The Cookham Cook

Green Tomato Cake - Sweet!

2011-08-19T00:04:00.003+01:00

One of my tomato plants has caught blight. I'm rather upset as it was the one that was growing the best until then. So this has meant I needed to strip off probably 3 dozen large green tomatoes to salvage anything from the plant. What to do with so many tomatoes? Well, there's green tomato chutney, but I still have damson-apple chutney from last year that we are still slowly working our way through. We don't need more chutney. I've made fried green tomatoes in honour of the movie. They were okay, in the way that anything breaded and fried in fat is okay, but I didn't really think it was anything special. And then I stumbled across a cake recipe and thought "Jackpot!".

I've made carrot cake, zucchini cake and beetroot cake. All are sweet cakes and all were good, so I figured why not try it with green tomatoes? So I did and found the result most pleasing. I wouldn't choose this over home-ripened red tomatoes, but it certainly beat my other options for green tomatoes.

I will list what I used for ingredients, but please feel free to adapt as you see fit. For example, you don't need to have half a cup of muscovado sugar, you could just add another half cup of regular sugar. I found it added a little more depth of sweetness and some little pockets of caramel where there were tiny lumps. But I'm also sure it would be fine without it.

Green Tomato Cake

by the Cookham Cook

1 cup (225g) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (125g) packed muscavado sugar
a bit over 1/2 cup (around 120g) melted butter, shortening or oil
3 large eggs
2 tsps (10ml) vanilla
1 cup (160g) wholegrain flour
2 cups (280g) plain flour
1 tsp (5g) salt
2 tsp (10g) baking powder
1/2 tsp (3g) baking soda
2 tsp (10g) cinnamon
1 tsp (5g) nutmeg
1 cup (165g) raisins
2 and 1/2 cups (use a big mug full, as I don't know how much that would weigh) green tomatoes, diced.

Heat your oven to 170°C (350F).

If you have a food processor, this is now the time to use it to dice the tomatoes. Try a dozen or so and see how much you get.

Mix the sugars, oil or melted shortening, eggs and vanilla until smooth and creamy. Sift in the flour, salt, baking power, baking soda and the spices. Mix in the eggs until the batter is consistent and then add the tomatoes and raisins, folding them in.

I cooked this both as a loaf and as muffins. The muffins took around 15 minutes (but please check earlier) and the loaf took around 40 minutes.

The only evidence of tomatoes in this spiced cake was the little chunks of green in it, which could easily be mistaken by looks for apple or pear. I'm sure no one would know it was a green tomato cake unless you told them. I personally like to save that little tidbit of information until people have had several bites and are enjoying it.

Strawberry Mango Pancakes

2011-02-25T22:12:00.004Z

I've often been disappointed by fruit in my pancakes. Blueberries seem to be the only one that provides decent results all the time. I find often the batter near the fruit is still raw, despite my best attempts of cooking them through with a nice slow temperature. Banana pancakes are my downfall. But today I decided to try again. Kiddo #1 spotted the strawberries in the fridge and came up with elaborate plans involving milk, strawberries and mango to make cookies. She actually came up with a fairly decent list of cookie ingredients (cocoa, butter, flour) but I decided at the time of day that it was, cookies wasn't what we needed; what we needed was dinner. We had been well fed with lunch at a friend's place, so pancakes for dinner - inspired by Kiddo, seemed right.

This time, instead of leaving the fruit in big chunks, I diced it up quite finely. Probably half centimetre blocks. The strawberries were pretty firm - as you would expect totally out of season (I'm sorry, I bought them on a whim) but were ripe and smelling gorgeous. I did about a handful of diced strawberries and a handful of diced fresh mango. Maybe a cup and half together.

In a vague attempt to make them healthy, I used half whole-wheat and half plain flour. Following the recipe outlined here, these pancakes will likely be thinner than North Americans are used to, half-way between pancakes and crepes. For Brits, these should look like your kind of pancake. You can try with more baking soda or some additional baking powder and see if you get more fluffy pancakes. I was happy with these as I knew they would be cooked through.

Strawberry Mango Pancakes

by the Cookham Cook

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup plain/all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar/honey/agave

2 eggs

2 cups of milk

oil or butter for grill

maple syrup for serving

Mix dry ingredients together. Mix wet ingredients together. Pour wet stuff into dry stuff. Add the fruit and mix. Heat your griddle or frying pan to medium and grease with a bit of oil or butter. Stir the batter each time before pouring out a ladle or 1/4 cup of batter for each pancake. When the top starts to be covered in bubbles that don't pop and it looks dry near the edges, it's time to flip. Cook on the other side until brown and done. Serve.

Verdict? These fruit pancakes worked out very well. Thinner than we are used to, but really nice with the fruit running through it and they went very well with the maple syrup. And cooked! No raw batter hiding in the middle, plus the fruit had been gently cooked, giving off more aroma and flavour. Yummy yummy.

Great Menu Planner

2011-02-13T19:22:00.002Z

I love cooking and trying new recipes. However, often with time constraints it's a lot easier if I just make the same old boring stuff or cheat with the kids and feed them fish sticks/fingers. I've tried doing menu planning in the past and when I've done it, it's worked really well. But I found it really time-consuming, at least during the planning stage. I've looked around the web for some programs and sites to help me with this and I feel I've finally found something that really is effective.

Plan to Eat

It's a very simple drag & drop system to put recipes into a 7-day meal plan, including breakfast lunch and dinner. You can easily import recipes from lots of sites and there's a cool cut & paste tool for importing recipes from sites they don't support with the import tool. Like your favourite blog perhaps. ;-)

Don't worry, this is not going to replace me writing recipes here. Here I get to tell you more of what's going on when I choose something and what the reaction was and how easy (or not) it was to cook. This website is just to help me through the daily grind of, "and what should we eat for the next meal?"

Go on, click the link and check it out for yourself. There's a free 30-day trial and you don't have to enter any details or banking info to try it. Plan to Eat

Bucatini Amatriciana

2011-02-09T22:58:00.003Z

A few weeks ago when I was in NYC, I went into the new Italian food mecca, Eataly, the brainchild of Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, two of the biggest movers and shakers in the world of food in the Big Apple. These dudes are amazing and have seized on an incredible opportunity to part New Yorkers from their cash. In the Toy Building at 200 Fifth Avenue, Eataly is huge, selling all sorts of Italian goods from pasta to gelato to wine as well as having many places to eat right within the store. We wandered in at about 2:30 p.m. on a weekday and the place was heaving! I had already eaten lunch (fabulous soup dumplings downtown at Joe's Shanghai, but that's another tale for another day) but I did grab a quick chocolate gelato and I am here to report that it was the BEST I have ever had and I've had lots and lots of gelato!

I bought some really good dried pastas including bucatini, which is essentially fat spaghetti with a hole in the middle, and the perfect vehicle for amatriciana sauce, an onion, pancetta (or guanciale) and tomato sauce.

Chris had just arrived home from an overnight trip and I threw this meal together in minutes. Was perfect with a salad and a glass of Cotes du Rhone on an absolutely frigid New Jersey day.

