Boozy Christmas Pudding Truffles

So-named because they contain Christmas pudding, not because they look like them. Although you could definitely take a leaf out of Nigella's Christmas Puddini Bonbons book and decorate them with white chocolate and glace cherries. They are basically a rum ball but I didn't use rum and bourbon balls doesn't quite capture it.

I had an out-of-date Christmas pudding that I wanted rid of before all my shopping arrived for this Christmas, so I opened it and gave it a sniff (seemed fine) then cooked it and ate a bit, to no ill-effect. I figured it was worth a gamble.

They are very dense and gooey and intensely flavoured. Even Paul and his lack of sweet tooth was impressed. He took them on a shoot, where they were rapidly re-named "Reindeer Poop" and devoured. Why you would want to eat something that you'd called poop is beyond me.

Boozy Christmas Pudding Truffles (makes 35+, depending on how big you make them)

600g leftover (cooked and cooled) Christmas pudding
200g dark chocolate
60g cream cheese
1/4 cup your choice of delicious brown liquor (rum, bourbon, brandy, whisky - I had bourbon)
100g dark chocolate, extra
sprinkles, to decorate

Place the 200g dark chocolate, broken into pieces, into a medium-sized glass mixing bowl. Put the bowl over a pan of simmering water (making sure the water doesn't touch the glass) and gently melt the chocolate. I've never got the hang of melting chocolate in the microwave, but if you can you should.

While the chocolate melts, break the pudding into small chunks.

When the chocolate has melted, beat in the cream cheese, then the pudding chunks and alcohol, and stir well until it's all combined. The pudding will pretty much disintegrate. Chill in the fridge for about half an hour.

Set out paper (or foil, if you are feeling very fancy) petit fours cases on a baking sheet.

Roll heaped teaspoonfuls of the cooled mixture between your hands into tidy-ish compact balls and place into the petit fours cases. Return to the fridge for half an hour.

Melt the extra chocolate in a small bowl over simmering water. Drip half-teaspoonfuls of the chocolate over the truffles and then spread the chocolate out a bit with the back of a teaspoon. I find a swirly motion is the most efficient. While the chocolate is still soft, sprinkle with whatever sprinkles you are using to decorate.

Chill overnight, but serve at room temperature.

Quince and ginger upside down cake

At Christmas, I bought some quinces. I had several extravagant plans for them, but then we didn't end up doing much in the way of desserts over the festive period. So I peeled, quartered and cored them and baked them in some sugar syrup until they were tender and amber coloured.

Some went into the quince and clementine trifle and the rest, with their syrup, went into the freezer until inspiration struck.

And inspiration has struck.

Quince and ginger upside down cake

75g caster sugar
2tbs water
4-6 quarters of poached quince (only use 4 if you are cooking it just for this recipe because otherwise it is madness)
140g golden caster sugar
140g butter, softened
2 eggs
40g ground almonds
100g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp ground ginger
5-6 pieces crystallised ginger, cut into chunky pieces

Preheat oven to 180C.

Line a 1lb loaf tin with a non-stick liner (or baking parchment).

In a small pan, gently melt together the 75g caster sugar and water until the sugar is dissolved, then increase heat and boil to an amber caramel. Pour into the base of the loaf tin and rotate tin to cover evenly.

Arrange the quince pieces on the caramel in a more-or-less pleasing fashion.

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, then fold in the dry ingredients and crystallised ginger until combined but don't overwork.

Gently spread the batter over the quince, trying not to disturb it.

Bake for about 45 minutes or until well browned and a skewer tests clean.

Stand for 5 minutes before turning out to cool.

Thanksgiving - green bean casserole and pumpkin pie

Quite often when Paul asks me to cook something for him I ignore him. A decade of him saying he wanted a dish only to be over the craving by the time I made it has taught me better. Like the time recently where he asked me to make a chocolate cake with caramel filling, only to admit that he only wanted a bite of a slice of such a cake. Fortunately I hadn't got beyond considering a recipe with that one.

