Smoked salmon chowder

This delicious - and surprisingly light - soup was inspired by Mary's Gold Beach Winter Chowder. I don't even know what shoepeg corn is, and I made a few other changes, but it conveys the same sense of warming, nourishing generosity and colour to make your heart sing that hers did.

Smoked salmon chowder (serves 2)

1 tsp butter
1 onion, finely diced
2 sticks of celery, chopped
1 floury potato, peeled and chopped
250g frozen corn kernals
500ml vegetable stock
100g hot smoked salmon
100ml skim milk

Melt the butter in a large-ish pot and add the onion and celery, sauteing gently until the onion is translucent. Add the potato and the stock and bring to the boil, then cover and cook for about 10 minutes. If you are making this ahead of time, make it up to this point and then take it off the heat, finishing it off about 5 minutes before you want to eat.

When you want to eat it, add the corn and return to the boil for a couple of minutes, then add the salmon, broken into large flakes, and the skim milk. Bring just back to the boil and serve.

This is a soup for Deb's Souper (soup, salad and sammie) Sunday!

Burger Breakout at the Old Crown

One London food trend of 2012 which shows no sign of disappearing is the appallingly-named "dirty" or even worse "dude" food. This is, for anyone happily ignorant of London food trends, the sort of American-style fast food that foodies usually deride made acceptable by careful sourcing, good cooking and social media buzz. Fried chicken, burgers, ribs and fries topped with all manner of extras.

Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of chicken and burgers and fries, especially when made from high-welfare meat. What I object to is adding value judgements to food - I don't like "naughty" or "guilty pleasure" either and as for the implication that this food is not for girls... well just don't get me started. Anyway, the "dirtiest" food I know, from the point of view of dripping down your elbows, is a beautifully ripe mango which hardly fits this trend.

Most of the places that specialise in this food don't take bookings. So what with one thing and another, aside from a quick solo lunch at Pitt Cue Co I haven't tried any of the new-wave luxury junk food.

Then an old friend came to town. I suggested a couple of lunch location options and The Old Crown got his nod. I've been following @burger_breakout on twitter for a while, so I was very much looking forward to trying their food.

I knew that with only two of us we wouldn't be in a position to try the pig in a pail, but I had hopes for burgers, a few side dishes and possibly one of their boozy milkshakes. Unfortunately Kendal was in recovery from eating way too much cheese and sausage on a ski trip: he shuddered at the prospect of deep-fried pickle spears and was faintly judgemental about the size of my beer. He restricted himself to the Camilla burger (chicken, of course) and the accompanying fries.

With a limited number of seats and the lunch time rush, the staff were pretty keen to get people fed and out (not unpleasantly, though) so I didn't get to consider the menu in quite the leisurely way I prefer. I ordered the first thing I saw, the Bambi Bought It - a thick venison patty, Tunworth (a Camembert-style cheese from Hampshire), beetroot pickle, chocolate & quince BBQ sauce. I also ordered the deep-fried pickles.

As soon as it hit the table I knew I was going to have to cut it in half. There was no way I could approach the monstrous mound of ooze any other way. The bun was good, although I had to turn the burger upside down to eat it - the bottom layer was pretty well saturated and soggy with juice. The lettuce and tomato were redundant as to flavour, but I suspect did help prevent the total collapse of the bun. The patty itself, whilst having a pleasing pink middle and good venison flavour, had spent a little too long on too hot a grill and featured a bitter and crunchy layer of char on the outside. The beetroot pickle could have been a little more assertive to stand up to the sweet barbecue sauce, but the soft cheese was just the perfect thing.

The skin-on fries were just how I like them, although I couldn't detect any horseradish in the salt. The deep-fried pickles were the best deep-fried pickles I have tried so far, with a good, crunchy layer of batter keeping in the explosive juices. I couldn't possibly eat the whole portion myself, sadly.

Kendal said his burger was among the top burgers of his career - pipped by one he'd had in New Zealand. Mine, although flawed, was still excellent and the best burger I've had for ages. I will happily go back to try more of the menu. Next time, though, I have to take a girl with me, because I want a witness for the eccentricity of the ladies' room. I ducked in before we left and was confronted by two toilets occupying one long cubicle. Fortunately I didn't have to share.

Baked peppered potato and aubergine

I had an aubergine that needed to be used. I had a solitary large potato. I was making lamb curry. I didn't know when Paul was getting home for tea.

I decided to cut my coat according to my cloth, so to speak, and take some of the flavours of my old peppered potatoes and cauliflower to make a side dish.

Baked peppered potato and aubergine (serves 2)

1 large baking potato
1 aubergine
Drizzle of olive oil
1/2 tsp white peppercorns
1/2 tsp black peppercorns
pinch cumin seeds
pinch salt
big pinch curry leaves

Scrub the potatoes and cut into chunks. Cut the aubergine into chunks. Toss in a drizzle of olive oil and bake at 180C for about 25 minutes.

While it is cooking grind the peppercorns, cumin seeds, salt and curry leaves in a spice grinder to a coarse powder.

Toss the vegetables in the spices and return to the oven for another 15-20 minutes, until they are cooked through and golden with little caught crispy bits.