1/2 lb. guanciale if you can find it. If not, use pancetta. I used pancetta because I can get it from the Italian deli up the street.
1/4 cup-ish of Olive Oil
1 large onion sliced thinly
1 or 2 cloves of garlic minced
Salt to taste
1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes or as much as you want. I like mine a little hot.
1 28 oz. can of really good San Marzano tomatoes. Some folks like them crushed. I prefer to crush them by squeezing them in my hand. It's what my mom did and it just feels right.
a wineglass of dry white wine
Good dried Pasta - 1lb. I like to use imported Italian pasta. You CAN taste the difference.
1/2 cup freshly grated pecorino romano cheese

Dice the pancetta and saute it in the olive oil until it is slightly crispy and has rendered a good bit of yummy fat. Remove from pan, leaving the oil and rendered fat and add the onions and garlic and saute until translucent and soft.

Add the tomatoes and wine and bring to a simmer. Add salt and red pepper flakes and continue to simmer for 10-15 minutes.

In the meantime, cook your pasta in salted water until al dente (to the tooth, or not completely mushy!). When finished, drain and add to the pan with the sauce and cook for a minute or two longer to further marry the pasta to the sauce. Taste to correct your seasonings. Put into serving dish with grated cheese and serve with additional cheese and red pepper at the table.

This meal is super easy and packed with flavor.

Porchetta for a Sunday Evening

2011-02-08T17:43:00.004Z

Super Bowl Sunday beckoned and even though I hate football, I felt as if I had to participate in the rite of cooking something for it. Wegman's had a great deal on bone-in pork shoulder and I grabbed one immediately. It's one of the cheapest cuts of meat you can buy and is meant to be tenderized to perfection by slow roasting or braising. It's a very versatile piece of meat which can be adapted to almost any cuisine.

This time I decided on a porchetta based upon the great Zuni Cafe's recipe. I remember my first trip to Italy, standing in the street on Sunday afternoon in February in Frascati, a small town outside of Rome, known for its unfussy and highly quaffable wine and beautiful villas. Sunday is when all the Italians celebrate the passeggiata, the afternoon or early evening social stroll. I was soaking in the moment when I realized that part of what was making it so special was the fact that the entire town smelled like roasted pork! Heaven! So my friend and I ducked into an unassuming subterranean wine tavern, ordered up a carafe of the local stuff and tucked into a huge plate of the delicious smelling porchetta. Bingo! Another defining food moment for me. My mother had always made a version of this, but somehow it felt different at the moment!

Everyone should put this in their recipe arsenal RIGHT NOW. It's that good.

Jane's Porchetta

1 Boneless or Bone-in pork Shoulder, or Picnic, or Boston Butt (the terminology varies depending upon where you live. Mine was 8 lbs. You can make this recipe with any size shoulder - just adjust your seasoning.
A bulb of fennel, sliced thinly
Olive Oil - a tablespoon or two
12-18 sage leaves - fresh
A tablespoon, or two of fresh rosemary, minced
A good sized tablespoon or two of roughly chopped capers in salt
The zest of two lemons
A liberal amount of freshly chopped parsley - Italian flat leaf ONLY!
6-10 cloves of fresh garlic minced to within an inch of its life.
Sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
Dry Vermouth, other white wine, or chicken stock (to go in roasting pan)

Heat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Make a rough paste of all the seasonings in a bowl by pulsing quickly in a food processor or manually chopping.

Make deep slits in the pork and slather the paste in them. Tie the pork up with butcher's twine.

Place in a Le Creuset Dutch Oven or a similar pot which has a lid. Toss a small glass of dry vermouth or whatever liquid you are using over it. Place in the oven, without the lid, for an hour, until the exterior has a bit of a crust. Don't sweat this. No matter what you do, this thing will be ridiculously good!

After an hour, place the lid on, reduce the heat to 300 degrees for three or four hours until it is fork tender and falling apart. De-fat as best as you possibly can, remove the string and shred it into big, chewy chunks. It will be full of delicious runny juices.

Serve with sauteed broccoli rabe and a wedge of good Asiago cheese. Some nice long hot peppers can be good with this also. Makes a fabulous sandwich.

8 lbs served about 12 people over the course of three days!

P.S. You can really play with this recipe and make it your own. It's a NO FAIL every time!

Fantastic Low Fat Simple Banana Muffins

2011-02-07T15:16:00.003Z

I've left this blog for over year, but I'm back. Now that Kiddo #2 is on the same solid food as the rest of us, it'll be a good way to keep track of what is a kitchen success and what isn't. Plus, it might Jane back on board too. ;-)

And nothing like starting with a success to get back in gear.

Today I wanted to use up the bananas that were starting to be on the wrong side of ripe. I like banana bread, but it takes so long to cook I thought muffins would result in a quicker pay-off, especially for my little helper, Kiddo#1.

There's lots of recipes for muffins out there, lots with applesauce replacing oil. Which is fine if you happen to have applesauce lying about the place. I don't. So I just made them without oil. What made these muffins particularly nice was the dates in them. I suppose you could substitute chocolate chips, but so much for the low-fat status. I do have wholewheat flour though, so used that. I'm sure 2 cups of plain flour would be fine too.

Simple Low Fat Banana Muffins

by the Cookham Cook

3 very ripe large bananas

2 eggs

1 cup/125 grams plain (or all-purpose) flour

1 cup /135 grams wholemeal flour

1/2 cup / 115 grams granulated sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt (this could be excluded for kids under 1)

handful of dates

Preheat oven to 180C/350F

Take the bananas and mash them in a large bowl. (I let Kiddo do this with a fork and then the potato masher while I measured the rest of the ingredients out). This doesn't have to be a perfectly smooth puree, any lumps smaller than a sugar cube are fine.
Add the 2 eggs and mix.
Add all the dry ingredients and mix.
Chop up the dates and fold into the batter.
Spoon into baking cases in a muffin tray (TIP: Because this recipe has very little fat in it, the muffins will stick to liner paper. I highly recommend using silicon liners if you have them). I managed to get 12 regular and 12 mini-muffins out of this amount of batter, just so you know.
Bake in the oven for around 20 minutes. I hate giving exact timings for baking because everyone's oven is different. You will know they are ready when they are a rich brown colour, spring back with a little touch and a toothpick stuck into one comes back out clean.

Verdict? These were delicious. Between the bananas and the dates they are really sweet, they don't have that "healthy taste" that is sometimes a bit of a turn-off, especially for little ones. The Kiddos can't get enough and I've had to fend them off with a sharp stick (just kidding) to leave any for tomorrow. I also like the fact that this is a one bowl recipe; rather than dirtying half my kitchenware for the sake of a few muffins, it all just get lumped together.

Make this!

Simple Green Grilled Salad

2009-12-01T15:24:00.003Z

I made this in a jiffy one night after seeing something similar elsewhere. I took a handful of green onions (spring onions, scallions, whatever you want to call them) and a handful of purple sprouting broccoli and threw them on the grill. I slightly steamed the broccoli first, as it was bigger and would take more cooking. Waited until they were "al-dente" and had pretty char marks on them, threw in some goats' cheese and a very simple vinaigrette of olive oil, lemon juice, a tiny bit of mustard and honey and salt.

Verdict? It was delicious. The recipe I saw had tuna in the vinaigrette, so I might try that next time if I want a more substantial meal.

Green Grilled Salad

by the Cookham Cook

4-5 green onions

4-5 purple sprouting broccoli

handful crumbled goats' cheese

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

half a lemon of fresh lemon juice

half tsp mustard

quarter tsp honey

dash salt

Roast Chicken for an Autumnal Evening

2009-10-11T15:29:00.007+01:00

The days are getting shorter and there's a real crispness in the air in my part of the world, which, for me, means roasting and braising. Having no children or job at the present, I have the luxury of food shopping on a daily basis and very rarely have a plan as to what I am cooking. I wandered into the market the other day to a big sale on roasters so I bought a decent sized one - about six pounds and made a phone call to two friends who are in the midst of a massive kitchen remodel and been doing without a stove for months. They jumped at the opportunity.