In the last few weeks though, he's become interested in a couple of the elements of a classic American Thanksgiving dinner - pumpkin pie and green bean casserole. I've always found green bean casserole a baffling proposition, myself, so I was quite happy to go along with him this time and make a cut-down Thanksgiving dinner to give him a chance to try those things.

I've made pumpkin pie before. Although apparently not for about 15 years if I've never made it for Paul. I bought some shortcrust pastry and a can of pumpkin puree and consulted Heather's blog (always good for pie recipes), settling on her Buttermilk Pumpkin Pie. I added 1 tsp of freshly grated ginger and reduced the brown sugar by 1/4 cup, but otherwise followed the recipe.

The green bean casserole is a very strange thing. The idea of beans in cream of mushroom soup with a crunchy topping isn't particularly appealling. I'd always assumed that it was one of those dishes that had gradually been debased with convenience products, but when I started to look for a recipe to inflict on Paul I discovered that in its purest original form it used frozen beans and canned soup. It was, in fact, an invention of the Campbells soup company in 1955. I can't think of any other similar recipe that has had such an impact. In Australia maybe the salad on the side of the Chang's crispy noodle packet, possibly the cheesecake on the Philadelphia packet. But nothing so completely ubiquitous - Campbells estimate that they sell $20 million worth of Cream of Mushroom a year and that 40% of that goes into green bean casserole.

Pure form or not, I just couldn't. So I made this from-scratch version, although I admit I got bored and didn't bother making the fried onion garnish. We had it with a rolled, stuffed turkey breast and roast potatoes (I think mashed potatoes are more traditional but Paul isn't a fan). I didn't bother with the other elements of a Thanksgiving dinner - the gravy, the cranberry sauce, the sweet potatoes - for just the two of us. The casserole was fine, I guess. The mushroom sauce was quite delicious - I'd make that element again, but I just don't think green beans and mushrooms are happy companions - they would have been better off as separate elements on the plate. Maybe the French fried onions really make the difference and pull the dish together, but I won't be finding out.

The pie, however, was excellent. Subtly spiced, not too sweet, perfect ratio of filling to pastry. We had it with a delicious new discovery of mine, Northern Bloc fresh ginger and caramel ice cream.

Even just a turkey breast gives a lot of leftovers. At this time of year there are articles all over the place on what to do with the remnants, but I already had a plan: the Kentucky Hot Brown.  An open-faced sandwich of tomatoes, bacon and/or ham, turkey, finished with cheese sauce and grilled. I used a white bloomer instead of the traditional Texas Toast, which I thought was a few calories too far. It's a particularly good version of the leftover sandwich, because unlike a lot of the others there's no jammy cranberry sauce or chutney, just savoury all the way through. Which is sometimes just what you need.

The Final Countdown

We have a lawn!

On Monday we'll be moving into the new house, so while there will be a final flurry of using bits up and whatnot, I really don't think I will be documenting it. So next time I post it'll probably be exploring a new-to-us pub while we try to avoid making the spanking new kitchen dirty.

ham hock terrine

I am faintly disappointed that things never got completely crazy with the flavour combinations. Although the tub labelled chicken stock which turned out to be blood orange sorbet, and the tub that I thought was chicken stock which turned out to be a rather lovely Asian shortrib soup almost got me into trouble. It was a valuable lesson in accurate labelling.

Ploughmans

This was a particularly good Ploughmans. Bread (using some of my baguette dough as a starter, and more of the chapatti flour), piccalilli, made by me a while ago, cheddar (because I like it), a ham hock terrine (using a ham hock I'd had in the freezer and some gelatine leaves) and a fresh green salad (finishing a jar of capers).

Lasagne

I wouldn't serve this lasagne to an Italian, but it was tasty! And it used a bottle of ratatouille, a packet of bacon, some minced beef and a packet of "fresh" (but frozen) pasta sheets.

