mockery of the healthy greenstuffs and lack of copious fat in this recipe. Something heart diseasalicious.
Funny you should say that...
-- Greenstuffs risotto part 2: The naughty bits
Ingredients
Leftover risotto
Brie
Can you see where we're going with this one?
Take your cold leftover risotto, your clean hands and your cubes of brie.
Use the second to wrap the first around the third, so you get little balls of risotto, each with a happy lump of brie inside.
Now fry them until the outsides are slightly browned and the insides are just warm enough to melt the brie. You may need to squash the balls slightly flat to achieve this. You may even end up compromising the integrity of the balls. It doesn't matter.
-- Liver
Om nom NOM! In the UK, lamb's liver is cheap and readily available. In the US, not so much. But don't worry, US, because to make up for it, you've got me, and I'm cheap, readily available and more likely to lend you $5.
I haven't eaten this in ages, because those times in mymonth life when I need a nice big boost of iron are exactly those times when I don't have the energy not only to go to the butcher (who might or might not have some in) but also to keep the look of "You want to charge me HOW MUCH?" off my face.
Um. Sorry. Where was I? Oh! Liver!
Serves one. Scales with such ease as to boggle the mind.
Ingredients
Liver!
No, be serious now
Okay, I'm going to say "Some liver" and you're going to have to keep from stabbing me in the face, because it's been so long since I've cooked this I can't even guess at the right weight. But you want a goodly handful -- it's not a very complicated recipe, liver doesn't change its size massively on cooking, so you should be able to judge based on, y'know, how much you think you can eat.
Right, are we okay? You've put the knife down?
Cool.
Some liver (Lamb's liver for preference -- if you get calf's liver, that's okay, too, but any other manner of liver, it can be a good idea to wash it then soak it in milk for 12 hours or so to soften it. Note: I have never done this. But I read it in a book once, and you know how books are for trufax.)
Some 100 ml / 1/2 cup single cream
A splash balsamic vinegar
Some 1/2 cup / 100 ml rice
But what do I do with all this liver?
Set the rice to start cooking (put 1/2 cup rice in with one anna half cups cold water into a pot on a medium heat; bring to the boil; simmer gentle until all the water has evaporated and/or been absorbed into the rice; check the rice is cooked by eating a grain, if it's not, add some more boiling water and continue cooking).
Rinse the liver in cold water, press dry with some paper towel, then cut into strips about 1cm wide and anything up to 5cm long.
Fry gently on a fairly low heat until the outsides have gone greyish brown, and the insides have gone pinkish.
Add the cream, stir.
Keep stirring. The cream should bubble and thicken a little.
Add the balsamic vinegar, keep stirring.
Stir some more.
Now everything is all thick and gorgeous and amazing, pour it onto the rice.
Die a little of happiness.
-- Espresso cupcakes with chocolate icing
Confession time! I've not actually made the recipe I'm about to give you. I made something very similar (and so damned good), but this recipe is with the improvements I will try for next time.
This recipe makes 12 cupcakes. The innocent observer may think it makes 14, but then the innocent observer hasn't considered how important it is to be able to lick out the bowl in style.
Seriously, though, a typical cupcake tray only hold twelve cupcakes. *nods* I think this is nature's way of telling you something.
Ingredients
Cupcakes
100g / 3.5 oz flour with some sort of raising agent -- you can use baking powder (about a teaspoon, I think) with plain flour, or you can use self-raising flour, but please, please, please use some sort of raising agent, otherwise I will cry.
100g / 3.5 oz butter
100g / 3.5 oz sugar
2 eggs
1 espresso cup's worth of double strength espresso (one of my flatmates has this marvellous machine, allowing me to make decaf espresso to my heart's content; otherwise, I should imagine using instant will do just as well)
Icing
90g / 3 oz chocolate
45g / 1.5 oz butter
3 heaped tablespoons icing sugar
Special equipment
Essential: Cupcake liners. You would not believe how often in my life I have got to a crucial stage in some sort of cupcake-related endeavour only to have to nip out to the shops to buy cupcake liners. Or, thinking about it, maybe you would. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Useful: Electric mixer; cupcake tray.
To make the cupcakes
Cream the butter and sugar together.