Burns Night - a celebration of an old-school cookbook

As I've mentioned in years gone by, for us Burns Night doesn't have a lot to do with poetry and pageantry and everything to do with an excuse to eat haggis. Haggis suits my philosophy of trying to eat nose-to-tail (but not kidney, except in steak and kidney pudding, otherwise ick), it's inexpensive and it tastes delicious. It really does.

This year we kept the haggis element pretty simple. Just heated through in a roasting tin with a bit of water and covered in foil. We had it with rumbledethumps - partly because they are a bit more nutritious than straight neeps & tatties, partly because they are absolutely delicious and partly because the name is brilliant - and a mustard and whisky sauce.

I also made a dessert.

The Australian Women's Weekly Dinner Party Cookbook is a great cookbook. It's also a cracking historical document. It doesn't have a publication date in it, but it does have Publisher: Ita Buttrose, which means it must have come out between 1978-1981. Cookbooks don't really tell you what people were eating at any given time, but they do indicate what people were aspiring to eat.

This one suggests firstly that people were into giving dinner parties with multiple courses and fancy china and glassware. It also gives the impression that breadcrumbs were very popular (out of thirty-one menus fifteen feature a crumbed starter, main course or side dish) and that seafood pates were the order of the day (six of them, seven if you count taramosalata). But the big thing about it is that it indicates that Australians were ready to try some new things and explore some different cuisines. It features Austrian, French, Indian, Greek, Italian and Chinese-inspired menus, presented in a very accessible (i.e not strictly authentic or using exotic ingredients) way.

Not all of the dishes have stood the test of time. I won't be serving tinned asparagus in any guise, or making "caviar pate" from liverwurst, ketchup and salmon roe, or topping crumbed steaks with slices of avocado and mustard sauce. But this book probably has more recipes that I have actually made and made often than any other (except for the AWW Italian Cooking Class Cookbook). The korma curry is excellent (if not actually resembling any korma I've seen elsewhere), the chocolate ice cream balls are old favourites, the ginger gelato is the simplest possible ice cream and the apricot yoghurt slice is divine.

The whisky oranges with Atholl Brose cream, however, is probably the one single dessert I have made or eaten most often in my life (my mother started making it long before I was legally allowed to buy whisky). Orange segments, steeped in a whisky syrup and served with billows of whipped cream flavoured with more whisky and honey. The perfect combination of cool, zingy citrus, bland cream, booze and sweetness. Very hard to beat.

Of course, I am almost incapable of leaving well alone, so this time I tinkered with the recipe to make a sort of whisky orange parfait and used blood oranges. I made a ginger oatmeal brittle, following this recipe, but adding ground ginger instead of the cinnamon.

After a couple of hours macerating, I drained the juices from the oranges and warmed them up on the stove, adding a couple of sheets of soaked gelatine. I put the jelly in the bottom of the glasses, let it set a bit, then added the orange segments. I mixed the oatmeal brittle with half of the cream and put that in the glasses, then topped it with the rest of the cream and a couple of prettier chunks of oatmeal, then chilled it for a couple of hours to set.

It was delicious, but I can't honestly say it was an improvement on the original - just a nice variation.

There were some leftovers of both the haggis and the rumbledethumps. Which is a good thing because it means our portions were sensibly sized. It was also a good thing because it meant that we got to eat the leftovers for lunch the following day. Bubble and squeak is the traditional name for these sorts of leftovers, fried together, but I thought a better name for this is rumble and squeak. The leftovers were just mashed together roughly and fried in a pan in a little butter, then finished under the grill. If we'd been hungrier a fried egg on top would be good.

Blueberry Oatmeal Pancakes with Lime Syrup

These fluffy little cakes of joy are inspired by Karen's low calorie oatmeal pancakes with blueberry syrup. Only considerably less low calorie. Instead of serving the pancakes with blueberry syrup, I incorporated the blueberries into the batter, so they explode into juicy little bites while they cook, and then served them with a tangy lime and syrup.

I made lots, and they were pretty good cold the next day with butter. Quite a lot of butter.

Blueberry Oatmeal Pancakes (serves 3-4)

2 eggs (separated, whites whisked to stiff peaks)
60g self raising flour
50g rolled oats
2 tbs powdered buttermilk
1 tbs caster sugar
1 tsp freshly-ground cinnamon
150 - 200ml skim milk
150g blueberries
Butter for frying
Grated zest and juice of 2 limes
2 tbs caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the flour, oats, sugar, cinnamon and buttermilk in a large bowl. Whisk in the egg yolks and milk until it is a pretty smooth batter, then fold in the blueberries and the whisked egg whites.

Fry spoonfuls gently in melted butter and keep warm while the rest are cooked (needs a longer cook than regular pancakes to allow the taste of the self raising flour to cook out).

In a small pan, combine the lime zest and juice with sugar and vanilla and heat gently until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil. Serve the pancakes with the hot syrup.

