English Wheat Beers - a tasting

A couple of weekends ago I met up with a bunch of friends at Borough Market for lunch, a bit of shopping and a good old catch-up. There weren't many things I was planning to buy - some mushroom pate (thwarted, they'd sold out), some cured meats from Cannon & Cannon and not much else. But I did want to buy some beer for Paul (and for me). Utobeer has an enormous range, but I decided to just buy a few different locally made wheat beers to see if I could find anything that I liked as much as Hoegaarden or Erdinger (that site has a really startling autoplay music thing, so approach with caution).

I must point out that we tasted these over several days, so these aren't really direct comparisons, just each one on its merits at the time. Which also explains the different lighting in the kitchen.

Meantime - London (poor focus not as a result of beer)

I started with Meantime, brewed in London, because I've had it before and knew it to be a very nice, easy-drinking beer.

Meantime

It had a lovely amber colour and a clean finish, although I think less fruity and spicy than the European ones that I like.

Definitely the prettiest label - Whitstable, Kent

Next up was the Whitstable Brewery candidate, from Kent. I had high hopes for this one, based almost entirely on how pretty the label was.

Whitstable - Kent

Unfortunately, I just didn't love the flavour so much. It had a pretty strongly citric acid aftertaste that I didn't really like (more lemony than the orange zest flavour of a Hoegaarden), but I suspect that on a hot day it'd be really refreshing.

Clouded Yellow - St Austell Brewery Cornwall

A beer from Cornwall was the next one we tried - Clouded Yellow from St Austell Brewery (also with annoying embedded autoplay video). I jumped to the conclusion that this would be a honey wheat beer, like an Australian Beez Neez, although why I formed that opinion when it's got a butterfly on the label and not a bee is beyond me.

Clouded Yellow - Cornwall

Anyway, it isn't a honey wheat beer. But it is extremely delicious. Quite a delicate flavour, moderately sweet and spicy.

Cotswold Brewing Co - Gloucestershire

The last candidate, from Cotswold had quite a savoury-yeast aftertaste (a bit vegemite-y, but not in a bad way!) which I think would appeal to a lot of people. I liked it, but it just wasn't my favourite.

Cotswold - Gloucestershire

All in all, this was a fun experiment. I honestly had no idea of the wide range of wheat beers that are being produced over here now, and none of the random selection I bought were actually bad which gives me confidence to try more in the future. And I will definitely buy the Meantime and the Clouded Yellow again, although they might wait until next summer!
 

Meat Free Monday: Cauliflower macaroni cheese

Macaroni cheese is good - but often feels a bit too heavy, a bit too rich. Cauliflower cheese is good - but doesn't seem like a meal on its own. It seems odd that it has taken me this long to realise that you can combine them.

I was inspired by Mary's delicious-looking dish of Baked Shells with Cauliflower and Cheese, which in turn was inspired by a Moosewood recipe. I didn't follow the recipe at all, possibly an error of judgement, I just cooked the pasta, added the cauliflower florets for the last couple of minutes and the shredded leaves of the cauliflower for the last 30 seconds, then drained them and covered them in cheese sauce.

That's right - the cauliflower leaves. Last year some friends of ours grew cauliflowers and discovered that when very fresh the leaves are tasty. The cauliflower I had was enclosed in lovely fresh leaves, so I just discarded the outermost ones and shredded the inner ones.

There should have been a higher ratio of cauliflower to macaroni

I used the Heston Blumenthal cheese sauce method, using vegetable stock instead of chicken stock, but for the first time the sauce didn't really come together for me - leaving melted cheesy lumps in a thin cheesy broth. I think it may have been because I used some grated cheddar and mozzarella mixture as part of the cheese component; I suspect it was the mozzarella that didn't play along with the sauce.

 

Since it was just for the two of us, I used the sauce anyway. And the finished product didn't seem to suffer for it at all! That method of making cheese sauce leaves you with a much lighter dish, and with the cauliflower florets and leaves, it actually felt like a complete meal. I am quite keen to try the original Moosewood recipe too, although I probably won't bother seeking out those jumbo shells for it.

Lily's scones

My scone-baking is improving. Still not quite there yet, but definitely making progress. This recipe is Lily's Scones, from Nigella Lawson's How to be a domestic goddess (which I have just bought). When I tried a friend's delicious scones, I asked for the recipe and was pointed in this direction. They have a LOT of cream of tartar in them, I couldn't believe it was right. But it is. And they have less of the metallic-y baking powder taste you sometimes get with scones.

Paul has his with the cream first then the jam.