My recipe is loosely based on one I found in Patricia Wells' Bistro Cooking. Patricia Wells is one of my favorite cookbook authors. She was the food critic for the International Herald Tribune and is based in Provence. Nice work if you can get it! She has written many cookbooks over the years. I like them because they often are based directly on classics and are fairly accessible. I don't think I have ever had a misfire with a Patricia Wells recipe and I think that's saying a lot.

The recipe which follows is based upon a recipe Patricia coaxed out of the Pile Ou Face Bistro in Paris.

Roast Chicken Pile Ou Face with A Rustic Gravy

1 Roasting Chicken 5-6 lbs.
2 large sprigs of fresh rosemary
1 lemon - cut into eight pieces
6 small shallots, halved
Sea Salt
Freshly Ground Pepper
1 chicken liver from gizzard package
2 egg yolks
Extra Virgin Olive Oil, as needed
A liberal handful of Herbes de Provence
1 T tarragon
A few handfuls of any fresh herbs you might have on hand, chopped finely (tarragon, parsley, sorrel, chervil, etc.) or if you only have them in a dried version, use that and reduce the quantity.
2 or 3 stalks of celery, halved lengthwise and then halved widthwise
3 carrots, halved lengthwise
A few tablespoons of Dry Sherry
1-2 cups of chicken stock

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Wash the chicken and dry witha paper towel and salt and pepper the cavity.
3. Place the lemon, shallots, and rosemary in the cavity and truss the legs with string.
4. Beat the egg yolks and a tablespoon or two of extra virgin olive oil and add all the herbs, dried and fresh to this making a thick paste.
5. Brush the paste on the chicken.
6. Shake some sea salt and fresh ground pepper on the chicken.
7. Make a bed with the carrots and celery and palce the chicken atop it.
8. Place in the oven for 2 - 2-1/2 hours, basting frequently. Add the liver to the roasting pan in last fifteen minutes of roasting.
8. The chicken is done when the temperature in the middle of the thigh reaches 170 degrees, or when the juices run clear at the joint between where the thigh meets the leg.
9. Place the chicken on a platter to rest. Give it a good ten or fifteen minutes before you carve it.
10.Meanwhile, coarsely chop the shallots from the cavity and the celery and carrots from the bed as well as the roasted liver. Put a tablespoon or two of flour into the roasting pan with the accumulated juices and whisk into a roux. When the flour has browned and is smooth, add the chicken broth slowly, whisking the entire time to avoid lumps. Then add the chopped shallots, celery and liver. Add a tablespoon or two of sherry (or white wine, or nothing at all if you're so inclined). Bring it up to a low simmer for five or ten minutes. This will be the most heavenly smell you could ever begin to imagine. Serve atop the roasted chicken. Makes a nice rustic meal. It's especially nice when served with mashed potatoes,a leafy green vegetable and a lightly dressed salad.

Fruity Lamb Koftas

2009-06-23T21:03:00.003+01:00

There is a big bag of frozen ground lamb in the freezer that needs using up, so I went on a search for something interesting to do with it. Shepard's pie is a British standard with lamb, but I find it tedious to make if you don't already have cooked potatoes and it's also not a very summery dish. I came across this recipe at www.allrecipes.co.uk and adapted it somewhat, so I feel it's fine for me to write up.

I took an apple, a couple of shallots, 2 or 3 dried apricots, 2 pieces of bread and some garlic cloves and whizzed them all up together in the food processer until it was all quite fine crumbs. The original recipe called for granary bread. I didn't have any, only very plain white (a rarity in our house, bought for novelty value) so I also tossed in a few sesame seeds, a bit of oatmeal and wheat germ. Probably not necessary, but better than just white bread I think.

To this I added the rest of the ingredients, which was the defrosted ground lamb; cumin, curry, paprika and ginger powder; a pinch of chili flakes, a BIG bunch of coriander (the stuff in my garden has gone to seed, I used frozen stuff), a bit of salt, some raisins, a beaten egg and some pine nuts and cashews. The original recipe called only for pine nuts, but I didn't have enough and a few roughly chopped cashews substituted quite nicely. This was then mixed together by hand until it was really well mixed. The meat will lose some texture, don't worry about it. Form into 8 patties and then put in the fridge for at least half an hour. It's quite a wet mixture, so it needs the time to set a bit before frying.

When it's cold, take them out and fry at medium-high heat on an oiled griddle until well brown on each side. Just be a bit careful and gentle when turning them over. I then served it with toast (pita bread would be better, but heyho) and yogurt mixed with fresh chopped mint.

Verdict? This is one of the best things I've made in several months for dinner. All 3 of us loved them. The fruit mixes well with the spices and lamb for a very refreshing taste. I wasn't sure when making them how it would be with big pine nuts and raisins in it, thinking perhaps I should have chopped them first. But the koftas held together and it was nice to have the different textures in the mix. One piece of advice is don't skimp on the spice measurements, including the coriander. It may seem like a fair amount, but it really makes the taste in this dish. This will become a very regular feature on our dinner menu whenever there's lamb and coriander in the house.

Fruity Lamb Koftas

by the Cookham Cook

1 apple, cored

2-3 dried apricots

2 shallots or 1 small onion, peeled

3 garlic cloves, peeled

2 slices of bread

280g ground lamb

4 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped

2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp curry powder, hot or mild, as you like

2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp ground ginger

big pinch of dried chili flakes

3/4 tsp salt or to taste

85 grams raisins

2 tbsps pine and/or cashew nuts

1 egg, beaten

Simple Rice Salad

2009-06-09T15:14:00.003+01:00

It was looking to be a warm evening, with a potential for a barbeque, so I put this together as a side.

I used Thai rice, which in my opinion is pretty similar to regular Basmati rice, which for me isn't a big step away from regular normal long-grain rice. So use whatever fits. I boiled up the rice with a chicken stock cube for extra flavour. I would have preferred a vegetable one, but unless you are vegetarian, I don't think it makes a big difference either. After the rice was cooked, I added chopped baby leaf salad and a can of drained black beans. I imagine if you made up the beans from dry, it would be tastier, but when you come up with these things on the afternoon of cooking, canned is the only way to go. As for the salad, it was spinach, swiss chard and beetroot leaves, all leaves that are just fine cooked, which is what they did when thrown into hot steaming rice. You might not want to do that with iceberg lettuce, but hey, give it a go if you are adventurous.

As the rice was steaming down, I made the dressing. Children were going to be eating this along with adults, so I used mostly regular olive oil and then about a third extra virgin olive oil. The EV oil we currently have is quite peppery and I thought it would be a bit much for the kids. To this, I added the juice of one lemon and enough white wine vinegar to make up a 3:1 ratio for a vinaigrette. I only recently learnt that if you use freshly squeezed lemon juice, you get a much more lemony and fresh taste than if you use lemon juice from concentrate or plastic squeezy lemon. The squeezy lemon stuff adds the acidity, but misses out on the subtlety of the lemon flavour. May seem obvious to the rest of you, but it was news to me and once I realised it, I realised I could also taste a big difference. Lemons are relatively cheap, so it's easy to have them on hand for fresh juice. I added a generous helping of salt and a generous grind of black pepper. I used more than I would for a vegetable salad. Finally I added a handful of chopped fresh basil and parsley. I would have added some fresh thyme, oregano, coriander and possibly rosemary and sage if I hadn't been too lazy to go outside to get it. The basil and parsley were on the windowsill within arm's reach. With everything for the dressing, you can be a bit heavy-handed as the rice will absorb a lot of the flavours.