(Creaming means mixing together until you have a nummy butter'n'sugar mix. With an electric mixer, this is easy as ~22/7. Without, I recommend letting the butter get soft and then using a wooden spoon to press the butter into the sugar. Unlike with the pastry, the object is both to get the butter sugary and the sugar buttery.)
Mix in the flour, eggs and espresso until light and airy.
(Again, electric mixer makes life happy. Without, a whisk is a good idea, and I tend to add the flour, mix, add the eggs, mix, then finally add the espresso, mix. A fun thing is not letting the espresso cool completely, because then it melts the butter a bit. SCIENCE.)
Marvel at how easy that was.
Now spoon the mix into your cupcake liners, which you've already put in your tray.
You'll want about two big tablespoons of mix in each liner -- more if you want to use up all the goop, less if you have to share licking-the-bowl-out with others.
Bake for 20-25 minutes at 375°F / 190°C, until the cupcakes are springy to the touch -- test this by pressing down on the top of one with a finger.
Leave to cool on a cooling rack if you have one, and on a plate if you don't. Don't leave them in the tray they cooked in.
When moderately cool, ice.
But with what shall I ice them, dear Liza, dear Liza?
Break the chocolate into chunks and cut the butter up into cubes, then melt them together. (For this you can use any of a microwave, a bowl on top of a pot of simmering water, a pot with a very thick bottom on a very low heat, the power of your mind.) Stir constantly. This is really important.
Once everything has melted, take the thing away from the heat source and add the icing sugar a tablespoon at a time. After each addition, stir vigorously until the icing sugar is completely mixed in.
Keep stirring.
Spoon the icing onto the cupcakes. It should be cool enough and solid enough that it doesn't ooze straight off -- if it isn't, let it cool some more and/or add some more icing sugar. (Keep stirring!)
Once you've doled out the icing, a hefty blob (maybe two teaspoon's worth?) on each cupcake, use the back of a teaspoon to smooth the icing out over the top of the cup cake. Finish by running the back of the teaspoon round in an inward, slightly upward spiral -- this will leave your cupcakes looking misleadingly professional.
-- Squishy cookies
None of the adjustments I've made for this have worked as well as the original, so I'm just going to link you to a recipe that works damned well for me, and then mention that I like to use M&Ms for the chocolate.
Recipe!
I baked these for my class once last semester. They said I should consider dropping out of maths and becoming a baker.
...I think they meant it as a compliment.
-- Earl Grey tea loaf
Oh, this recipe makes me happy!
I haven't made bread by hand since I got mymagical robo-slave bread maker, but sometime soon I'm going to have to, because this is one of the few bread recipes I know that actually tastes better when made by (slightly incompetent) hand.
This recipe has steps. This recipe takes 24 hours. This recipe is worth it.
Ingredients
1 pt strongly brewed Earl Grey tea
7 oz / 200g raisins
4 cups / 480g plain flour
1 sachet (7oz, I think) dried yeast
300ml / 10 fl oz water
30g / 1 oz butter
3 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons cinnamon
Step 1: t = -24h
Brew the tea; leave the raisins to soak. (Make sure to cover them, and/or leave them in the fridge.)
Step 2: t = -3h
Mix flour, sugar, cinnamon, yeast. They should be room temperature or warmer -- if you like, you can zap the flour (but not the yeast!) in the microwave for a minute on defrost.
Cut the butter into cubes and rub it into the flour-mix with your hands. You want to end up with a mixture that looks a little like breadcrumbs.
Raise the water to body temperature and add it a little at a time, mixing (with your hands) after each addition. You may not need all the water -- you want to get a, heh, doughy consistency.
Better to get slightly too sticky than slightly too dry, though you can adjust either way during the kneading process.
Now knead the dough on a heavily floured surface.
Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I shall just provide a video of someone else kneading dough (watch from about 1 min in) -- you want to do this for about five minutes.
Then put it in a lightly greased bowl and leave it to rise in a warm, dry place, covered with a wet tea towel for about 45 minutes.
Step 3: t = -2h
Uncover the dough. Inhale. Smile.
Tip your dough out onto a floured surface, punch it once in its ugly face to relieve your stress and to let some of the air out.