And this version of an Eton mess used frozen cranberries, frozen eggwhites and coconut. The tangy fruit was a particularly good foil for the sweet coconut meringues.

Clearing the freezer - we're getting there, honestly

"Baguette" more or less

Well, this is all inordinately stressful. The builders went quiet on us for a couple of weeks as the date we have to vacate this house got closer and closer and we weren't getting any answers as to when we would be able to move in to the new place. We have, finally, more or less got a plan. Not a very good one, but it may actually be workable.

charcuterie platter

And emptying the fridge/freezer/pantry carries on apace. I can't remember if I posted about the 5kg bag of chapatti flour that I bought, mistakenly thinking it was 500g. Anyway, there is still quite a lot of flour in it. I followed my usual King Arthur baguette recipe, but using a mixture of strong white, plain light brown and chapatti flour. It ended up with a tighter crumb than usual, but it was just the thing with a charcuterie plate (which also used up some potted wild boar from the freezer and pickled cherries from the pantry).

Teacakes - using up flour, dried cherries and sultanas

Basically I am refusing to cook anything at the moment that doesn't clear out a jar, packet or freezer bag.

More robust than the bought ones, still good to convey butter

Porky stew, using pork jowl, chicken stock and lentils

Thai-ish mussel stew using frozen mussels, sambal paste, coconut milk and chicken broth

Calamondin iced tea - using lots of frozen calamondins

This biryani was actually inspired by the book I am reading at the moment - Chasing the Dram. Rachel makes a pretty solid argument for drinking whisky and soda with curry meals and includes Mallika Basu's venison biryani recipe. And it just so happened that I had some venison in the freezer. Not enough, though, but I also had some goat steaks in the freezer, so mine was a mixed goat and venison biryani. Honestly, I couldn't taste any difference between the meats. It was very good - although next time I will cook the rice almost completely before I layer it. There wasn't enough liquid included to cook the rice properly, so I had to add more and the bottom bit ended up a bit mushy.

Game biryani

Trifle - using chocolate cake trimmings from the freezer and finishing a bottle of Chambord

Sort of Chinese claypot affair, using up chicken, Chinese sausage, pudding rice and chestnuts

Cherry pie

Using the final bag of frozen cherries, the remnants of the bag of dried sour cherries and a jar of cherries in brandy

Clearing the pantry - spiced marmalade cookies

Spiced marmalade cookies - raw

And so it continues... honestly, it may not seem like it with this endless stream of posts but I am definitely making progress. I am finding that an unfortunate side effect is that some of the dishes I am producing are really, genuinely delicious but because it's the end of a jar of this and the last of a packet of that I will never, ever be able to reproduce it.

UFOs

The other night I unearthed two UFOs. Or at least Partially-Identified Frozen Objects. One was labelled lamb, the other mutton. Neither was big enough for a meal for two people. Sure, I could have heated them separately and each of us eaten one, but as they thawed it looked like the mutton was with barley and the lamb was a shank cooked with haricot beans, so I combined them with some tomato paste and extra seasoning. It was good!

cassoulet nachos

Another UFO had a label half hanging off it which said cassoulet - I was initially concerned that the label may have fallen off something else, but when I thawed it, it was cassoulet. It didn't stay cassoulet though. When I reheated it I added smoked paprika, coriander, cumin, chilli, oregano and thyme to give it more of a Mexican flavour profile. I layered it with cornchips and cheese, baked it and topped it with guacamole for a very rich nachos.

Peanut sauce

Last night I made a stonking satay-ish peanut sauce to go on some barbecued chicken legs. The chicken legs were marinaded for a couple of hours in the dregs of a bottle of teriyaki sauce, a lot of crushed garlic and black pepper. Then the sauce itself was around 1/4 cup of anchovy, chilli and shrimp sauce, around 1/3 cup of crunchy peanut butter, 2 sachets of coconut cream, a load of garlic, a little brown sugar and tamarind until the balance was right, boiling water until it all came together and a gentle simmer for a couple of minutes. The meal emptied 3 jars, a box and a bottle AND it tasted wonderful, so I was extremely pleased with it. And there's enough for two lunches - noodles tossed with the peanut sauce and topped with cucumber and a boiled egg.