I mixed it altogether and gave it a taste. It was a bit boring because there wasn't any crunch. So I added a handful of chopped blanched almonds. This gave it the necessary crunch to make it pretty good, in my opinion.

This was a base that was that I planned to add more interesting things to. Cherry tomatoes, chopped sundried tomatoes, olives, celery, grated carrot, capers, etc etc. All would be nice in the salad I'm sure, but perhaps not all at once. In the end, I didn't add anything else and it was still good. It was a big salad and has kept well in the fridge. So an easy one to have on hand in the fridge in case of sudden BBQ weather or a quick lunch.

Simple Rice Salad

by the Cookham Cook

300g long-grain rice, rinsed

600ml water

one chicken or vegetable stock cube

one can of black beans (or similar), drained and rinsed

100-200g of baby spinach or mixed leaf salad, chopped

approx 150ml virgin olive oil

juice of one large lemon

enough wine vinegar to make up to 50ml with lemon juice

generous amounts of salt and freshly ground pepper

large handfuls of fresh herbs (basil, parsley, thyme, coriander, etc)

one handful of blanched almonds, chopped roughly

add other yummy ingredients at will and want

Homemade Gnocchi with a Wild Mushroom Sauce

2009-06-02T01:02:00.005+01:00

My husband Chris is a madman for things gnocchi so when we had a rainy day a month ago on a Saturday, I decided to please him and try my hand making them homemade. My mom used to make them when we were kids, but she never quite mastered the art of a light pillow-like gnocchi so as a result we referred to them as sinkballs.

I spent the entire morning trolling through my piles of cookbooks and looking on the internet for a suitability good gnocchi recipe, one which I thought would yield restaurant quality gnocchis. I landed on one by Michael Chiarello, who once had a good program on the Food Network, and whose cooking always looks authentic and easy, which to my mind is quite a feat! His recipe calls for the potatoes to be baked rather than boiled and I think that helped make them light. I followed it to the letter, something I never ever do, and it paid off. They were great!

Since it was raining and cold, I wanted something hearty and decided to come up with a wild mushroom sauce. I made this up and was happy with the end result.

½ lb. sliced crimini or porcini mushrooms or even white button mushrooms

½ lb. fresh shitake mushrooms, sliced, woody stems discarded

2 shallots minced

1 clove garlic minced

A few sprigs of fresh thyme (not necessary, but I had some hanging around that I did not want to waste), chopped

2 T butter

1 T olive oil

2 or 3 dried porcini mushrooms, reconstituted in one cup hot water, chopped.

Broth from dried porcini mushrooms

1 C beef broth

A liberal glug of half and half, cream or whatever you have on hand

Salt – to taste

Pepper – to taste

A good sized splash of dry sherry

Flat leaf parsley

Good grating cheese. I used Parmigiano Reggiano.

Pour yourself a glass of good red wine.

Put the olive oil and butter in a big sauté pan and heat over medium high heat until bubbling. Do not burn.

Add the mushrooms and cooks till they are dry and browned.

Then add the shallots, garlic and thyme and cook for a few minutes until softened and fragrant.

Next throw in the chopped reconstituted dry mushrooms and cook for a minute or so.

Put in beef broth and reduce on high. Throw in the cream and continue to reduce. Then throw in the sherry, cook off the alcohol and taste for seasonings. Add salt and pepper.

When your gnocchi has cooked and drained, toss it in the pan and cook for minute to consolidate the flavors.

Toss with parsley and cheese.

Savor!

Sticky Lemon Chicken ala Gordon Ramsay

2009-05-10T12:07:00.002+01:00

This is a recipe taken from Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food book (US link, UK link). It's a rare day when I follow a recipe to the letter, but I came pretty close with this one. It calls for 1 large chicken jointed into 8-10 pieces, but I instead used about 4 large breast halves. If you have a chicken, go for it, but the breasts worked perfectly well. I used to always want to get the exact same ingredients as called for in a recipe, but life is far too fast nowadays to bother with that. It asked for chicken, I had chicken, done.

You season then brown the chicken in oil with garlic and thyme, then add sherry vinegar (oh, I only had white balsamic and wine vinegar, they'll do) and reduce by half. Add soy sauce, honey, some hot water and lemon slices and let simmer away until reduced again until syrupy, about 10 minutes. Serve with a sprinkle of parsley on top. One tip, put all the lemon slices into the sauce when you add them. Any that are left on the chicken will taste a bit bitter by the time it's all cooked, but the slices in the sauce are delicious.

Verdict? This is definitely a big time winner. Everyone really liked it and it was fast to make. Plus it was ingredients that are usually or often on hand. This will go into regular use I think.

Sticky Lemon Chicken
mainly by Gordon Ramsay but cooked by The Cookham Cook
4 large chicken breasts
salt and pepper for seasoning
some olive oil for frying
1 head of garlic, cut in half horizontally
a few thyme sprigs
good tablespoon sherry vinegar (or whatever vinegar you have)
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
3 tablespoons of honey
1 lemon, very finely sliced

Greens Gumbo

2009-04-18T13:53:00.003+01:00

I decided to try and make this recipe for Gumbo Z'herbes. Just so you know, 3 pounds of greens is A LOT of greens. I know they melt down to nearly nothing, but I'm guessing most people don't have a container big enough to cook them all at once. I used our big roasting tin, which is huge, and it was full to the brim with just 2 pounds of greens. I used a mixture of the mysterious English "greens" (that's what it's called in the store), baby spinach, carrot tops, parsley and some ground elder that I ripped out of our garden as payback for its invasive tendencies.

I more or less followed the recipe as it stands, just reducing the quantities by a third since I only had 2 pounds of greens. It was pretty time-consuming, with all the cooking time and roux-stirring involved. I was prepared for that and felt up to doing something that took more than 3 minutes to prepare. However....

Verdict? Not really that spectacular for the amount of effort involved. And it was not very appealing to look at. For whatever reason, my gumbo was a very green shade, unlike the brown gumbo shown in the picture in the link. Very green goop was the look. I thought it had a nice taste, but my dinner companions were heavily influenced by the look and were faint in their praise. Kiddo wouldn't touch it. There is a lot leftover, so it might be combined into an omelette or a version of spinach pie. We'll have to see. A shame, but not every dish of food is going to be a winner. Ah well.

Penne All'Arrabbiata

2009-04-07T21:55:00.005+01:00

I get inspiration for food from many places. My sisters and friends are a huge source of ideas, as are food magazines, television and increasingly, the internet, but perhaps more than anything, my travels have really spurred me to try new things and replicate tastes from far off places.