Knead it three or four times very gently, and then, ooh ho, the raisins that were soaked in step 1, Chekhov will not be happy if we don't use them in step 3.
Stretch the dough out and spread the raisins along this moist, appealing surface. Then roll the dough up, and put it on a lightly greased baking tray.
Sprinkle a very little of the left-over tea on top of the cake, maybe also sprinkle some crystals of sugar if you're in the mood, and leave to rise in a warm, dry place (covered with a wet tea towel) for about an hour and a half.
At some point, turn on the oven.
Step 4: t = -0.5h
Bake at 200°C / 390°F for about 30 minutes, until knocking on the bottom makes a hollow sound.
Then take out and leave to cool for at least ten minutes. Seriously. Seriously. I know, I know, but seriously. I could make something up about why leaving it for ten minutes is a good idea, but despite my students' best efforts, I'm a mathematician, Jim, not a baker, so I'll just tell you it's worth it, I promise.
Then eat -- om nom nom nom -- your warm, fresh tea loaf with cold butter and a glad heart.
Day Two: Recipes
I have a deep, dark secret: while I appreciate many things about food, I'm not very fond of actually eating it. I learned to cook in self-defense -- I like simple recipes with good, strong smells that make me hungry enough to eat what I've made. The following recipes are very, very simple; they are written under the assumption that if you already know how to cook, you already know (or, at least, can guess) how to make these.
(I should add, I owe a debt to many people for these, but most especially
cealdis and fhtagn.)-- Spinach and brie and tomato and mushroom and joy, purest joy, pancake bake
Serving size: I'm not sure how many people this would serve. Two of us ate nearly all of this and then spent an hour lolling on the couch too full to move, but it could probably serve four or five as a main dish with some steamed veg on the side, and can easily be scaled up.
Pancakes:
1 pint milk
1 pint flour
2 large eggs
Note: Imperial pints (568ml) not US pints (473ml), though if you -- hypothetically, that is -- forget there's a difference and use the US pint measure, you can thin the mixture out at any point in proceedings, including after you've made the first pancake and tragically have to eat it with ice cream because it's the wrong consistency for your masterpiece. Hypothetically.
If you have a sieve and don't mind washing it, sieve the flour into a bowl. Otherwise, just put the flour in a bowl. I won't tell. Break the eggs into the bowl, beat, add the milk a bit at a time, beating at each stage until smooth.
Leave to stand while you make everything else -- don't worry if the mixture is a little runnier than you were expecting, as it thickens a tiny bit while you're not looking.
Spinach mix:
1 large red onion
1 bag of spinach (I think mine was 9oz/250g, but it doesn't really matter)
1 clove garlic
Chop the onion and garlic, fry in a frying pan until soft and delicious, add the spinach a bit at a time, stirring occasionally, until you have a gorgeous soft, messy goop.
It's a good idea to give it a whizz with a stick-blender-magic-thing, just to make it a bit smoother and goopier. Not until it's totally smooth -- you want some texture from the onion -- but just, y'know, until you can stand back and think, "My, that's some damned fine goop I made there."
Tomato and mushroom sauce:
1 large onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tin whole stewed tomatoes (tinned tomatoes are one of those things I don't believe in being cheap on -- it's not that cheap diced tomatoes aren't fine, but good quality tinned tomatoes are surprisingly nice)
1 handful button mushrooms
1 splash dry sherry, if you happen to have bought yourself a very nice bottle of sherry as a "So, you can't drink any more, but you can cook with alcohol," present
Herbs and stuff to season -- I used herbes de provence, because I like not having to think, and pepper, because the whole thing was very sweet
Chop the onion and garlic, fry in a saucepan until soft and mm, so tender. Chop the mushrooms very finely, add to the onion. When it smells nice, add the tin of tomatoes, smushing the tomatoes for that satisfying moment when they burst like broken hearts. Add a splash of sherry. Leave, poking occasionally, to argue with someone on the internet. Come back and add the herbs when you remember.
When it is all cooked and yummy-looking, give it a whir with a stick-blender-magic-thing. A thorough, proper, aiming to get a real sauce out of it whir. And then give it a bit more of a whir, just to make sure. Yeah. Like that. Show it who's boss.
