#131 Devonshire Junket

No I’d never heard of one either. A junket is made by mixing milk with rennet and letting it curdle, adding whatever flavour you wish. Essentially, it is Little Miss Muffet’s curds and whey. These sorts of puddings were very popular – and still are in France. The English version being different in that the curds and whey aren’t separated, whereas other nations usually do. This is a very old recipe going way back – the earliest Griggers found was in a book from 1653. In fact the term ‘junket’ comes from the Norman French, jonquet, which was a basket made from rushes (jonques) to drain cheeses, says Jane. The junket has fallen out of favour, but is hanging on as a speciality of Devonshire, south-west England. The trickiest bit of the recipe, is finding somewhere that sells rennet – if there’s any Mancunians reading this, I got mine from Barbakan in Chorlton.

FYI: Rennet is an enzyme that used to be extracted from the stomachs of calves to curdle milk. Although still used, most manufacturers used vegetarian rennet to make their cheeses etc. I think the veggie-friendly rennet is produced using bacteria with the rennet gene inserted.

For 4 to 6:

Warm a pint of Channel Island milk slowly until it reaches 37°C. If you can’t get Channel Island milk, use whole milk – do not be tempted to use skimmed or semi-skimmed, it will not work. Whilst it’s warming, mix a dessert spoon of sugar with 2 tablespoons of brandy in the serving dish that you want to set your junket. When at temperature, pour the milk into the dish and carefully stir in a dessertspoon of rennet (follow the instructions on the bottle in case this is different). Now leave the milk to set at room temperature. I went back and checked it after an hour and it was done – it had essentially become fromage fraise. Now slacken off ¼ pint of clotted cream with a little double cream and pour or spread it over the junket, being careful not to let it split. Lastly sprinkle some nutmeg or cinnamon over the top and you are done.


#131 Devonshire Junket – 5/10. This was ok, but sugar and cream always tastes good. I think the brandy should be replaced with some stewed fruit or vanilla extract, because I loved the texture of it. I think with a little playing around, the junket could have a come-back. I am dreaming up variants as I type…

#130 Boiled Wild Rabbit with Onion Sauce

‘Tis the end of the game season here in Old Blighty; though any game fans out there needn’t panic as rabbit is available all year round. This is due to the fact that they are evil vermin and should be ‘disappeared’. They were introduced by the Romans and by the Normans as farm animals, the little critters escaped and we were overrun. I am assuming they outcompeted the hares, causing their numbers to drop. So shoot away – even if you don’t want to eat them. You will be doing a service to the country.

FYI: Easter bunnies do not refer to rabbits, but hares, as it is they who display their 'mad' March behaviour. Rabbits are similar and much more common and so have been mis-named. If you spot anyone making this minor error, be annoying and pull them up on it and then do your best smug face to infuriate them further

Anyway, I’d never eaten wild rabbit and had had farmed only the once and totally cocked it up, but since I am loving the game thus far in English Food I knew I’d like this one. Only wild rabbit will do here, people, if you can’t get wild rabbit use duck instead. What also interested me was the huge amount of onions required for this recipe – it’s very rare that onions are used as a vegetable. It's another Eighteenth Century dish. If you got your rabbit whole and intact, you should use the jaw bones and stick them in the rabbit's eyes and fill its mouth with myrtle or barberries. Whatever they are.

Here goes…

For 4.

Truss your wild rabbit (or duck) with string, place it in a pan, cover with water, add a bouquet garni (I used parsley, bay, thyme, rosemary and some pared orange rind) and some salt and pepper then bring it to the boil and simmer ‘until done’. Having no frame of reference here, meant checking every now and again. Apparently, younger lithe rabbits cook quicker than old gnarly ones, so check every half an hour after the first hour is up. Once simmering, get to work on peeling 2 to 3 pounds of onions. Pop them in whole along with the rabbit after half an hour and take them out after another half an hour. Now chop them up – a boiled onion is a slippery customer, so be careful with them knife. Fry the onions in 4 ounces of butter until golden in colour, add 4 tablespoons of double cream and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Remove the cooked rabbit and let it rest for a little while and then cut up into serving pieces – two rear legs, two fore legs and the saddle cut into 3 pieces. Arrange on a serving dish and smother with the sauce. Serve with spinach and potatoes as instructed by Griggers herself (I did mash).


#130 Boiled Wild Rabbit with Onion Sauce – 5/10. Not sure if I liked this. It wasn’t vile, as I finished my meal, but wild rabbit has an unusual flavour that is pungent and slightly unappetising. Butters said it tasted like sewage. Weirdly, he wasn’t far away with that description. In fact reading ahead to other rabbit recipes, Griggers herself says that rabbit needs strong flavours to balance its ‘rank flavour.’ This begs the question: if I don’t like it, should I cook the other recipes? They all ask for wild rabbit, however, it is only this recipe that absolutely requires wild, so maybe I should try farmed next time. Not sure. Slightly disappointed that I dislike something – I pride myself in not being a fussy eater. Anyways, the onion sauce was lovely and rich and creamy – loved that. Perhaps using a duck would have been better all round.

