Eatori's Flourless Espresso Brownies

When this post goes live I will be completing the first hour of a 3-day dance intensive. 18 hours of dance. And there is an evening performance as well.

I've made a batch of Tori Haschka's Flourless Espresso Brownies, which are a slow-carb treat, to sustain me through a lot of dance and three days of pub food. No added sugar: the sweetness is from banana and dates, with almonds and coconut instead of wheat flour. I used decaf coffee, because I'm leaving some for Paul and he doesn't tolerate too much caffeine these days. I've just tried that little piece on top there, and it is lovely. The perfect brownie texture, with a super-intense bitter chocolate flavour.

Have a lovely weekend!

Wordless Wednesday - Quince, apple and pear butter

Spiced duck with date and orange salad for I Heart Cooking Clubs

I'd thought that a weekly blogging event like I Heart Cooking Clubs would be way too much for me to keep up with. And it is true that I'm developing fewer of my own recipes, or just randomly cooking, while participating in the Diana Henry-themed events. At the same time, I am enjoying it!

This week's theme is a particularly fun one - "Mystery Box Madness". We had to choose a recipe from Diana Henry or one of the past IHCC chefs featuring any three of harissa, eggs, saffron, pumpkin, maple syrup, dates, rose water, oranges, spinach, and chickpeas. My Eat Your Books membership definitely came into play for this one!

Diana Henry's spiced quail with blood orange and date salad qualified, as it features harissa, dates and oranges. Unless I am at Merchants Tavern, I don't particularly care for quail, so I substituted duck breasts. I slashed the skin and fat, and sat them in the spicy marinade, leaving the skin clear of it. Then I seared them skin side down to render out some of the fat and get the skin nicely coloured before returning them to the marinade bath to bake in the oven.

Apparently blood oranges aren't in season yet, so I used normal navel oranges. I didn't add any orange juice to the dressing, but I squeezed out the membranes left after cutting out the orange segments, which made plenty of juice.

To accompany it I made a warm version of a mushroom and butterbean salad that my family has been enjoying for at least 30 years. Paul claims it was the first time I'd ever made it for him... which can't be true.

This was a fantastic dish. Warmly spicy, sweet and tangy. One to make again.

Other bloggers' dishes

I'm a bit surprised to realise I haven't done an "Other Bloggers' Dishes" post since February. I knew it had been a while, but the year really has slipped away from me a bit. And actually, what with one thing and another, there haven't been that many dishes from blogs, or dishes I was alerted to by bloggers, that I hadn't already written about.

This pumpkin pangrattato with merguez was absolutely gorgeous, although I didn't do the method as written. I blended the garlic, rosemary, bread, coriander, the calamondins I was using instead of orange zest and the gouda I was using instead of taleggio to a chunky paste with some olive oil. I roasted the butternut for 20 minutes, added the sausages for 15 minutes and then topped it with the crumbs for 20 minutes. I really must make it again soon - it's definitely the weather for this kind of one-pot dish!

Pumpkin pangrattato with merguez

My take on the stacked pig sandwich was less stacked, less green and less beautifully photographed. But more mayonnaisey. This is another one that I need to make again, to try and capture the stacked green magic.

Stacked pig sandwich

I used pork escalopes instead of chicken for this dish of escalopes with tomato, olive and caper dressing. Surprisingly, with all those salty ingredients, it wasn't as punchy as I was anticipating, but it was a very nice fresh-tasting sauce/salad hybrid.

I really loved this salad of lettuce, peas and ham, not just for the story about driving down the road with a spoonful of mustard clutched in one hand. I think it'll be a good one to revisit over the Christmas season, where there are odds and ends of cheese, ham and bread about the place, but a lighter dish is called for.

And finally, a dish from Meemalee, although from her book, not her blog. Taiwanese beef brisket soup, garnished with preserved vegetables and, of course, habanero chilli. Fragrant, warming and hearty.

West Indian Hot Pepper Sauce for I Heart Cooking Clubs

This week's theme for I Heart Cooking Clubs is Stock Your Exotic Pantry - which was timely, because despite my best efforts our habanero chilli plant is still heavy with ripe lantern-shaped fruits.

I perused Diana Henry's recipes for preserves made with chillis and settled on the West Indian Hot Pepper Sauce in Salt Sugar Smoke. Intended to be used like Tabasco, it has a green papaya and vinegar base and used six whole Scotch Bonnet chillis. Scotch Bonnets are not quite the same as habaneros, but they do have a similar heat and fruity flavour so it seemed reasonable to substitute them in this recipe.

As the stated yield was quite low - which is one of the advantages of this book, most of the recipes just make a delicious little pot or two, you don't end up with vast quantities - I decided to double the recipe in order to get more chillis out of my life.

I couldn't get green papaya, so I used some underripe mango instead.

Between the mango, turmeric and mustard powder, the cooked hot sauce was a lurid yellow colour, which blushed to a pretty orange as the red chillis were pureed into it. It actually ended up looking a lot like pumpkin soup and the thought of Russian Roulette soup cups did cross my mind.

My idea of doubling the recipe turned out to be a less-brilliant one, as the yield was considerably higher than stated. Instead of the two 500ml pots I was anticipating I ended up with two 500ml pots AND three 225ml pots. Which is a lot for a hot sauce that you add a drop at a time...

Fortunately Paul's colleagues laugh in the face of recommended serving suggestions, and polished off a whole jar in one lunchtime, smearing it lavishly into their sandwiches.

Habanero Harvest

It seemed touch-and-go for a while there. After being very tricky to germinate and extremely slow-growing, the habanero eventually grew fruit. It then took literally months for the mature fruit to ripen. Some of the immature ones got red really quickly, but their flavour was undeveloped.

We waited.

And waited.

Eventually, when I was beginning to despair, we had a flush of orange, and then it was all on.  Then I realised that I was faced with a challenge. We are not chilli heads. We like a moderate amount of heat, not the intense fire of habaneros...

Paul's taken lots into work, and we've been eating lots more chilli than usual, but most recipes we make only use half, or one. Our tolerance is developing though! We've found that the habaneros have a lovely, fruity flavour and the heat lets go quite quickly - you don't have to gulp milk for hours afterwards.

The flavour goes best with Mexican and Caribbean flavours, as you'd imagine.

Mango avocado salsa

Jerk pork, rice & peas, and the mango salsa - excellent jerk paste recipe

Pork pibil nachos with pink pickled onions

Prawn coctel - like a bloody mary/prawn cocktail hybrid. Refreshing and delicious

Fish tacos - this with the innovation of using a mixture of hot fresh mackerel and smoked peppered mackerel fillet

I've also done a bit of preserving, with mixed results. Rachel Allen's Sweet Chilli Jam is absolutely lovely made with 4 deseeded habaneros. On the other hand I followed an American recipe for an apricot hot pepper jam which, weirdly, crystallised.

Later this week I've got another post featuring the habaneros, and I suspect there will be more before the harvest is over.

Hot sweet chilli jam with sour cream, roast chicken and potato wedges

Diana Henry's soy-braised chicken for I Heart Cooking Clubs

This week's theme for I Heart Cooking Clubs is What came first... the chicken or the egg? And very conveniently, I had one of Diana Henry's chicken dishes in hand - chicken and pumpkin braised with soy and star anise from A Change of Appetite. I mean, a chicken theme for Diana Henry is a bit of a no-brainer, since I believe her next book is actually going to be on chicken, and all of her books so far have done a good line in chicken recipes. I used butternut squash instead of pumpkin, calamondins instead of oranges and it was absolutely delicious.