Assembly:
Everything above
1 largish piece brie
I used a cake tin for this, because we have a frying pan with a base slightly smaller than the tin, so the pancakes popped right in. But, hey, some sort of baking dish would work, too.
Anyway, yes!
Fry the pancakes! The first one's always a dud, so don't worry if you have to eat it. The mixture should make eight pancakes, and you'll want about six for the bake. Who knows what you'll want to do with the rest.
Grease the tin / dish / whatever.
Put just under half of the tomato and mushroom sauce on the bottom of the dish.
Put your first pancake down.
Marvel at how squoodgy the sauce is under the pancake.
Tell yourself you really need to stop squoodging it sometime soon.
Stop squoodging it.
No, really.
Then put a third of the spinach mix down.
Then put the second pancake down. Squoodge away, dude.
Then chop up the brie into pieces and put some down on top of the second pancake.
The pancake, then spinach, then pancake, then brie, then pancake, then spinach, then pancake.
Then dot some brie -- but less than for the other two layers -- on top of the last pancake, and pour the rest of the tomato sauce over it all.
Bake for about 30 minutes at about 350*F / 175*C / Gas Mark 3. (That is, I did about twenty minutes on 300*F, because 300 is a large number and I'm used to cooking in *C, then I did the conversion in my head and turned it up to 350*F, and left it in until the doorbell rang.)
Enjoy!
--
Steak and ale pie
I think this serves two hungry or four polite people, but it can very easily be scaled up.
Ingredients:
Filling:
-- 1 lb / 500g hanger steak (if you can get it -- otherwise I suspect neck is a good bet, or anything with streaks of fat)
-- 1 pt / 500ml ale (I used London Pride, because I'm like that, but just use your favourite beer-type-thing)
-- 1 large onion
-- 2 cloves garlic
-- "some" stock (yes, I know, I'm sorry, but I hope you realise how hard it was for me earlier not just to say "the right amount of steak, you know, so it feels good in your hand")
-- a couple of tablespoons of flour
Pastry
-- 200g / 7oz salted butter, cold
-- 200g / 7oz plain flour
-- 75ml / 2.5 fl oz water, cold
Special equipment:
-- A good pot that can go on the stove and in the oven
-- Something with which to roll pastry. We've used
footnotetoplato's water bottle, a wine bottle, a tall plastic glass and -- at a pinch -- a rolling pin.To make the filling:
Chop the steak into nice, bitesized lumps (maybe an inch cubed, if you insist on instructions) and fry it gently in the pot with, let's be honest here, butter. I think the only reason to use low fat cooking spray at this point is an appreciation for gentle irony.
While the steak is frying -- with the lid on, for preference, as this will store more of the fat'n'stuff -- chop the onion and garlic coarsely. When you're done and the steak is lightly browned, add the onion and garlic and continue frying until the onion is translucent and the whole thing smells like happiness.
Add the ale. Om nom nom. Let it fizz up, marveling at the Science, and then simmer.
This should actually smell a little off-putting at this point, as if the mad fool giving you your culinary advice has gone crazed with power and just told you to combine as many awesome ingredients as you can in one pot and stir. That's where the stock comes in.
Once the steak and ale have been simmering together for a while, add, I'm sorry, I really am, "some" stock. It's best to add it a bit at a time, tasting at each stage until you've hit what you think is the right balance.
Now simmer for a while, occasionally adding a sprinkle of flour (and stirring lots until the flour is all mixed in) to bring the mixture up to a nice consistency. Aim for slightly thinner than your end goal, because the last step is to put this in the oven for half an hour with your beautifully prepared pastry.
Your beautifully prepared pastry
This works best when the ingredients, equipment and work area are cold, but, um, how can I put this? While we're hoping for deliciously light and crisp puff pastry, when I've really, really messed this up times-past, I've still ended up with deliciously moist and flakey short crust pastry.
One warning! If your butter is unsalted, you really do want to add a pinch of salt to this. *nods*
So, anyway, yes, sift the flour (or, at least, pour it from high up -- this will achieve two of the three main goals of sifting flour: getting some air into it and making a mess), and cut up largish cubes of butter.