#129 Dartmouth Pie

It was British Pie Week the other week – and I admit I was a bit tardy making a pie in time but better late than never, innit. The trouble was choosing a pie to make, after a quick flick through I went for this Dartmouth Pie (FYI: Dartmouth is in Devon, SW England). There’s two reasons for this; the meat in it is mutton and after the mutton broth and Lancashire hotpot I made I’ve really got into cooking with it. Secondly, the pie itself is interesting. It’s one of the very few survivors of medieval cuisine; they loved their meat mixed with fruit, sugar and spices. Traditionally, minced mutton is used, but you can use venison or chuck steak. The recipe in English Food is an updated version of this dish containing cubed mutton rather than minced – apart from that is not too far from the proper original one as far as I can see.



This pie serves four, but is quite rich so you could get away with five or six:

Trim some cubed shoulder of mutton well so that you end up with a pound of it in weight. Next, make a spice mix using a teaspoon each of black peppercorns and coriander seed, ½ a teaspoon each of ground mace and ground allspice and an inch length of cinnamon stick. Grind all the spices down - I use a coffee grinder for such things, if you don’t have one use a pestle and mortar. Salt the meat and brown it using 2 ounces of beef dripping in a pan that is ovenproof. Add the spices and fry them gently for a couple of minutes. Add 8 ounces of sliced onions and 1 ½ teaspoons of flour and give it good mix around. Add ½ pint of beef stock (Griggers says you can also use veal or venison stock; oh la-dee-dah!). Now the sweet element – stir in 2 ounces each of dried prunes, apricots and raisins; and to counteract the sweetness the juice and rind of a Seville orange (or, alternatively, a sweet orange plus lemon juice). She doesn’t say whether you chop up the rind or just add it to take out later. I chopped it up like you would for marmalade, but it did make the resulting sauce slightly too bitter; this was resolved by the addition of some sugar to taste later. Bring the mixture a simmer, cover and bake in a low oven - 140°C – for 2 hours (or more if you like). Taste and check for seasoning, transfer to a small pie dish and allow to cool; skimming any fat away that may appear.

Make a shortcrust pastry using 8 ounces of flour, 4 ounces of fat (I used half-lard, half-butter), salt and milk to bind. Cover the dish as normal and decorate the pie with the trimmings. Butters and I had fun making apricots, leaves and a wee sheep to go on it. Brush with beaten egg as a glaze and bake for 25-40 minutes at 220°C until the pastry is cooked and golden brown.

Check out the artwork

#129 Dartmouth Pie – 7.5/10. A very good pie indeed. Very sweet and rich but went brilliantly with some relatively bland mash and minty peas. The medieval flavours were not alien – I can see why this one survived (and others where fish is used instead of mutton didn’t). As I’ve mentioned before, the secret is the slow-cooking; the resulting meat was so tender, you hardly had to chew and the fruit had become a dark bitter-sweet mush. Lovely. If I owned a restaurant, I’d have it on the menu!

#128 Woodcock

Here’s something I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually get to cook! The woodcock is Britain’s smallest game bird – it’s very well camouflaged and hides away in scrub and hedgerows, and is quite uncommon. All this adds up to a meat you don’t see everyday. However, I was the Frost the Butcher in Chorlton buying some mutton for a pie, when I saw a huge standing freezer full of game saw the typical stuff – venison, rabbit, pigeon and there – tucked away on the bottom shelf – a brace of woodcock. Obviously I snapped them up, only to find they were 15 quid each! I bought just the one, natch.

Finding the woodcock was exciting, as I am now officially a food geek – however I was feeling a little trepidation; this is definitely the first really extreme thing I’ve made from the cook book. Woodcock is considered a delicacy not just because it’s so hard to get hold of, but also because pretty much the whole thing is eaten. Essentially, the bird is roasted rare, whole and completely intact (except the eyes are removed and it is plucked) and trussed with its own beak. The trail of the bird (i.e. the guts, liver etc) is spread on fried bread and the head is split in two so that you can use the beak of one half to prize out the brain from the other.

Woodcock trussed with its own beak

Here’s what to do if you happen upon this little birdie:

Preheat your oven to 220°C. Start off by trussing the bird with it’s beak by spearing the thighs to keep them closed up together. Season the breasts and cover liberally with butter so it doesn’t dry out. Place on a small roasting tin and cook for 18-20 minutes. Whilst that is happening, fry one slice of white bread per bird gently in butter, placing it under the woodcock(s) for the final 5 minutes of cooking. When the time is up, remove the bread and place on a warmed plate and allow the bird to rest for 5 or 10 minutes in the pan. Next, using a knife and/or spoon scoop out the trail (everything except the gizzard – which is actually hard to get to, so it’s unlikely you’ll accidently scoop it out). Spread the trail on the toast. Cut off the head and cut it in half lengthways so that you can use the beak to remove the brain from the halves. You can serve the bird whole or remove the breasts if you like.