Leftover peanut sauce

The final dish for this round of decluttering used up the end of a jar of marmalade. I'd normally use golden syrup for something like this but the marmalade was good. It makes quite a cake-y sort of cookie. If you like gingerbread, you will probably like these.

Spiced Marmalade Cookies (makes 36)

125g butter, softened
90g brown sugar
250g marmalade
2tsp ground ginger
1/2tsp ground cinnamon
1/2tsp ground allspice
1 eggyolk
75g rolled oats
320g SR flour
2-3tbs pearl sugar

Preheat oven to 160C

Cream butter, sugar and marmalade together until light and fluffy. Beat in spices, eggyolk and oats, then fold in flour and mix to a smooth-ish dough.

Roll dough into walnut sized balls. Dab the tops of the balls into the pearl sugar. Space out well on a baking-parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes until risen and lightly golden brown. Allow to cool on the sheet for a couple of minutes before attempting to transfer to a wire rack to cool.

A barbecue or two

It turns out that this week's festival-for-raising-awareness-of-things-we-already-knew-about is National Barbecue Week. It's the 20th anniversary of it, in fact.

Apparently the average British family now barbecues nine times a summer. Since we barbecue about three times a week from April to October, that doesn't leave a lot of barbecuing for anyone else, but there you go. Of course, most of our barbecues are simple, after work affairs, grilling some sausages or some veg and minimising the amount of washing up that will need to be done. But on a weekend if the weather forecast is OK, we'll plan something that takes a bit more effort and is a bit more extravagant.

Brisket point

Project Brisket was such a success, and we still had the point half in the freezer, so we decided to have another go. With the added complication that we weren't going to eat it at our house. So we rubbed and we smoked, then wrapped it tightly in foil and towels and took it over to friends, where it finished cooking in their barbecue.

It wasn't as successful as the first one. I think we didn't give it long enough in the second half of the cook. It was delicious, but not as meltingly tender. You actually needed a butter knife to cut it. Paul was disappointed in himself.

Good bark, nice smoke ring

But honestly, if you hadn't tried the previous attempt you wouldn't have felt there was anything lacking.

We took a good portion of leftovers home, which made a fantastic salad (cold salad vegetables, warmed-through meat, tangy Thai-ish chilli and fish sauce dressing), with some sweet potato wedges.

Having scratched his brisket itch, Paul decided that ribs were to be the next target. According to Neil Rankin's excellent book Low and Slow: How to Cook Meat, American pork ribs have a lot more meat left on them, whereas pork belly is so profitable for butchers here that they trim really close to the bone. He does talk about the conversation you need to have with your butcher to get really meaty ribs, but that wasn't something I felt up for, so I just bought a couple of scrawny racks from the supermarket.

We rubbed them with salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika and smoked the living daylights out of them in a cool, humid barbecue, then poured on a tamarind glaze, wrapped them in foil and finished the cooking. Then, while they rested, I deep fried some okra and made a salad. The ribs were perfection. Just meaty enough, with excellent flavour, and tender enough to slip easily off the bones.

Jalapeno & cheddar cornbread to go with pulled pork

Having conquered brisket and ribs, Paul decided that pork butt was his next ambition. I removed the rind (it was going to cook too long, slow and humid for crackling) and put it in the freezer for some day in the future when I fancy making chicharrón. I scored the fat and rubbed the whole thing with a mixture of salt, pepper, fennel seeds and garlic powder (5g each salt, fennel and garlic, 10g peppercorns - made more rub than I needed).

Then the usual routine of long, slow smoking (apple wood, this time), then wrapping for the rest of the cooking time.