Then mix the butter and flour together using the blade of a sharp, cold knife -- I think this is called cutting the butter into the flour. Don't worry if you have lumps of butter that are just coated on the outside; the aim is to get all the flour buttery, not all the butter floury.
Add the water a bit at a time, cutting it in, until the mixture just sticks together into one big clump. You will probably get this wrong and add a little too much water, but don't worry, the next step involves more flour.
Sprinkle flour on a clean, flat surface. Make sure to have plenty of flour to hand (either in a bowl, or in the form of a friend who will happily pour flour into your hands as and when you require; if this friend does so without getting in your way and they happen to be of a gender you enjoy sexing, marry them).
Get lots and lots and lots of flour on your rolling pin.
Roll out the pastry into a vague rectangle until it is about half an inch thick. Don't worry if bits get stuck to you / the flat surface / the rolling pin / your willing friend-cum-fiance(e); there's nothing the careful application of more flour can't fix.
Divide the longer side of the rectangle into three, and fold the two outer thirds in, so you have a new, smaller but thicker rectangle. Use the rolling pin to press down on the two shorter ends of the new rectangle, sealing in all that wonderful air. Now use the rolling pin to make a couple of dents parallel to the longer side of the new rectangle, so you end up with three pockets of air.
Um. If that's not clear, I made a beautiful diagram! Here!
Now! The process begins again. Roll the whole thing out, trying not to squeeze the air out (but not worrying if you do), fold, press, dent...
Do this maybe five or six times. At this point, you should have something that looks a lot less like blobs of flour and butter and a lot more like delicious, delicious pastry.
Now roll out to a thickness of maybe a quarter of an inch, and use the lid of your pot to cut out a circle of pastry.
Fold the remains together (gently) and roll it out to see if you can get another circle of pastry.
Put one circle (I recommend the first, but it doesn't matter) very gently on top of your steak and ale mixture; put the other on a tray.
Roast / bake everything in the oven at 200°C / 390°F for about half an hour, until the pastry looks done-ish.
The pastry on the pie will be soggy and gorgeous, the pastry off the pie will be crispy and divine.
...wow, that took rather more words than I was expecting.
-- Greenstuffs risotto
This is not really risotto. This is a dish made with risotto rice and whatever green things you have in your freezer that aren't pistachio ice cream.
Serves one hungry person or up to three people as a side; even easier than the last dish to scale up
Ingredients:
1/2 cup / 100 ml risotto rice
1 1/2 cups / 300 ml stock
1 medium onion (hark at my precision! it really doesn't matter)
1 clove garlic
1 splash sherry, optional
3 handfuls of frozen green veg (I tend to use spinach, because spinach is awesome and so am I, and peas, but go wild. It doesn't even have to be frozen.)
How to
Chop the onion and garlic coarsely. Fry with a little oil until translucent, then turn the heat down, add a little more oil and the rice. Fry the rice until the rice is coated in oil (about half of the typical grain should be translucent) then add the splash of sherry.
While the sherry is sizzling away merrily, realise you haven't put the kettle on to make the stock, panic briefly, take the pan off the heat while you boil the water.
You're allowed to circumvent the above step if you really must, but please try not to feel too smug about it.
Add the stock to the rice (which is back on the heat by now) and stir gently. Once it's up to a simmer, add the veg and give it a good stir.
Bring it back to a simmer and let it stay there until the rice is soft, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom. You may have to add more hot water, every now and again, because you really don't want the bottom to burn. The best way to test if the rice is soft is to bite a grain or two and see.
But Katy, I hear you cry! I careful scaled up this recipe to feed four hungry people, and we didn't finish it! Perhaps four onions was a little ambitious, after all. What on earth should I do with my boring, stuffy old leftovers? I want to do something . . . decadent! Something that makes a mockery of the healthy greenstuffs and lack of copious fat in this recipe. Something heart diseasalicious.
Funny you should say that...
-- Greenstuffs risotto part 2: The naughty bits
Ingredients
Leftover risotto
Brie
Can you see where we're going with this one?
Take your cold leftover risotto, your clean hands and your cubes of brie.
Use the second to wrap the first around the third, so you get little balls of risotto, each with a happy lump of brie inside.
Now fry them until the outsides are slightly browned and the insides are just warm enough to melt the brie. You may need to squash the balls slightly flat to achieve this. You may even end up compromising the integrity of the balls. It doesn't matter.