The final dish

#128 Woodcock. How on Earth am I going to score this one!? Eating the innards of a bird wasn’t something I was going to relish – but I did relish the idea of eating something very traditional but very out-of-favour. From that point of view – an excitement rating – 10/10. Flavour-wise, the breast meat was very gamey indeed – the smaller the bird, the stronger the flavour – it was so rich that it would have been more than enough for one person. The thigh meat was horrible though – just tasted of dead animal. Bizarrely, the best bit was the trail on toast. The intestines were very soft and there was nothing chewy, though it took some courage to make the first bite. Turns out it tastes a bit like Marmite. Very nice. The brain didn’t really taste as strong as the trail, but was soft and slightly greasy in texture; it appealed to my sudden manly bloodlust though. So overall, it is a high scorer, but not too high – I don’t want to give it loads of marks because of the novelty, so on flavour alone, I reckon it’s worthy of 6/10.

#127 Banana Chutney

Thus far I have enjoyed making the preserves in English Food and was very much in the mood to make a new one – the Banana Chutney was selected as I had all the ingredients other than the masses of bananas in already, plus it seemed like a no-brainer; no faffing about with pectin and sugar thermometers here!


Begin by slicing up 12 bananas and simmering them in ½ a pint of cider (or white wine) vinegar until the bananas are cooked and mushy. Stir in 8 ounces of sugar and allow to cool. Next stir in 2 medium onions that have been finely sliced, 4 ounces of finely chopped sultanas, an ounce of curry powder (whatever strength you like), ½ teaspoon of cinnamon, a pinch of Cayenne pepper, and salt – and salt well; chutneys should be salty, add up to 3 teaspoons. Cover the bowl or pan with Clingfilm and allow to stand for 12 hours. Taste and check for seasoning again before potting in sterilised jars and store somewhere cool.

#127 Banana Chutney – 5.5/10. Nice and sweet; Griggers says to serve with ham, salt pork and chicken, but I had it in a cheese sandwich and it was very nice, though it was quite dry – I prefer chutneys to have a bit of sauce to them. If I were to make itagain, I would add more vinegar and sugar and would also cook the curry powder out too in a little oil before adding the bananas and vinegar at the start (but what do I know).

Pheasant and Celery Broth

There was no way I was throwing out the carcasses of the roast pheasants, so I did my research and came up with this soup which used up all the celery trimmings and unused potatoes from the game chips too. I also found pigeon carcasses in the freezer, so I added them in. The idea here is that you can use any poultry or game bird carcasses as long as you’ve got enough of them. The point is to use whatever left over vegetables you’ve got, so I’ve not given amounts – I even chucked in the leftover cooked peas and beans that hadn’t been eaten right at the end.

You will need…
Carcasses of 2 pheasant, cut up (or 1 chicken, turkey or several smaller game birds, etc, etc)
4 pints of water
Bouquet garni
5 peppercorns
1 teaspoon salt
Stock vegetables/trimmings – i.e. celery, onion, leek etc. all roughly chopped
1 pint of light beef stock
4 ounces of pearl barley
Sliced/cubed broth vegetables – potatoes, carrots, etc
4 or 5 sticks of celery, sliced or cubed

What to do…
Place the carcasses into a large saucepan or stockpot with the water, the bouquet garni, the peppercorns, salt and the stock vegetables. Bring to the boil, cover tightly and simmer for 2 to 2 ½ hours. Strain the stock and return it to the pan and add the barley, beef stock, celery and the other stock vegetables and simmer for a further hour. Whilst you are waiting, pick any meat from the carcasses and put them in with broth at the end. Check the seasoning. Serve with buttered brown bread.

#126 Kickshaws

As we are being constantly reminded of Global Recessions and Credit Crunches in the news, I thought it’s best to get as thrifty as possible and make some meals out of leftovers. I’ve managed to get two extra things out of the feast I made – one of which is a recipe from English Food, the other one of my own devising.

I made the Kickshaws from the leftover puff pastry trimmings. They are very easy to make – good one to make with kids if you’ve got any and don’t mind getting their filthy little paws in you food.

Roll out your puff pastry trimmings thinly and cut out circles of around 3 inches in diameter. Next, place a scant teaspoon of jelly or jam in the centre and use milk or beaten egg to make little parcels or turnovers; I used bramble jelly, quince jelly and apricot jam. Deep fry at around 160°C for a few minutes until the pastry has puffed up and golden brown. Sprinkle some sugar over them and eat warm. I poured some double cream over them that was also left over from big feast.

FYI: the name “Kickshaws” comes from an Anglicisation of the French quelque chose. I don’t know any French, but Griggers says it means “some odd thing or other”.