My first trip to Rome was in the early nineties and I can remember my first meal on a tiny piazza behind the Pantheon. Once I finished gorging on the amazing antipasti, I moved on to my primi piatti (first course) of pasta which was Penne All’Arrabbiata. Seemingly composed of just three or four ingredients, it stunned me with its simple yet amazing taste. I vowed to come home and find out how to make it. It took awhile and a few trys, (remember. this was before you could google everything) but I finally found an authentic recipe in an old Food & Wine magazine on Rome, I think. Roman food is a world unto itself and I’ll spend some more time in the future on favorite simple Roman pastas. In any case, this is one of my staple meals. I usually have pasta, good tomatoes, garlic, red pepper flakes, cheese and extra virgin olive oil and flat leaf parsley on hand and if not, I can dive around to the grocery store around the block and grab what I need.

1 28 oz. can San Marzano tomatoes - spend on the good DOP kind - worth every penny.
6 garlic cloves minced
5 T extra virgin olive oil
2 t red pepper flakes or more if you like things spiced up
salt & pepper to taste
1/4 c grated pecorino or parmigiano reggiano or both and more to grate
chopped fresh flat parsley - NEVER USE CURLY!!!
1 lb DeCecco Penne - again, use the good stuff.

1. Heat the minced garlic with the oil and saute until golden.
2. Do not burn. If you do, toss it out and start again.
3. Then add the red pepper flakes, swirl pan and cook for a minute longer. 4. Then add the tomatoes which I like to break up with my hands as my mother taught us.
5. Simmer for twenty minutes adding a touch of salt and pepper to taste. 6. Meanwhile cook the penne in rolling boiling salted water until al dente.
7. Drain and then add to sauce and cook a minute or two more to absorb all the flavor.
8. Put in a serving bowl with cheese and toss with parsley. Serve with extra cheese and pepper flakes. Serves 4 hungry people with bread and salad.

Anyway, it's now one of my staples and people love it. And it never fails to remind me of my first trip to Italy - what more can you ask of a simple dish?

2009-04-03T22:27:00.010+01:00

A Basic Vinaigrette

First, I'd like to thank Andrea for taking me on board. I love that you can get to know someone without ever meeting. The internet is the 21st century incarnation of pen pals.

By way of introduction, I am an American, living in a small town in New Jersey, but very close to Philadelphia and within a ninety minute drive of Manhattan so I am hardly in a culinary hinterland. We have great access to good ingredients and ethnic restaurants and supermarkets of all stripes. I try to be a locavore, but don't always succeed. I try not to use processed food ever and I believe in good, honest cooking. My mother was an imaginative cook in the sixties when it was impossible to find the stuff we take for granted now like extra virgin olive oil and parmigiano reggiano. My sisters are great cooks and most of my friends are foodies too, which is nice because it pretty much guarantees a decent dinner on a Saturday or Sunday night! But enough blithering, let's talk food.

Almost every time I cook, I try to make a salad. In my Italian-American family, we always finished our dinner with the salad as bit of a palate cleanser and most of my friends from similar backgrounds did the same. As I said above, I absolutely loathe processed foods. They're meant to be a timesaver and I get that, but making your own vinaigrette salad dressing takes five minutes or under and the taste difference over the jarred stuff is unbelievable.

So here's my very simple formula for making a basic vinaigrette. It could not be any more easy-peasy. There are basic proportions to which you ought to roughly adhere. The ratio of oil to vinegar is normally three to one, but I never measure and just rely on my eye and my taste buds to tell me what is right. Play with it and vary it to suit your needs.

Extra virgin olive oil - I like to use an unfiltered oil - I love the viscosity and rough look of it. It is a bit on the expensive side so regular extra virgin olive oil will do as well.

Red wine vinegar - but you can vary this and use sherry wine vinegar, which has a beautifully complex taste, white wine vinegar, and so forth. I don't like a balsamic in my vinaigrette because I feel its big taste overwhelms the other more subtle ingredients, but to each their own.

Garlic - 2 cloves

Sea Salt - I like Maldon, but anything will do even regular table salt.

Lemon juice - about a quarter of a lemon or to taste

Dijon mustard - about a teaspoon.

Freshly ground pepper - to taste

1. Put about a teaspoon of sea salt into a mortar and pestle with 2 cloves of garlic and grind it to a paste. What you are aiming for is a very gloopy looking mixture where the salt and garlic are completely combined. It should look like this -

2. When you've finished mashing your garlic and salt together, scrape it out of the mortar and pestle with a rubber spatula and put it into the bowl in which you plan to serve your salad. Add the rest of the ingredients.
3. Whisk everything together until you have a nice emulsion. It can sit a while to let the flavors develop. It should look like this when you are through whisking.
4.Throw some nice mesclun mix, arugula or whatever salad greens appeal to you on top of it and toss gently just before serving. I like a lightly dressed salad.

The beautiful thing about making your own salad dressing is that once you've found out how truly simple it is, you can start experimenting. I make an asian style dressing with garlic, fresh ginger, lime juice, sesame oil and fish sauce. It will literally knock your socks off. You can really play with your salad dressing until you've found something you love. Enjoy!

Roast Beef Stir-Fry

2009-03-31T12:59:00.002+01:00

Once again a recipe involving leftovers. We had a really large amount of roast beef left after my partner slow-cooked some topside. It was good, but perhaps a bit tough for a stir-fry, heading into some more hot heat. So I decided to make a marinade to hopefully soften it a bit.

It's hard to say how much of the liquids I used. I think it's easiest if I give it in bar terms. 3 portions soy sauce, 2 portions vegetable oil, 1 portion white wine vinegar. If I had a lighter vinegar like rice wine, I probably would have used more. I crushed in 2 cloves garlic and about 2 inches of fresh ginger. I had a passion fruit in the fridge that needed using up, so I threw that in too. Then a bit of orange zest and half an orange juiced in. I had cut the roast beef into about 0.5-1cm thick strips. In it went and I had kiddo as my helper mix it.

For vegetables I added just broccoli and an orange and yellow pepper. Having made a few stir-fries, I think that having too many different vegetables can sometimes bring it down, so I decided to just go two ingredients this time and I think it worked better. I cut them into strips too, to match the beef.

First I put in the broccoli into the wok, then cut up the peppers and added them. Oh, I used the beef marinade as the oil to cook the veg. As the beef was already cooked, it went in last (with most of the marinade) before the noodles. I just added packaged thin noodles, but I'm sure the dish would work with thick noodles or rice.

Verdict? It was really good. Better than expected to be honest. The thinner pieces of beef were the best, having absorbed the most marinade and being the most tender. I liked the slightly fruity sweet taste to the marinade, but it wasn't overpowering or had you looking for the pineapple. Even kiddo ate a full portion, although there were distractions that may have helped with that, but even the leftovers today were eaten with relative gusto. There is more beef in the fridge still, so I might make some more up later this week. I also liked using cooked beef, as it meant I could taste the marinade and test the beef to see how it was tasting.

Roast Beef Stir-Fry

by the Cookham Cook

a big handful of roast beef, cut into thin strips

a small head of broccoli, cut into long strips

2-3 sweet peppers, again, cut into long strips

1 package pre-cooked oriental noodles

approx 125mL soy sauce

approx 100mL vegetable oil

approx 60 mL white wine vinegar

2 cloves garlic crushed

2 inches ginger, diced or crushed

1 passionfruit

1/2 orange, zest and juice

A New Cook

2009-03-26T15:48:00.003Z

I want to introduce a new author to this blog. Potterstreet, aka Jane. She and I have come close to meeting, but never quite, so we are online pen pals is probably the best way to describe it. I know she's quite the passionate cook and will add lots of great recipes to this blog. Plus they won't all be cooked with a toddler in the kitchen, which will probably mean a slightly more interesting list of ingredients (unless you count eggshells in your soup as interesting) to use.