-- Liver
Om nom NOM! In the UK, lamb's liver is cheap and readily available. In the US, not so much. But don't worry, US, because to make up for it, you've got me, and I'm cheap, readily available and more likely to lend you $5.
I haven't eaten this in ages, because those times in my
Um. Sorry. Where was I? Oh! Liver!
Serves one. Scales with such ease as to boggle the mind.
Ingredients
Liver!
No, be serious now
Okay, I'm going to say "Some liver" and you're going to have to keep from stabbing me in the face, because it's been so long since I've cooked this I can't even guess at the right weight. But you want a goodly handful -- it's not a very complicated recipe, liver doesn't change its size massively on cooking, so you should be able to judge based on, y'know, how much you think you can eat.
Right, are we okay? You've put the knife down?
Cool.
Some liver (Lamb's liver for preference -- if you get calf's liver, that's okay, too, but any other manner of liver, it can be a good idea to wash it then soak it in milk for 12 hours or so to soften it. Note: I have never done this. But I read it in a book once, and you know how books are for trufax.)
A splash balsamic vinegar
But what do I do with all this liver?
Set the rice to start cooking (put 1/2 cup rice in with one anna half cups cold water into a pot on a medium heat; bring to the boil; simmer gentle until all the water has evaporated and/or been absorbed into the rice; check the rice is cooked by eating a grain, if it's not, add some more boiling water and continue cooking).
Rinse the liver in cold water, press dry with some paper towel, then cut into strips about 1cm wide and anything up to 5cm long.
Fry gently on a fairly low heat until the outsides have gone greyish brown, and the insides have gone pinkish.
Add the cream, stir.
Keep stirring. The cream should bubble and thicken a little.
Add the balsamic vinegar, keep stirring.
Stir some more.
Now everything is all thick and gorgeous and amazing, pour it onto the rice.
Die a little of happiness.
-- Espresso cupcakes with chocolate icing
Confession time! I've not actually made the recipe I'm about to give you. I made something very similar (and so damned good), but this recipe is with the improvements I will try for next time.
This recipe makes 12 cupcakes. The innocent observer may think it makes 14, but then the innocent observer hasn't considered how important it is to be able to lick out the bowl in style.
Seriously, though, a typical cupcake tray only hold twelve cupcakes. *nods* I think this is nature's way of telling you something.
Ingredients
Cupcakes
100g / 3.5 oz flour with some sort of raising agent -- you can use baking powder (about a teaspoon, I think) with plain flour, or you can use self-raising flour, but please, please, please use some sort of raising agent, otherwise I will cry.
100g / 3.5 oz butter
100g / 3.5 oz sugar
2 eggs
1 espresso cup's worth of double strength espresso (one of my flatmates has this marvellous machine, allowing me to make decaf espresso to my heart's content; otherwise, I should imagine using instant will do just as well)
Icing
90g / 3 oz chocolate
45g / 1.5 oz butter
3 heaped tablespoons icing sugar
Special equipment
Essential: Cupcake liners. You would not believe how often in my life I have got to a crucial stage in some sort of cupcake-related endeavour only to have to nip out to the shops to buy cupcake liners. Or, thinking about it, maybe you would. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Useful: Electric mixer; cupcake tray.
To make the cupcakes
Cream the butter and sugar together.
(Creaming means mixing together until you have a nummy butter'n'sugar mix. With an electric mixer, this is easy as ~22/7. Without, I recommend letting the butter get soft and then using a wooden spoon to press the butter into the sugar. Unlike with the pastry, the object is both to get the butter sugary and the sugar buttery.)
Mix in the flour, eggs and espresso until light and airy.
(Again, electric mixer makes life happy. Without, a whisk is a good idea, and I tend to add the flour, mix, add the eggs, mix, then finally add the espresso, mix. A fun thing is not letting the espresso cool completely, because then it melts the butter a bit. SCIENCE.)
Marvel at how easy that was.
Now spoon the mix into your cupcake liners, which you've already put in your tray.
You'll want about two big tablespoons of mix in each liner -- more if you want to use up all the goop, less if you have to share licking-the-bowl-out with others.