#126 Kickshaws – 8/10. Kickshaws go right back to Medieval times, though survived until the Eighteenth Century, though we don’t really make them now. We should definitely bring them back though as they are delicious. They are definitely being made every time there are trimmings to be used up!

#125 Whim-Wham

For dessert, Charmolian requested Whim-Wham. Not a proper dessert, but more a “tasty mouthful”. Here at Grigson Towers, we’re all about tasty mouthfuls. Plus it was an Eighteenth Century recipe so it fitted the bill. The other good thing about this dessert is that it can be knocked up in minutes… “Whim-Wham means something trifling, i.e. a trifle”. She goes on to say that it is also “delicious and not too heavy”. All boxes ticked there then.

For each person:
Start off by breaking a sponge finger into four pieces and laying it in the bottom of a small ramekin or cup. Next pour over a tablespoon of sherry or Muscatel dessert wine - I (or, rather, Charmolian) used sherry. On top of this dollop on 2 tablespoons of whipped cream. To decorate, add half a teaspoon of chopped roasted hazelnuts and something sweet – Griggers says some leaves cut from angelica or cumin comfits, but not – heaven forbid – glace cherries as they would be “out of style” (this is one of the few times that the book shows its age). The most difficult part of the whole meal was getting hold of angelica – I eventually got some in Tesco, if anybody is wondering. I have no idea what cumin comfits are, but they sound delicious – I may try and locate some…

FYI: Angelica has been cultivated since the Tenth Century as food and for its medicinal properties – it has antibacterial, antifungal and antiviral properties. It has been noted also for its wonderful taste and aroma – compared to musk and juniper. I found that it was completely tasteless in its candied form. Hey-ho.

FYI2: It is called angelica because the Archangel Gabriel supposedly informed us of its uses. That was nice of him, wasn’t it?

#125 Whim-Wham – 3/10. Ms Grigson should be done for false advertising here – the phrases “tasty mouthful” and “not too heavy” are very much – in my opinion – fibs. They were so rich, alcoholic and massive. By the time dessert was brought out I was a little tipsy and for somehow manage to not only polish off mine, but also someone else’s. The next day, when I thought of them, I puked. Next time (as if there will be one), I’ll used Muscatel wine. Bleurgh…

#124 Celery with Cream

I commented earlier how nice it was to have leek tarts because the leek is so under-used as a vegetable in its own right. Well, another vegetable that fits into the same category is celery. Apparently celery was introduced in the Seventeenth Century, but was used first used as a cooked vegetable in the Eighteenth. It’s hard to imagine that bitter celery would be good on it’s own, but Griggers reckons it’s delicious. We shall see. This dish also completes my main course for the Eighteenth Century Feast.

Wash and trim 2 heads of celery and cut them into 3 inch lengths. Plunge them into boiling water for 10-15minutes until they are tender. Drain and return to the pan. Beat two egg yolks and ¼ pint of double cream together along with some seasoning. Stir this into the celery over a low heat until the sauce thickens. Serve straight away.


#124 Celery with Cream – 3.5/10. Not foul or inedible, just weird. That is the best I can sum this up as. I’m not sure that celery is palatable cooked this way – Braised celery, I know, is a good way to eat it as an individual vegetable, but not this one I’m afraid. I’ll stick to cauliflower cheese in future!

#123 Bread Sauce

Ahhh! The bread sauce. A total necessity to go with roast pheasant (or with any roast game or poultry). You don’t get much a more English accompaniment to a roast dinner than this – though not many seem to have tried it, put off by the soggy bread aspect. Don’t you be put off, reader; the bread completely disintegrates to make a nice smooth sauce. Plus, the sauce is prevented from being at all gluey by the addition of butter or cream (or a mixture of the two). If you’ve never made it, have a go – it’s very easy and can be made ahead of time as long as you cover it in cling film to prevent a skin forming and you reheat it in a bowl over a pan of simmering water.

FYI: This is a very old recipe, bread sauces go back to Medieval times though stock was used as a base more often than milk. Thick sauces were required then because trenchers (plates made of dried bread) would have gone soggy otherwise. Sauces thickened with flour or eggs would not work for that as they would either glue or custard respectively!

OK, the recipe:

Begin by putting ¾ of a pint of whole or Jersey milk into a basin along with a small onion that has been halved and studded with 3 or 4 cloves. Place the basin over simmering water and keep the milk just below boiling point for as long as possible so that it can be infused with the flavours. Whilst that is going on use a food processor to make 4 ounces of white breadcrumbs. Take out the onion and cloves and whisk in the breadcrumbs until it is thick. The suace will thicken up after a few minutes, but if it’s a bit on the thin side make some more breadcrumbs and whisks them in. Season the sauce with mace or nutmeg (or both), salt, white pepper and a pinch of Cayenne pepper. Lastly, enrich the sauce with 1 ½ ounces of butter or 2 tablespoons of cream (or a bit of both). Pour into a ‘sauce tureen’ and add an extra sprinkle of Cayenne, says Griggers.