Salmon Fish Cakes

2009-03-22T21:21:00.003Z

It was nice yesterday and I had been to the wholesalers and found some cheap but delicious looking whole salmon fillets there, so we bbq'ed it. It was a big thing, over a kilo in weight, so there was a fair amount left over for today to be made into fish cakes. Last year I made these quite regularly due a glut of fish in the freezer (long story that is somewhat embarrassing) but I haven't made them much since. I think it's something I tend to make when there's lots of fish about, but there's no real reason it couldn't be made with canned fish.

I put 4 mid-sized potatoes onto boil in their skins while I got the rest of the ingredients together. I flaked the salmon into a bowl and added a bit more of the sauce/marinade that it was cooked in (a creamy lemon thyme dressing, I don't think you'll miss it) I then whizzed up a leftover crust of bread for crumbs. I added some celery salt and some garlic powder. In a good knob of butter I softened up a small onion and added that after. I find onion can be pretty overpowering a taste sometimes when it's raw, hence the cooking. When the potatoes were cooked, I mashed them with their skins but without butter or milk and then added them. Two eggs, some fresh parsley and some fresh garlic chives and mixed it all up. Mixing was to get the egg through everything, not to make it all one texture and consistency. There were lumps of salmon and potato throughout it.

Now I did something different from previous fish cakes I've made. I baked them on a cookie sheet rather than frying them. This is a brilliant new discovery for me which I don't know why I didn't think of before. I can cook lots at once rather than just a batch, it's less fatty and it's easier to have them all at the same level of doneness. I did 2 sets, one of 9 fairly large ones, another set of 17 small bite-sized ones. I had the oven at 170°C, which seemed to be an ideal temperature. 7 minutes on the first side, then a flip and 5 or so minutes on the other side, the small ones perhaps a minute less on each side. Since everything other than the eggs is cooked, they don't take long.

Verdict? Great! I love them. They are slightly dry and so best with a sauce. We used sweet chili sauce, but kiddo ate them plain (I did have some ketchup hidden as a reserve if needed, but it wasn't). I think to eat them plain you would need more spices and herbs than I added and perhaps less potato or more fish. But with a sauce, they were delicious.

Salmon Fish Cakes

by the Cookham Cook

400g of cooked salmon

4 mid-sized potatoes

a slice of bread or half a cup of bread crumbs

some celery salt

some garlic powder

a small onion, diced

knob of butter

small handful fresh parsley, chopped finely

small handful garlic chives (regular chives would be fine), chopped finely

2 eggs

salt and pepper to taste

Beef Shin Stew in the Slow Cooker

2009-02-28T21:09:00.004Z

I more or less followed a recipe off of Jamie Oliver's website, but I'll repost here as I did it in the slow cooker rather than oven and think it needs a little work.

Beef Shin is cheap cheap cheap. Like less than half the price of rump steak, which is another cut available for stewing. And less bony than oxtail, although perhaps not quite as tasty without the added bones, I'll admit. But it would be easy enough to add some bones to the stew, or just some marrow, as I saw recommended on one website. I can't quite picture myself going up to our local butcher and asking for some beef marrow, but I'm sure he probably has it or can get it. I'll work on building up my gumption.

So I softened an onion and a small bunch of sage leaves in butter. Then I added the floured beef chunks. I actually let this brown a bit while I cut up the rest of the vegetables. Brown you say? In a slow cooker? Well, first I was going to make it in the slow cooker and just brown everything in a pan. Then I realised the recipe didn't actually call for browning and decided maybe just oven cooking it would be faster (someone had a plane to catch in the early evening) so I dumped the onion/sage mix into a Le Creuset dish on the stove and added the beef. Then I realised the pot I had wasn't big enough and that the slow cooker was really the only thing that would hold it comfortably. So I managed to dirty 3 pots rather than a possible one or two. Not very effecient.

Anyways, I only used 2 carrots as they were pretty big. I think next time I'll slice them into big chunks rather than half them lengthwise, as I ended up just cutting them to fit into the bowls anyways. Carrots, parsnips, butternut squash went in, a couple squeezes of tomato puree and then about a cup of red wine and a quarter of a cup of beef stock. Slow cookers keep the moisture in, so unless I was prepared to boil it for an hour or so without the lid on, there was no point in putting too much liquid in. I then cooked it on high for about 4 hours or so, until the meat was very tender and fell apart. I turned it down to warm and added some leftover mashed leek and potato we had in the fridge. I just settled it gently on top in 4 big spoonfuls, so it could be scooped out later as a serving. An hour or so later, when we were ready for dinner, it was warmed through.

Verdict? It was good, with my partner liking it the most. However, it was missing something; it was somehow a bit flat on taste. I mean, it was good, but it needed to either be richer in taste, or have sort of contrast in taste to zing it up. Jamie suggests sprinkling it with a mix of lemon zest, chopped rosemary and garlic just before serving which I'm sure would have picked it up some. Or the other option of a bit of reduced red wine and some beef marrow for a richer taste. It wasn't bad and it was very hearty, it just could be improved. I'll keep you posted if I make it again. A very economical meal too, with all the ingredients being cheap.

Beef Shin Stew in the Slow Cooker

by the Cookham Cook

approx 900 g of cubed beef shin, dredged in flour seasoned with salt and pepper

a knob of butter

a medium onion, chopped

a handful of fresh sage

2 big carrots, chopped into big chunks

2 parsnips, chopped into big chunks

1/2 a butternut squash, diced

2 tbsp of tomato puree

1 cup of red wine

1/4 cup of beef stock

serve with mashed potatoes or crusty bread

This is the recipe I more or less used. If I make it again and remember to adjust it, I will then add any changes I made to it here.

Pancakes with Rhubarb Compote.

2009-02-24T20:39:00.005Z

I have missed a few decent meals due to busy evenings and forgetfulness. Some nice meatloaf with lots of side vegetables and leek-potato mash stands out. I was most impressed with the full meal look to the table, even with the ease of the side dishes.

Anyways, today we made traditional Shrove Tuesday pancakes. The idea being that you make pancakes because it uses up all the eggs in time for you to give them up for Lent. People obviously use a different recipe to mine, as even doubled, my recipe only called for 2 eggs. I used a recipe off of allrecipes.com, Good Old Fashioned Pancakes. Unless you are making only for one person or two really not very hungry people, double it. I found the batter went lumpy because the melted butter hit the cold milk and resolidified, but it really didn't make that much difference to the pancakes, they rose just fine. They just looked a bit odd with small pools of melting butter showing up on the non-cooked side of the pancake as the lumps melted. Next time I'll probably take the advice given in some of the reviews and heat the milk slightly to avoid it. But simple it was, and tasty too.

We ate them with maple syrup and some rhubarb compote that I made up. The ease of the recipe was that I could put it in the oven and forget about it. Which I did; it cooked for much closer to 60 than 30 minutes. It meant most of the rhubarb had broken down, but that didn't bother me. I found the amount of sugar recommended wasn't enough and added about an extra tablespoon or two plus a bit of apple juice at the end. It was then sweet, but still slightly tart. The apple juice was really to give it a bit more liquid, since I had cooked so much of it off with my added time. It contrasted nicely with the sweet maple syrup.