Chorizo Stuffed Aubergine - making a little go a long way

The beginning of this year was a bit odd, really. Last year Paul was working in Aberdeen, flying up on a Monday, coming home on a Friday. Then, seemingly at the last minute before he went back to Aberdeen for the first time in the New Year, he was put on a different project. In Derbyshire. Which isn't as far as Aberdeen but still not a daily commute. But we knew it was only going to be temporary because he was waiting for the planets to be aligned for work in Birmingham (my understanding of British geography is greatly improved by him working away).

As it happened, that conjunction of the planets happened again quite suddenly - he called on a Thursday afternoon to say that he was going to be home that night, ahead of starting in Birmingham on the Friday. Which was lovely and everything, but very inconvenient, because I had only planned a solo dinner and it was going to be a nice one.

You see, I had an aubergine and a single, 70g piece of cooking chorizo. My plan was to stuff the chorizo into the aubergine and bake it, letting the lovely brick red oil baste the aubergine from the inside. And half an aubergine really is not a meal.

I couldn't let go of my original plan, because it was a bloody good one. I peeled the skin from the chorizo, cut it into 6 portions and stuffed the portions into slits in the flesh of the aubergine (being careful not to cut into the skin). I also cut another, horizontal slit in the aubergine to encourage the chorizo oil to flow through. Then I sprinkled it with a bit of extra olive oil and baked it in a medium oven for about 45 minutes, until it was very obviously cooked all the way through. Undercooked aubergine is horrible. Properly cooked aubergine is heavenly.

Then, to make it a more substantial meal, I served it with some pasta aglio olio e pepperoncino (garlic, oil and chilli). In addition to fresh garlic and chilli, I used a sprinkling of pil pil mix (dried paprika, garlic, parsley and chilli), so the slight hint of paprika in the pasta echoed the paprika in the chorizo.

I'm really looking forward to summer, because these aubergines would be so good cooked on the barbecue. I won't even mind having to share them.

BSFIC - 3 Ingredient Nutella Frozen Yoghurt

It is cold at the moment. Very, very cold. We've had  several inches of snow, which has been sticking around. There has been transport chaos, Paul has had to work from home for a couple of days and warming stews and suet puddings have been called for. It was -8C at 7am yesterday.

So it goes without saying that it was time to make my entry for this month's Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream challenge. Nothing says ice cream like 4" of snow on the ground (I have actually seen recipes for snow ice cream).

He was sort of supposed to be a bear

The challenge ingredient was dried fruits or nuts, and Kavey wouldn't let me re-run my Amaretto Nougat Glacé from last month, even though it contained both dried fruits and nuts (and I had loads leftover).

The other thing I still had in abundance were Ferrero Rochers. They'd been a gift that we hadn't got around to eating and since they contain nuts it seemed like a good fit for the challenge.

If you haven't encountered a Ferrero Rocher (which is impressive, because they spend a lot of money on marketing), they come in several varieties, but the classic one is hazelnut. A whole hazelnut, enclosed in chocolate hazelnut filling, a wafer shell and then more chocolate and hazelnuts.

Chocolate and hazelnuts. Like nutella? Well, yes, since they are made by the same company.

Combining the Ferrero Rochers and nutella seemed like a no-brainer, but how to turn them into a frozen treat made me scratch my head a little. My inspiration came from all the tedious January turn-over-a-new-leaf, detox-and-lose-weight articles. My ice cream would be a frozen yoghurt. Health food.

Nutella and yoghurt

And lo! It came into being. I microwaved (lid off) a 200g jar of nutella in short bursts until it was quite runny, then whisked it into 200ml of 2% fat Greek yoghurt until it held soft peaks.

I just liked how this picture turned out

At this stage it was incredibly delicious. It was actually very tempting to just eat it like that, as a mousse, but that wouldn't have used up the Ferrero Rochers and wouldn't have met the challenge.

So I cut the chocolates in half with a sharp knife, lined a plastic bowl with cling film and arranged the halves around the base and sides. It took 15 whole chocolates to get up around the sides. Which was convenient since I had 16 chocolates. I have no idea what happened to the last one. Honestly.

Some of the chocolates already starting to crumble

I filled the middle up with the nutella yoghurt mixture, covered the top with more cling film and froze it over night. I was pretty tempted just to stick it outside the back door, but I had enough space in the freezer.

Slicing the frozen chocolate hazelnut igloo proved a little challenging. The chocolates shattered and fell off, ruining the appearance a bit, and the frozen yoghurt was very firm. It really needed 10 minutes out of the freezer before serving. It also ended up being too high a ratio of chocolates to fro-yo. The tangy yet rich frozen yoghurt was overwhelmed by the very sweet chocolates.

So - not 100% successful, but still pretty darned good. I think if I were to make it again, if I knew I was going to be able to serve it all at once, I would use fewer chocolates and cover the base of a loaf tin, to give more yoghurt per portion. If it was going to be cut-and-come-again like this one, I would put a row of whole chocolates down the middle of a loaf tin, like eggs in a Gala Pie so that they were a surprise in the middle of the portion. I would probably also add some booze to the mix - Frangelico or Creme de Cacao or rum - to help keep the texture a little softer. But the mixture of yoghurt and nutella is a very, very good one.

After several days of snow, Urchin is feeling confident.