#123 Bread Sauce – 9/10. I loved this; creamy, rich, but not sickly at all. I’ve made it before, but this definitely the best recipe for it so far. The old fashioned spices really made it work for me.

#122 Roast Pheasant

The Roast Pheasant was obviously the star of the meal – not just because it is a meat we don’t eat enough of, but also from my point of view because to tick it off I had to do lots of accompanying dishes, so some organisation was required. If you want to have a go, you can have as many of the elements as you wish, though try to do as many as possible as they do go so very well together as a dish. The trickiest part was getting hold of pheasant giblets – however, the nice game butcher at the Farmers’ Market got me them when I asked. Make a point of ordering them as they are routinely thrown away. So, the roast pheasant is made up of five individual parts:

1. The pheasants themselves
2. The game chips
3. The giblet gravy
4. The browned crumbs
5. The bread sauce (dealt with separately as #123).

Most of this can be made in advance and reheated, that which is not, is easy and quick to prepare and will not keep you from your guests for very long.

To prepare the brace of pheasants, begin by removing the giblets and setting them aside for later on. Stuff each bird with 2 ounces of butter, plus the liver (make sure you remove the green bitter gall bladder) and a good seasoning with salt and pepper, then lay a thin sheet of back pork fat over them that is large enough to cover the beasts and legs. Secure the back fat by tying string around the pheasants. Place them in a roasting tin and set aside for when you want to roast them – they should be roasted at 190°C for 20 minutes per pound plus an extra 10 minutes. You calculate this for the heaviest bird; in my case 2 pounds, so 50 minutes in all. For the final 10 minutes of cooking, remove the back fat and dust the breasts lightly with seasoned flour. Remove from the oven and allow to rest. I did this just before the guests arrived so that the birds could rest as the leek tarts were cooking. To serve it, I removed the legs, then sliced the breast meat and placed on a bed of watercress.

When the birds were prepared, I started on the gravy: first place the giblets (minus livers) in a saucepan along with a sliced carrot, a sliced onion and a bouquet garni and enough light beef stock to cover everything generously. This was simmered gently for two hours before being finished off later (see below). Next job was to get the game chips sorted. Game chips are basically crisps cut very thinly on a Chinese mandolin using the ridged blade to produce a lattice, or gaufrette, pattern. Peel 1 ½ pounds of firm potatoes. Put the mandolin at its thinnest setting and slice downwards, turning the potato a quarter-turn as you bring it back up to make the next slice to get the lattice effect. Put the chips into a large bowl of water to remove starch and then dry thoroughly. Deep fry in batches at 200°C until golden brown, and drain on kitchen paper and salt them well. This can be re-heated in the oven whenever you need to use them.

Once the starters had been eaten, I put the game chips in the oven and got to work on the buttered crumbs and rest of the giblet gravy. For the crumbs, 3 ounces of stale white breadcrumbs were fried gently for 5 or 10 minutes in 1 ½ ounces of butter until golden. They were placed in a serving dish and kept warm with the game chips. For the gravy, the stock with all the lovely the giblet flavours poured into the roasting tin. The stock was boiled hard and all the nice sticky bits that were found on the bottom of the pan were scraped off. When reduced, a glass of port was added, there was a quick seasoning, and the gravy was strained into a sauce boat.

So that there was a bit of green, also served some peas and green peas, but also Bread Sauce (as instructed) and (#124) Creamed Celery – Grigson says that either celery or mushrooms should be eaten with roast pheasant.

#122 Roast Pheasant – 9.5/10. What a brilliant meal! It was well worth the effort, I cannot fault it in any way really, and will definitely make it again, though maybe not with all the required elements. The pheasant was juicy and just-cooked, the gravy was beautifully rich and luscious, the breadcrumbs provided a nice crunchy texture and the game chips were tasty, some crunchy and some soggy in the gravy and bread sauce. For me, pheasant is the king of the game birds, and after this, it is going to be very difficult to knock it off the top spot.

FYI: to be a bit thrifty, I made soup from the carcasses and left over veg and trimmed celery etc and it was lovely – I’ll put a recipe up for it. I am never chucking out a carcass again!

#121 Little Leek Tarts

The first thing to get ready was the Little Leek Tarts. These seemed very simple to make – a leek puree baked in puff pastry (bought, I might add) plus a bit of salad of my own doing. I imagined them to be quite contemporary actually – many restaurants seem to have some kind of tart as a starter these days.