Meat Free Monday - Panfried gnocchi with pesto

Cream cheese gnocchi

I've had a few days off work recently. Originally Paul & I planned to go away for a long weekend, but then he couldn't get the time off work and I decided to take the leave anyway. It was lovely: very relaxing and restorative (even if I did come down with a cold and get very few of my planned projects achieved).

It also meant that I watched some TV that I wouldn't normally watch. Like Lorraine's Fast Fresh & Easy Food. The thing is, I don't really care about recipes being fast, fresh and easy. If I need to make something fast, I probably won't follow a recipe, I'll just draw on my repertoire of things I can cook in a hurry. Almost everything I eat is fresh, so that just isn't isn't a big selling point for me. And easy? Well... I am actually a pretty fair cook, so there are a lot of techniques that I consider easy. So it hasn't been a series I have sought out at all, but it was a good way to spend the odd half hour of leisure time.

One recipe that caught my eye before I found her mannerisms too irritating to watch any more was this panfried mascarpone gnocchi, with pesto. I was impressed by the idea that it was quicker than potato gnocchi, and anything as a vehicle for pesto is OK by me.

It... was not an unqualified success. For one thing it really is not a lot quicker than potato gnocchi. Maybe if you do use 2 frying pans it might be, but for me with one pan it was not. It was also very stodgy. I don't know if that is because I took a cheaper route and used cream cheese instead of mascarpone, but I don't think that would make too much difference (the amount of flour it took was the same, so it wasn't drier or anything). When I've made gnudi before - which is probably a closer analogue than potato gnocchi - they've been very light and delicate but these were quite heavy.

Now, normally when I make pesto I add some of the pasta cooking water to the sauce to loosen it and help it coat the pasta, but when you fry the gnocchi you don't have that nice starchy water. So the pesto sat in clumps in the bowl. What with one thing and another the dish didn't live up to the promise it showed on TV! However, it wasn't a total loss. Because it was so heavy, we had loads left over. I layered them in a pyrex dish with some slices of aubergine, covered them in a thick tomato sauce and blanketed them with grated cheese, then baked them. This form was much, much more successful! The gnocchi were much lighter and fluffier after they absorbed some of the tomato sauce. If I make these again, I am going to try boiling them and serving them in a sauce rather than doing them according to the recipe again.

Looks better than it tastes

Liz McLarnon's pumpkin cupcakes for British Cheese Week

I don't watch Masterchef, celebrity or otherwise. I can't deal with the manufactured drama and the hosts irritate me beyond words. I didn't know who Liz McClarnon was until I googled. Still, I was quite happy to be approached with some recipes developed by Celeb Masterchef winner Liz McClarnon for Cathedral City Cheddar, as part of British Cheese Week.

As you may have noticed, for me all weeks are Cheese Week, but I still don't think it hurts to put the spotlight on the lovely cheeses we make in Britain from time to time. I also live with someone who has more of a savoury tooth, so it's always easy to get him to taste something cheesy.

I had a few minor quibbles with the recipe. Firstly, it says that it makes 20, but the instructions are to use 12 cupcake cases. It also says that the preparation time is 15 minutes, but that only works if you have some leftover roast butternut lurking around the house. Also, it is something of a pet peeve of mine to have an ingredient listed in the title of the recipe (chilli) and then only feature as a garnish. You don't call it a cocoa tiramisu just because there is a dusting of cocoa powder on it, do you? A final, nitpicky peeve, these are muffins, not cupcakes. The difference is in the method - cupcakes are a creamed batter, muffins add a wet mix to a dry mix. I am only letting this one through because of the conceit of decorating them like a cupcake, which is cute.

I made a half recipe, because of the very short keeping time. That turned out to be 9 muffins. I may have been using smaller eggs than they did when they tested it, because my mixture was terribly dry so I added a second egg to it. I added a good pinch of chilli flakes to the batter to get a bit of warmth into it. When they were cool I looked at what a half quantity of the topping looked like... and made the full quantity. 25g each of cream cheese and crème fraiche just looked so sad in the bowl.

I'm still not interested in seeking out Liz McClarnon's body of work as an actor, but these were delicious little savoury muffins. Next time, I will increase the amount of chilli, because it didn't come through at all, but other than that, I think these were very successful.

Liz McClarnon's Cathedral City Mature Butternut Squash and Chilli Cupcakes

Makes: 20 cupcakes
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:
For the cupcakes:
2 eggs
175ml semi-skimmed milk
250g mashed, roasted butternut squash
125g Cathedral City Mature, grated
3 chopped spring onions
80g uncooked rolled oats
125g whole wheat flour
125g plain flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. maple syrup

For the topping:
Chopped spring onions (the darker green part)
50g crème fraiche
50g soft cream cheese
Chilli flakes

Method:

Preheat the oven to 190°C and line a cupcake tray with 12 paper cases.
In a large mixing bowl combine the squash, milk and eggs.