Bake for 20-25 minutes at 375°F / 190°C, until the cupcakes are springy to the touch -- test this by pressing down on the top of one with a finger.
Leave to cool on a cooling rack if you have one, and on a plate if you don't. Don't leave them in the tray they cooked in.
When moderately cool, ice.
But with what shall I ice them, dear Liza, dear Liza?
Break the chocolate into chunks and cut the butter up into cubes, then melt them together. (For this you can use any of a microwave, a bowl on top of a pot of simmering water, a pot with a very thick bottom on a very low heat, the power of your mind.) Stir constantly. This is really important.
Once everything has melted, take the thing away from the heat source and add the icing sugar a tablespoon at a time. After each addition, stir vigorously until the icing sugar is completely mixed in.
Keep stirring.
Spoon the icing onto the cupcakes. It should be cool enough and solid enough that it doesn't ooze straight off -- if it isn't, let it cool some more and/or add some more icing sugar. (Keep stirring!)
Once you've doled out the icing, a hefty blob (maybe two teaspoon's worth?) on each cupcake, use the back of a teaspoon to smooth the icing out over the top of the cup cake. Finish by running the back of the teaspoon round in an inward, slightly upward spiral -- this will leave your cupcakes looking misleadingly professional.
-- Squishy cookies
None of the adjustments I've made for this have worked as well as the original, so I'm just going to link you to a recipe that works damned well for me, and then mention that I like to use M&Ms for the chocolate.
Recipe!
I baked these for my class once last semester. They said I should consider dropping out of maths and becoming a baker.
...I think they meant it as a compliment.
-- Earl Grey tea loaf
Oh, this recipe makes me happy!
I haven't made bread by hand since I got my
This recipe has steps. This recipe takes 24 hours. This recipe is worth it.
Ingredients
1 pt strongly brewed Earl Grey tea
7 oz / 200g raisins
4 cups / 480g plain flour
1 sachet (7oz, I think) dried yeast
300ml / 10 fl oz water
30g / 1 oz butter
3 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons cinnamon
Step 1: t = -24h
Brew the tea; leave the raisins to soak. (Make sure to cover them, and/or leave them in the fridge.)
Step 2: t = -3h
Mix flour, sugar, cinnamon, yeast. They should be room temperature or warmer -- if you like, you can zap the flour (but not the yeast!) in the microwave for a minute on defrost.
Cut the butter into cubes and rub it into the flour-mix with your hands. You want to end up with a mixture that looks a little like breadcrumbs.
Raise the water to body temperature and add it a little at a time, mixing (with your hands) after each addition. You may not need all the water -- you want to get a, heh, doughy consistency.
Better to get slightly too sticky than slightly too dry, though you can adjust either way during the kneading process.
Now knead the dough on a heavily floured surface.
Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I shall just provide a video of someone else kneading dough (watch from about 1 min in) -- you want to do this for about five minutes.
Then put it in a lightly greased bowl and leave it to rise in a warm, dry place, covered with a wet tea towel for about 45 minutes.
Step 3: t = -2h
Uncover the dough. Inhale. Smile.
Tip your dough out onto a floured surface, punch it once in its ugly face to relieve your stress and to let some of the air out.
Knead it three or four times very gently, and then, ooh ho, the raisins that were soaked in step 1, Chekhov will not be happy if we don't use them in step 3.
Stretch the dough out and spread the raisins along this moist, appealing surface. Then roll the dough up, and put it on a lightly greased baking tray.
Sprinkle a very little of the left-over tea on top of the cake, maybe also sprinkle some crystals of sugar if you're in the mood, and leave to rise in a warm, dry place (covered with a wet tea towel) for about an hour and a half.
At some point, turn on the oven.
Step 4: t = -0.5h
Bake at 200°C / 390°F for about 30 minutes, until knocking on the bottom makes a hollow sound.
Then take out and leave to cool for at least ten minutes. Seriously. Seriously. I know, I know, but seriously. I could make something up about why leaving it for ten minutes is a good idea, but despite my students' best efforts, I'm a mathematician, Jim, not a baker, so I'll just tell you it's worth it, I promise.
Then eat -- om nom nom nom -- your warm, fresh tea loaf with cold butter and a glad heart.