This recipe makes between 12 and 24 tarts, depending how much filling you put in each one:


Begin by trimming and cleaning some leeks – you need 2 pounds trimmed weight (this may seem a lot, but they melt down and concentrate). Chop them up and add them to a heavy-based pan that has 2 generous ounces of butter melted in it. Cover the pan tightly and allow to stew slowly for about 10 or 15minutes. Check inside and stir – the leek should not have changed colour, just reduced in volume. Cook for a further 10-15 minutes with the lid off so that the leeks lose their wetness. This is important to concentrate the flavour. Whilst this is happening cut out circles of puff pastry to line small tart tins and heat the oven to 220°C. Liquidise the leeks and season with salt and pepper and stir through a couple of tablespoons of double cream. Divide the mixture out between the pastry cases and sprinkle a teaspoon of grated Cheddar or Wensleydale cheese over them. Bake for 15-20 minutes and serve immediately. To look a bit more swish, I added rocket that had been dressed with a simple vinaigrette.


In reality, we made them first, but actually baked them when everyone arrived and the pheasants had finished cooking.


FYI: the leek became the national ‘flower’ of Wales after a Welsh King called Cadwaladr (c. 633–682) apparently ordered his soldiers to wear them on their helmets in a battle against the Saxons that took place in a leek field! This story is probably nonsense, but the best ones usually are...


#121 Little Leek Tarts – 8.5/10. Absolutely delicious! So often are leeks just used as a stock or soup vegetable; this recipe let them shine. The leek puree was light but creamy and went very well with the rich pastry. The only problem (and it was my problem, not the recipes) was that it was very slightly gritty – I obviously rushed the rinsing of a few of the leeks. Oopsey! Oh well, I have learned from my errors and have therefore become a better person because of it. Whatever.

An Eighteenth Century Feast

I’ve got a bit of catching up to do – this weekend was a Grigson frenzy; 5 in one day!! I had been toying with doing a reasonably elaborate meal – and in particular the roast pheasant that appears in the book. It was meant to be the 100th recipe but I couldn’t get hold of pheasant giblets, but look and ye shall find.

So basing a meal around this I came up with a loose theme – the Eighteenth Century. It was quite a time-consuming set of recipes, but none are particularly complex. Plus I had lots of help from my sous chefs Iain (Butters) and Charlotte (Charmolian). Also, in the times of the credit crunch, the whole meal was actually pretty good value, so it won't burn a hole in your pocket. Anyways, here it is:


~Starter~

Little Leek Tarts served with a rocket salad (the latter, my own addition, obviously)


~Main Course~

Brace of Roasted Pheasants

Served with: Game chips, green vegetables, buttered crumbs and a rich giblet gravy

Accompanied by: Creamed celery and bread sauce


~Dessert~

Whim-Wham

Not a mean feat, but we started well ahead of time so that we never seemed rushed, plus much of this could be made in advance. Paddy, Kate and Pete came over, so there were no heirs and graces and if anything did go wrong it wouldn’t matter (nothing did!). So if you fancy making any elements of this meal, I shall naturally be adding the recipes alongside any wee factoids I may find over the next couple of days.

#120 Mr Frost's Chocolate Cake

This one is a piece of piss to make and comes from a chap who owns (or, I presume owned now, as this book is quite old) a restaurant in Cirencester. Griggers likes it as it’s a nice classy version of chocolate cornflake or Rice Krispie cakes (though try my Mum’s recipe).

For this you need chocolate (plain or dark or a mixture), butter, nuts (any type – I used almonds and hazelnuts which are essential, you could use walnuts but peanuts are “right out”) and digestive biscuits. Weight out equal amounts of chocolate, butter and digestives and half the total weight of nuts. Roast the nuts for about 25 minutes in a low oven and remove any skins by rubbing them with a cloth, then chop roughly. Melt the butter and chocolate over a low heat. Keep an eye on them whilst you chop up the biscuits into small squares – don’t worry if there’s loads of crumbs, this is a good thing. Once the chocolate and butter have melted, mix in the nuts and biscuits. Pour into a lined tin so that it’s about a finger thick and cool in the fridge. Cut the cake into squares or fingers and keep cool.

#120 Mr Frost’s Chocolate Cake – 6/10. Good old Mr Frost. The Grigson was right in that this is much better than crappy old cornflake cakes. It could’ve been improved with a few sultanas, but the good thing about this is that you can add whatever you fancy – crystallised ginger would be good, or marshmallows maybe.

#119 Gloucester Pancakes

Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday and so to not repeat myself with common or garden crepe style pancakes, I thought I’d be controversial and try a different one. Gloucester pancakes don’t really resemble normal pancakes- they’re more like muffins. A point of note here – we know that Pancake Day exists to use up the fat ready for the onset of Lent, but bloody hell, these contain a LOT of fat – chopped beef and suet AND fried in lard. Oh well, you only live once…

This recipe makes around 8 pancakes:

In a bowl, mix together 6 ounces of flour, a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of baking powder. Then stir in 3 ounces of chopped suet and bind everything together with a beaten egg and some milk to produce a firm dough. Roll out the mixture so that it’s ½ an inch thick and use scone cutters (around 3 ½ inches wide) to cut them out. Fry the pancakes in a little lard on a lowish heat until golden brown – they should rise a little due to the baking powder. Serve hot with plenty of golden syrup.