In a separate medium bowl, sift together the flours, baking powder and salt, making sure they are evenly rubbed through. To this bowl, add the spring onions, Cathedral City Mature, oats and syrup and mix until evenly distributed. Pour in the egg mixture and mix until it is just about combined.

Fill the cupcake cases about 3/4 full with the mixture and bake for about 15-20 minutes or until they are a golden brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely before adding the topping.

To make the topping, mix the crème fraiche and the soft cheese together until smooth. Pop this in the fridge for about 10 minutes to get it to a good piping consistency. Using a piping bag with a star tip, pipe small 50p sized tops onto the cupcakes.

Dress this with a couple of sprigs of chopped spring onion and a smattering of chilli flakes. These will keep in an airtight tin for 24 hours.

I struggled to make my chilli sprinkles even

BSFIC - Triple ginger and nectarine ice cream

I love ice cream. It's pretty much my favourite dessert. I try not to eat it too often, or have it in the house that often either, so I don't do the Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream challenge much. I do pay attention to it though! Seeing that this month's BSFIC challenge was spices really captured my imagination.

I decided to use the same egg, mascarpone and cream base that I'd used for my whiskey marmalade ice cream at Christmas - it's very rich but not too sweet and has a lovely texture. From that point I decided I wanted to build up layers of ginger flavours.

My original plan was to use some marinated baby figs to add interesting texture and another dimension of flavour, but then I saw some beautiful white nectarines on discount and decided to use them instead.

Nectarines waiting for roasting

Triple ginger and roasted nectarine ice cream

4 white nectarines
1tbs golden syrup
2tsp ground ginger
2 eggs, separated
50g icing sugar
250g mascarpone
3tbs Kings Ginger liqueur
150ml double cream
50g crystallised ginger, chopped
1tbs Kings Ginger extra, per serving

Slice the nectarines and place in a baking dish. Drizzle with golden syrup and dust evenly with the ground ginger. Bake at 160C for about an hour, until soft, slightly caught in places and delicious-looking. Chop into smaller pieces and allow to cool.

Whisk the egg whites in one large bowl to stiff peaks. In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks and icing sugar until pale and frothy, then beat in the mascarpone and ginger liqueur. Fold the egg whites into the mascarpone mixture. In the bowl that held the egg whites, beat the cream to soft peaks, then fold gently into the mascarpone mixture. You want it entirely combined, with no streaks of egg white, but without knocking the air out. Fold in the cooled nectarines and crystallised ginger.

Scrape the mixture into a freezer-proof lunch box or similar and freeze for 8 hours or so. Remove from the freezer 5 minutes before serving to allow to ripen a bit (the nectarines still have quite a lot of water in them, so this sets harder than my whiskey marmalade version).

Serve with a drizzle of extra ginger liqueur on each portion.

Seriously lush: smooth, creamy with a warm spicy aftertaste

Cook the Books: Fried chicken for Home Cooking

I have slightly mixed feelings about Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking, the current Cook the Books Club selection. I mean, I thoroughly enjoyed every page of it, and I can see myself going back to re-read bits often. Unfortunately, with the pleasure of discovering a new author and a new book came the discovery that Laurie Colwin died tragically young and I will never get to take her out for a drink.

And she really does come across as someone you'd like to take out for a drink. Warm, funny, down-to-earth with a sharp eye for human foibles. The food she writes about is very much home cooking - straightforward, accessible, inexpensive ingredients and things that people actually like eating. Which, sadly, is not the case in a lot of cook books.

It took me quite a while to decide what to make. I was intrigued by angostura bitters in a salad dressing, but I haven't been brave enough. I've made Black Cake before and it was utterly delicious, but not the sort of thing I want to have hanging around the house this far away from Christmas. I've been intrigued by the notion of Sussex Pond Pudding for years, but the weather just hasn't been playing ball with the idea of a boiled pudding.

Then I saw Felicity Cloake use Laurie Colwin's fried chicken recipe in her How to Cook Perfect... series, and decided that I would give it a go.

My previous best endeavours with fried chicken have all been in seasoned flour, rather than batter or breadcrumbs, so I felt OK about that bit. What was a total departure for me was shallow frying, crowding the pan and covering it.

Apparently having the pan slightly crowded is a good thing

But you know what? I am a total convert. The chicken (I used bone-in chicken thighs) was tender and moist inside, with a really properly crunchy outside. And because for the majority of the cook time the lid is on the pan, the whole house doesn't smell like frying. So I am very happy to send this to our book club host Deb as my contribution to the Home Cooking feast!

I did some fried pickles too