Cottage Pie

2009-02-17T05:57:00.003Z

Really easy dish to make, assuming you already have some leftover potatoes, as I don't like cooking up spuds just to have on top of something. . I minced an onion and fried it until soft, then added a half kilo of ground beef. There would have been garlic there too, but we still had some issues with our garlic supply chain. When that was cooked through, I drained the liquid. It wasn't all fat, the meat had released some water too. Cheap stuff will do that, even if it's organic beef. Back to the heat and I added some grated carrot. Grating is great for things like carrot, as it means it cooks through very quickly. I then added a can of chopped tomatoes and some frozen peas. Then about half a can of beef broth and a dash of worcestershire sauce. I simmered that down until it wasn't too soupy. Then into a casserole dish. Take the cooked potatoes, mash them up with some cheese, then spread on top of the beef mixture and sprinkle a little more cheese on top. Since everything is already cooked, you only need to really warm everything up together in the oven. When the cheese is melted and golden, it's done.

Verdict? Very tasty, all 3 of us liked it, with kiddo using it as an opportunity to go pea fishing, but she did eat the rest with gusto too. If there hadn't been potatoes, it might have worked with cous cous or spaghetti. This is a good dish to prepare in advance and just reheat, even from frozen.

Cottage Pie

by the Cookham Cook

1 onion, diced

1 clove garlic, diced

500g ground beef

1 large carrot, grated

handful or two of peas

1 400mL can of chopped tomatoes

200 mL beef broth

dash worcestershire sauce

cooked potatoes

some cheddar cheese, grated

Venison with Braised Cabbage and Spätzle

2009-02-09T20:49:00.003Z

I'm going to skip the Venison and Braised Cabbage details for now, simply because I don't feel like writing them up. And as currently I'm the only one reading this blog, I only have to please myself as a reader. A blog should be a pleasure, not a chore. Just like cooking. Which is why it's okay to have cereal for dinner sometimes.

Just a quick mention that the farmed venison steaks were very tender and tasty. Certainly worth buying again.

I wanted to make spätzle which is a type of German homemade noodle. (see here for more if you are curious: Spätzle). I found a recipe written up in a style I liked - no measuring involved - and went for it. What you do is use one egg per person, add about the same amount of water, mix, then add a dash of salt and then add flour until the mix is past pancake batter consistency, more a heavy dropping thickness. Then mix until the dough is sort of stretchy. Leave the dough to rest for half an hour. Then come back and boil up some slightly salty water in a big deep pot.

Now you need a board; a cutting board will work nicely if it's sturdy enough not to bend and light enough to hold with one hand. Dip the board in the water so the surface you are going to use is wet. Take a portion of your dough (too little is better than too much) and stretch it over your board to the end. Next take something with a narrow edge to it. A clean wall spackler, a spatula, a butter knife, whatever. I started with a spatula and ended with a teaspoon. Dip your tool of choice into the water and then start cutting off small bits of the dough directly into the boiling water. They will expand a fair amount, so really use small amounts, you want small noodles, not giant flabby pieces of dough. Once you have the bottom of your pan covered, you have your first batch. Wait until they are all floating in the water and then let them cook another minute. Scoop them out and rinse with cold water. Let that batch drain while you cook the next. Then move to a dish and keep them warm in the oven at very low heat.

Verdict? They tasted great, the way only fresh pasta can. I was amazed how easy it was to make, thinking it might be a bit more complicated or involved. Lots less flour thrown about the kitchen than regular pasta requires. They looked a bit anemic I thought for a side dish, so I think next time the only change I will make is to maybe use only an egg yolk rather than a whole egg for the last egg needed and see if that makes a difference. Also, as a side dish, you don't need one egg per person. Our 2 egg dough was more than plenty for two of us.

Spätzle

by the Cookham Cook

approx 1 egg per person

approx 1 eggshell full water per person

flour as needed

dash salt

Gingerbread

2009-02-08T20:35:00.004Z

Today dinner was leftover pork with creamy leeks for me and fish fingers and baked sweet potato chips for the kiddo. My partner is out of town, in case you are wondering at the lack of adult company at these meals. The pork was okay the second day, but didn't improve the way some dishes do with time. So instead of reviewing dinner, I thought I'd walk through something we made a few days ago - gingerbread.

The kiddo is 2 and has had a fascination with gingerbread men for the last little while. I decided it was time to indulge her and make some biscuits. I took Delia Smith's gingerbread men recipe and went for that. Of course, I didn't or couldn't make it exactly as suggested. I had bought black treacle (molasses) in anticipation of making gingerbread, but hadn't really looked at this specific recipe asking for golden syrup. So I substituted slightly more treacle and a slightly less than a couple of tablespoons of honey. I also didn't have any ground cloves. I thought I had bought some last time I went shopping, also in anticipation of making gingerbread. But after a long search through my spice drawer, I realised I had instead bought ground cumin. Which is fine, because I needed that too, but not really ideal for making gingerbread. So I ground up about 3 whole cloves and then a good dash of ground allspice. I'm pretty sure I read the recipe as having another teaspoon of cloves, along with the other spices, but even if so, my heavy-handedness with the allspice and cloves didn't have a negative impact on the result.

Delia mentions if you think the dough needs more flour, add it. Well I think it needed a lot more flour. I probably added a wee bit too much extra, but at couple of good handfuls went in before I'd say it was an issue. I only found rerolling the dough after the first time of cutting the shapes out, it was a bit less sticky than you might want it, with the pieces not meshing together as nice as they could have, which I attribute to the slight excess flour. However, it would have been way too sticky without the extra flour.

I think I cooked mine for about 15 minutes, when I had meant for the first check to be at 8 minutes. Our oven burns hot, and even with a lower temperature for that and for its fan, I find I can usually chop off a good part of the cooking time. However, the timer failed to beep when the 8 minutes were up (I told you that this was real-life cooking), leaving me to rely on my Spidey sense that the time was up. A couple of the biscuits were slightly burnt around the edges, but none of the bottoms, so it looks like my Spidey senses are working well currently. I didn't bother to ice them, as that just seemed like extra mess with a little kid around; both in the doing and the eating.

Verdict? The taste was good. Not particularly gingery, but the smell was there, as was the rough type of sweetness provided by the black treacle. The one drawback of the longer baking time was that once the biscuits cooled, they were extremely hard. This was actually good for the kiddo, as it meant she couldn't chomp through them a dozen at a sitting. Also, her molars are coming in and it made for a tasty teething ring a couple of times in the last few days for her. However, for the rest of us whose teeth have already made an appearance, I think a bit softer would have been nicer. Kiddo really enjoyed helping cut out the shapes and putting them onto the tray. I really enjoyed that this part of the process wasn't that messy, compared to sugar cookies I've made other times. So gingerbread will be made again by us. I have to use up that can of treacle anyways.

Gingerbread
by the Cookham Cook
75 g soft brown sugar, sieved
2 scant tbsp honey
1 generous tbsp black treacle
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp allspice
3 cloves, freshly ground
finely grated zest of 1/2 orange
95 g butter or margarine
1/2 tsp baking soda
at least 250g plain flour

Pork with Creamy Leeks and Applesauce

2009-02-07T19:28:00.003Z

Being a bit more organised today, I was able to plan a slightly more complicated dinner. When I say complicated, it involves 3 pots rather than my standard one. I had a couple of nice boneless pork loins I wanted to fry up and I also had a craving for some applesauce with it, so I made that too.