#119 Gloucester Pancakes – 5/10. Nice, but I probably wouldn’t make them again. In order to turn this around, Charlotte made the Welsh light cakes that we did a few months ago (which I’m thinking about upping to a 10). Yep, I'd definitely rather be in Wales than Gloucester on Pancake Day...

#118 Banana Tea Loaf

It was my turn to make a cake for the Evolutionary Biology department’s Wednesday Cake Day, and as there are many a non-Briton in the department I thought I’d do something very English – a tea loaf. Tea loaves are great for several reasons; they taste nice and are lovely and moist, you can make them in advance (in fact they taste nicer if you do leave them); you put butter on the sliced loaf, and they are very easy to make. This one is particularly easy as there is no creaming of butter or anything like that to do.

First, sieve 8 ounces of self-raising flour, ¾ level teaspoon of mixed spice, ½ a teaspoon of salt and 4 ounces of caster sugar into a mixing bowl. Chop 4 ounces of butter into small pieces and add it to the flour along with one tablespoon of honey, 4 ounces of sultanas, 3 ounces of glace cherries, 3 ounces of blanched almonds or walnuts (or a mixture). Now the wet ingredients: 1 pound of mashed ripe bananas, 2 eggs and the juice of a lemon. Once mixed together nicely, turn the mixture out into a buttered 9 inch loaf tin and bake of an hour at 180ºC and then half an hour at 160ºC. Allow to cool on a wire rack and store in an air-tight container.


#118 Banana Tea Loaf – 8.5/10. Marvellous! This is quite a hefty tea loaf and I didn’t think our wee group would get through it, but we made light work of it. The addition of the cherries and nuts made it a little Seventies-looking and I thought would make it overly rich, but it wasn’t the case. Very, very good – thinking about when I’ll make the next one!

#117 Mrs Borthwick's Yorkshire Teacakes

Been very busy with work and decorating folks, sorry for being a little slack of late. I have had the chance to do a couple of recipes – trying to do at least ten a month, but not sure if I’ll make it this February…

Being a Yorkshireman I thought I’d make these Yorkshire teacakes. The currant teacake reminds me of my Mum; she’s rather partial, though I didn’t really know that they were particularly Yorkshire, I glad they are. They’re a large sweetened teacake with mixed fruit in them and traditional way to eat them is to slice them crosswise and eat with butter and cheese, though I like them toasted with butter. Each to their own.

Now I’ve started to crack the art of yeast cookery, I’m enjoying bread-making and these are easy – the fruit and sugar hide a multitude of sins – and taste much better than bought stuff. Part of the reason behind this is the use of fresh yeast, which gives a much better flavour than the dried stuff, plus the bread rises much more rapidly I’ve noticed.

Oh, and Mrs Borthwick is some reader of one of Griggers’ columns and sent her this recipe. In case you were wondering.


Anyways, this makes eight large ones:

Sieve together 1 ¼ pounds of strong plain flour, 2 ounces of sugar and a pinch of salt into a big mixing bowl. Rub in an ounce of lard and stir in 3 ½ ounces total of currants and mixed peel (have the ratio according to your taste). Make a deep well in the centre of the flour and crumble in an ounce of fresh yeast and then grate plenty of nutmeg over the whole thing. Next, measure half a pint of room-temperature whole milk and add a quarter pint of boiling water to it. Pour the lot into the well. Do not worry that it looks a horrible mess, it is supposed to. Flick a little flour over the top, cover and leave to bubble in a warm place for 15-20 minutes, or whatever. Mix to form a dough, adding more flour if required, and knead for a few minutes. Divide the dough into eight pieces and knead each again, fold them inwards so they form little plump breadcakes. Put onto greased baking trays and allow to rise again for another 15 minutes. Bake at 220ºC for 30 minutes, turning them over in the final 5 minutes. When ready place on a wire rack and brush with milk to give them a shine.

#117 Mrs Borthwick’s Yorkshire Teacakes. 6.5/10. Really nice teacakes that require minimum effort for pretty good results, though I would add more currants than this recipe I think. I really loving the bread cookery – Hot Cross Buns are a-calling, me-thinks!

#116 Apple and Raisin Pie

A good honest hotpot deserved a good honest pudding. I wanted a desert-version of a hotpot and went for this apple and raisin pie. This, people, is no ordinary apple pie – it is a buttered apple pie, very popular in the Seventeenth Century. It’s very easy to do, especially if you use bought puff pastry.