I couldn't be bothered making a sauce for it, so after we broke it up into chunks we just sprinkled it with a little Tabasco. We had it with cornbread, and an olive and orange salad. Some of the leftovers went into a sort of Chinese chilli sauce with aubergine and made a very satisfying meal the following day. I think we've held our end up for British barbecue.

Project Brisket

Paul's had a bee in his bonnet lately. For over a month now, any time you walk into our study you will find him glued to youtube watching (mostly) big, (mostly) white, (mostly) men talking about pecan, mesquite, Kansas-style, Texas-style, Carolina-style. He's become obsessed with American barbecue. Specifically barbecued brisket.

We've barbecued a brisket years ago, not at all successfully. With our little Weber we weren't able to control the temperature and it ran too hot, too fast leaving dry, tough meat. Then we tried a hybrid approach, smoking the meat in the barbecue for flavour and finishing with a long slow cook in the oven. That worked very well, but it's been two years and we haven't repeated it.

But I think you've probably noticed that Paul takes his role as Chief Wielder of Fire and Knives quite seriously, and his ability to cook anything on a fire is one of the cornerstones of his identity. Without my even noticing, the brisket had become his white whale.

We ordered a whole packer cut brisket and he took a day off work (although the day off work was mostly planned because of the late finish of the Captain America marathon).

Whole brisket

Brisket point

Brisket flat

Now, a 6kg brisket is actually too big for the hot air to circulate properly in our Weber, and vastly too much food for two people, so Paul trimmed it and cut it in half. As delicious as beef dripping chips are, we're trying not to eat very much of that sort of thing at the moment, so most of the lovely clean white fat is going to go out for the birds. The brisket point is in the freezer and we just cooked the flat.

Since Paul was so invested in his research, I figured I should probably be a useful and supportive partner and do a bit myself. Which consisted of opening Hog and reading the page on live-fire cooking. That gave the inspiration for moderating the heat with pans of water for the indirect cooking. Paul's been worshipping at the altar of Aaron Franklin, where he got the tip that keeping the humidity up is important, and the pans of water helped with that too.

Indirect cooking set-up

A pan of water under the meat, and more directly over the coals (we didn't have a smaller foil pan, so an empty artichoke heart can got washed out and put into service).

A good bit of seasoning rubbed on the meat (although as it turned out, not enough and not massaged in enough)  and away we went.

We'd realised that a really important part of moderating your temperature to keep it low and slow is to actually know what the temperature is. So a thermometer went in as well. And despite all the talk about hickory, pecan and mesquite, we decided that excellent British meat cooked in Britain needed a typically British smoking wood, so we used cherry.

Of course, being a British barbecue we also had to deal with some challenging climatic conditions. Pretty much as soon as we got the lid on the heavens opened, with rain and hail. Still, it was better than Tuesday, when it snowed.  And one of the things that seldom gets mentioned when talking about barbecue is how much impact the ambient temperature has. We can and do barbecue in mid winter, but when it's really cold outside it'd hard to keep the temperature up for the fire to cook anything bigger than a steak. But when you want a long slow cook, a bit of colder air around the kettle isn't a bad thing, and helped us keep the fire between 120C - 150C for the duration of the cook.

After a few hours, when the internal temperature of the meat was 78C, just through the plateau, we wrapped it in foil and kept cooking for another couple of hours. Then it rested until we couldn't bear it any more.

Not bad

Pretty good really

It's actually a tribute to Paul's knife sharpening skills that he was able to cut it into tidy slices, because it was soft as jelly and could have been cut up with the side of a saucer.

Pretty pink smoke ring

We had it with spicy chipotle slaw, pickles, and a chunk of bread for mopping the plate. Absolutely gorgeous (but slightly underseasoned - more salt during the cooking next time).

leftovers

As tempting as it was to just nibble at the leftovers every time we walked by the fridge, I did something a bit more substantial with them. An old-school Stroganoff, with paprika, brandy, vermouth, lots of mushrooms and a little bit of crème fraiche.    

Brisket Stroganoff