First I started with the apple sauce. Sauce is a bit of misnomer, as I was using totally the wrong apples for sauce. It was more stewed chunks of apple rather than sauce. I had some Braeburn apples, which are really really good eating apples. Crisp, sweet with just a bit of tartness to offset their sweetness. But they make lousy sauce because they don't break down when you cook them. I knew this was going to be the case, so I just chopped up some of it quite finely to fake a sauce. Peeled, cored, chopped and thrown into a heavy-bottomed pot with a splash of water, a little light brown sugar and some cinnamon. I could have left the sugar out, but I have a sweet tooth. The cinnamon is just a bit, but if you love it, use more. I used one of our heavy-bottomed pots because I knew it would stew for quite a while and it would less likely burn with one of them than one of our thin ones. Bring it up to bubble, then turn it down and ignore it until you think it's done. If you use eating apples like I do, they are done when they feel pretty soft upon biting. If you use cooking apples (which are usually tarter, so that sugar might come in more handy for them) they will cook down to mush when they are done.

Next I put on some brown basmati rice to cook. I'm not really great at rice. I'm rarely prepared to measure it very exactly, measure the water very exactly and then watch it like a hawk, which is sometimes what I feel rice needs when you use the method that uses up all the water. I often end up with a crust of burnt rice on the bottom of the pot if I do this, so I much prefer the lots-of-water-and-drain-it-when-it's-done method. And as I find brown rice can sometimes be a bit dry, this wetter treatment doesn't seem to do it any harm either.

Originally I was going to use the pork steaks whole, but then decided since it was just kiddo and me, strips might be easier for her to handle and save me a bunch of cutting up at the table in a small plastic bowl. So they were cut into 1.5cm thick strips (oh yes, I measured that exactly, ha ha) and then fried in a bit of olive oil. I should have let them brown up a bit more to add some extra flavour and attractiveness, but by this time kiddo was hungry and I was in a bit of a rush. Once the pork was about half cooked, I added diced leek straight to the pan. Mixing, mixing, waiting until the leek wilted a bit, then I added a small splash of white wine vinegar and a slightly larger splash of apple juice. I let that bubble and steam a bit down, then added about half a carton of double cream. Salt, pepper, bubble and steam, then serve over the rice with the side of apple sauce.

Verdict? I liked it a lot, especially with the apples bringing in some sweetness with the creamy leeks. I'm not sure the vinegar and apple juice were necessary. When I tasted the sauce without the apples, it seemed like it was crying out for some herbs because of the slight sour undernote. It wasn't bad, it just tasted like something was missing. With the apples, it wasn't noticeable. I will leave both the vinegar and juice out next time, unless I want to get any stuck brown bits off the bottom of the pan. In which case I will use just the juice or maybe a little white wine, but not the vinegar. Sometimes simpler is better.

Apple "Sauce"

by the Cookham Cook

3 large Braeburn apples, peeled, cored and chopped. Some finely, some in chunks.

approx 1 tbsp of water

approx 1 heaped tsp of light brown sugar

a couple of dashes of cinnamon

Brown Basmati Rice

If you need me to list the ingredients for rice, cooking might be a step beyond you.

Pork with Creamy Leeks

by the Cookham Cook

2 boneless pork filets, cut into strips

a little olive oil for frying the pork

one large leek, sliced in half and then diced

about 150mL of double cream

salt & pepper

Chicken Tomato Pasta

2009-02-06T20:21:00.005Z

What a boring name for the first recipe I'm about to write down. Suggestions welcome.

This was a quick pasta dinner I whipped up using leftover rotisserie chicken. I took about a cup of chicken off of the carcass and diced it. An ingredients list follows the convoluted story of my cooking method.

First I finely diced two small onions and softened them in a pot with a little olive oil. I would have added some garlic, but to my dismay, we are totally out of it. A rare and tragic event in our household, to be out of garlic. Next I added a grated carrot. Adding a carrot adds another vegetable to dinner, adds thickness to the sauce and also sweetens it a bit, which I knew would probably be needed, as the next ingredient was a can of chopped tomatoes, which are often a bit tangy-sour. I would have used a can of whole tomatoes and chopped them, I don't think it matters too much. I then filled the tomato can with water and added that too. Next I added an appropriate amount of chicken stock concentrate to make that water into stock. If I had chicken stock, I would have added a can full of that.

The pasta I used was called casarecce. Any smallish pasta will probably do. I added a couple of small handfuls directly to the sauce in the pot. Brought to boil and reduced it to a simmer. I didn't put a lid on it, as I wanted the sauce to reduce somewhat. While it was simmering, I added my standard mix of Italian seasoning (MY standard mix, not anyone else's, so don't complain to me if it's not what your Nonna uses) which is a big dash of dried basil, a good dash of oregano, a dash of thyme and a dash of celery salt. The celery salt saves me from bothering with regular salt. I also had a small amount of garlic pepper left which I used to make up for the missing garlic.

When the pasta was about 3 minutes away from being done, I added the diced cooked chicken and also about four "parcels" (for lack of a better word) of frozen chopped spinach. I mixed it all through, then whacked on a lid to make sure it stayed hot enough to melt the spinach.

I served it up without any cheese because I had a load for lunch, but of course you could grate some Parmesan on top of it. I added some double cream to kiddo's portion, as I was overly generous with the garlic pepper and it was a bit spicy for her and the cream helped with that. It tasted okay from the mouthful or two I tried, but I personally think it's not necessary.

Verdict? It was pretty good. Not gourmet, but very moreish. I think using rotisserie chicken of mainly dark meat, along with some of the roasted skin, really added another flavour. It might have been a bit bland with just leftover poached chicken breast. I also like the one pot aspect of the meal, as the less clean-up, the better in my books.

Chicken Tomato Pasta

by the Cookham Cook

2 small onions, finely diced

1-2 garlic cloves, finely diced or pressed

1 large carrot, grated

some olive oil for frying the onions

1 400mL can of chopped tomatoes

400 mL of chicken stock

couple of handfuls of small, sauce loving pasta shapes

dashes of basil, oregano, thyme, celery salt, pepper

approx a cup of diced cooked chicken

handful of frozen chopped spinach (you could of course use fresh, in which case it would be maybe two big handfuls? Not sure on that amount)

optional: grated Parmesan cheese, double cream

Introductions

2009-02-06T20:09:00.004Z

I've created this blog for a few reasons:

One; ever since I moved to Cookham, I thought The Cookham Cook was a great title and finally the urge to use it has overcome me.

Two; there are lots of cooking blogs out there. Most of the ones I read are really good, with lovely pictures and interesting food. But few seem to describe any mishaps in their kitchens, of which I have plenty. I felt it was only fair to offer the other side of the coin. Someone who likes cooking, but isn't so passionate about it as to have every gadget under the sun and who doesn't always have enough countertop space because the dishes from lunch or yesterday (or the day before!) haven't been washed.

Three; I want to create a sort of online recipe book for myself, with the added convenience of notes. If I make something, I can say if it was tasty or if it needed more cream, or if the kiddo liked it but the adults thought it was a bit thick or if it would be better if I didn't forget it in the oven and let it go more brown than black.

As I do the majority of the cooking, but not all of it, there may be the occasional review of my partner's cooking. Or perhaps he'll come on as a guest blogger. Either way, I'll let you know. If you read this and like it, let me know. If you cook something I've tried, let me know how your version turns out.