Peel, core and quarter 3 ½ pounds of Cox’s Orange Pippin apples and quarters the quarters into six and place in a bowl. Sprinkle over 4 ounces of caster sugar and the grated zest of half a lemon and mix. Melt 4 ounces of unsalted butter in a pan and pour over the apples and lastly 4 ounces of raisins. Mix again and place the apples and buttery juices into a large pie dish. Roll out some puff pastry and cut out a shape large enough to cover the dish. With the trimmings, roll out a thin length of pastry and glue it to the rim with egg white. Then using more egg white glue on the pastry lid and glaze with more egg white. Sprinkle the top with a little sugar and make a slit in the pastry so the steam can escape. Bake in a hot oven – around 220ºC – for 15-20 minutes, and then turn down to 160-180ºC and bake for a further 30-45 minutes until the apples are tender. Serve with lightly whipped cream.


#116 Apple and Raisin Pie – 9.5/10. This is the best apple pie I’ve ever made. The apples were still tart but swimming in a lovely sweet, rich buttery liquor that was the perfect balance. The raisins were very juicy and plump and the pastry crisp. Total genius. Go and make this pie right now, people!

#115 Lancashire Hotpot

Last week I took the afternoon off work to go shopping with Butters to Cheshire Oaks to spend money I don’t have. One of the main reasons I wanted to go was Butters had been told that there was a Le Crueset shop there. I love Le Crueset stuff but it is tres expensive, so I had a total geek boner about going to the factory outlet shop.

After about an hour of decision-making, I went for a large round casserole and a big mixing jug. With the casserole I knew exactly how I was going to christen it – with a Lancashire Hotpot. I’ve had hotpots before, but in the form of ready meals, which, if I remember, had tomato in it. Real Lancashire hotpot is very simple – one of those dishes involving lots of sliced potatoes and onions that seem to come in an amazing variety. It’s also rather like an Irish stew.

It looked nicer in real...

FYI: Lancashire Hotpots were traditionally made in large, deep dark glazed brown pots that were given to the baker to put in his oven whilst people went to work so they collect on their way back.

FYI2: Although hotpot usually contains potato, onion, lamb and kidneys, people have put in black pudding, sweetbreads, mushrooms and oysters. So if you have any of those to hand pop them in.

This is enough for 6 people:

Start off by thinly slicing a pound of onions and 2 pounds of peeled potatoes. Next trim any large bits of fat from best end of neck lamb chops; you’ll need between 8 and 12 depending upon thickness. When at the butches try to get about 6 lamb’s kidneys. Depending on your butcher, they may or may not be prepared – make sure the tough outer membrane has been peeled away, and slice in half lengthways and cut out their central tough, white centres. Layer up the potatoes, then onions, then meat and offal, seasoning as you go. Make sure you leave enough spuds so you can arrange them nicely on the top. Pour enough water to reach halfway up the pot and then brush the potatoes with some melted butter. Place the lid on the casserole and bake at 200-240ºC for 30 minutes, and then turn the oven down to 140ºC for about 2-2 ½ hours. Take the lid of for the final 30-45 minutes so that the top can crisp up. Serve with boiled or pickled red cabbage.

#115 Lancashire Hotpot – 6.5/10. Very nice and hearty grub that is simple yet effective. Not used to cooking with lamb, but am loving how simple this is. Also I’d forgotten how nice kidneys are – I’ve not had them in years. It’s definitely something I’d make again, but it would have to contain something more than just lamb. Plus it’s very cheap – the meat came to £6 at the butchers in the Arndale Centre. Bargain!

#114 Quince, Medlar, Sorb or Crab Apple Jelly

The quinces I bought the other day were beginning to look a bit sad and I needed to use them up with something. I really like quince, so quince jelly was the obvious choice – making a few jars of this would mean I would still be eating them way beyond their season had ended.

By the way, this recipe can be followed as is but with medlars, sorbs or crab apples, so if you are lucky enough to know where their might be some growing near you try this jelly.

Begin by scrubbing clean your quinces and chop them roughly along with the same weight in Bramley apples. Do not peel or core them – that is where the pectin resides that will set the jelly. Place the fruit in a pan and barely cover them with water. Simmer the fruit until they have become a pulp (I used a potato masher to help the quinces along).

Place the pulp in a jelly bag suspended over a bowl – if you don’t have one, use a muslin-lined sieve instead. Leave the pulp to drip dry – this takes a while, a few hours at least, overnight if you’ve done loads. Measure the volume of liquid and pour into a heavy-based pan and add a pound of sugar for every pint of liquid. Boil this mixture until this has reached setting point (read the recipe for marmalade for more info on this) and pour into sterilised jars.

Quince jelly can be used like any fruit jelly, but is typically an accompaniment to cheeses, game and turkey.

#114 Quince Jelly - 6.5/10. A nice conserve, but I perhaps more apple than I should have, as the quince flavour is not super strong and is sweeter than I’m used to. That said, I used as jam and I think it’ll be a lot better with some game or cheese. Also, the recipe’s very good as I got four jars of jelly from just two quince!