#142 Ballymaloe Fruit Tarts

As Grigson says in her entry for this recipe – “in no way are these English”. Seeing as they’re obviously Irish; a recipe from a lady called Myrtle Allen who lived/lives in Cork (I wonder if she’s related to Rachel Allen?), but came up with it in France, I’d be inclined to agree. However, as you’ll see if you make them, they seem quintessentially English – the whipped cream, the chewy ground almond base and, most importantly, the use of seasonal fruit. One fruit on my seasonal list for May is rhubarb. However, there’s no rhubarb recipe in the book, at least not specifically rhubarb. This seemed like the only opportunity to use it. You can of course use any fruit: “During the first part of the year, top them with chunks of lightly cooked pink rhubarb, next come gooseberries, then the wild possibilities of the full summer…”.

FYI1: If like me, you love rhubarb, don’t make a habit of eating too much of the green rhubarb as it causes kidney and bladder stones due to the oxalate contained in the green areas – it dissolves in the blood no problems but in large amounts precipitates once it’s been filtered by the kidneys.

FYI2: All of the pink forced rhubarb in Britain comes from West Yorkshire - the rhubarb triangle. It’s a triangle because all farms are located within the triangle that Leeds (my home town), Branford and Wakefield make up. Read about it here.


This is a very easy recipe; summery and light, just right to finish off the skate salad I had made. For the base you need ground almonds, caster sugar and lightly salted butter all in equal amounts. Griggers says 4 ounces of each, but I went for 2 ounces of each seeing as there was just me and Butters to feed. This made 12 little tarts.

Preheat the oven to 180⁰C. Cream together the butter, sugar and almonds and place teaspoonfuls of the mixture into a small tart tin. Bake for 10 minutes, maybe more, maybe less; what happens is magical – the blobs of mixture spread out to form perfect little tart bases that are cooked once they are rimmed with golden brown. Take them out of the tins when they’ve cooled a little bit with a butter knife or a teaspoon and allow to cool and harden on a wire rack. Don’t leave them in there too long or they’ll stick to the tins. Now whisk some cream, and a little sugar if you like, and place a teaspoon of it in the tart case and some of the fruit on top. (For the rhubarb, I stewed it lightly with some sugar and a vanilla pod.)

#142 Ballymaloe Fruit Tarts – 7.5/10. Really simple and delicious. The base is chewy and the topping, light. Even if you don’t bake these sorts of things, have a go at these – you get a lot of return for little effort.

#141 Warm Skate Salad with Shaun Hill's Dressing

Another fish dish. Skate is one of my favourite fish and liked the idea of having it in warm salad – perfect for this time of year when the weather is often bright and sunny but will a chill still in the air. Classically, skate is poached or fried and served with either a beurre noisette or capers, so I thought having it in strips with warm vinaigrette would be a new thing that might jazz up this tasty, though bland, fish.

Start off by preparing your skate wings (one per person). Rinse each one under the tap or soak in a change or two of water – take heed of this advice, this gets rid of the taste of ammonia found in fresh skate. I didn’t know this, even though I’ve cooked it many times, it’s never been ponged of ammonia. However, this time it was different (for one of us anyway!). Dry the wings and fry them in a little olive oil until cooked through – a few minutes a side, you can tell they’re cooked as the flesh starts to raise itself up from the cartilaginous bones. Whilst you are waiting, wash and dry some green salad leaves (I used watercress to be seasonal) and place a pile of them in the centre of each plate.

Now make the dressing. Set up a bowl over some simmering water. Add three tablespoons of fish stock and around 6 tablespoons of olive oil to the bowl. Chop up a handful of parsley leaves with a shallot and a small clove of garlic. Add this and season with salt, pepper and lemon juice.

Remove the cooked skate from the pan and strip the meat of the wings with a fork. Pile the stripped fish on the salad leaves and sprinkle the whole thing with the dressing. Do this for each plate. Serve immediately.


FYI: Shaun Hill is still a chef, working at The Walnut Tree Inn in Wales. Here’s an article about him.

#141 Warm Skate Salad with Shaun Hill’s Dressing – 5/10. What a weird dish this turned out to be. None of the ingredients were bad , they just didn’t do together. The skate was nice and moist and gelatinous, but it’s delicate flavour was completely drowned out by the dressing with its strong garlic, shallot and olive flavours –delicious that it was. The ammonia was a cause for concern – it obviously doesn’t happen every time one cooks it, otherwise I’d have noticed before, but it’s worth bearing in mind in the future. Overall, I prefer my skate the old-fashioned way… Skate was very popular, but recipes like this won’t be doing it many favours in making it popular again.

#140 Crab Tart

I’ve mentioned before that a much ignored chapter in English Food is the Fish chapter (I must tell you what the chapters actually are, so you know where the seemingly random recipes fit). The fish that are in season during May and are in the book are salmon and crab. A quick phone call to Butters to help me decide which fish/crustacean to try first was required – I’ve never cooked with crab other than tinned, and salmon isn’t my favourite. We went for the crab. There’s a few crab recipes but this one seemed relatively straight-forward.

It seems the oceans were a much more plentiful place in the 1970s compared to now (though we knew that already!). The original recipe asks for a boiled crab weighing 2 pounds or one kilogram. Fat chance of that says the fishmonger, however I asked for the biggest one and it wasn’t too far off. It only cost a fiver! I was well happy there – a tiny tin of it cost about 3 quid. Bargin. In fact I noticed the fishmonger was stocked with loads of nice things at the minute...

Butters gets a crab infestation. Again

To make a crab tart, start off by making (or buying) some shortcrust pastry and lining an 8 to 9 inch flan or tart tin with it. Bake the pastry blind in a hot oven - 220°C – for 10-15 minutes. Do this by lining it with greaseproof paper or foil and pouring in some baking beans. For the final couple of minutes remove the beans so that the base can crisp and dry out a little.

Now you have to pay the boiled crab some considerable attention. It’s quite an arduous task but quite satisfyingly so. I won’t go through how to remove the meat here, but I’ll instead send you to this link to Deliaonline, which I followed and it did the job. In fact go to that website if there’s any techniques you want to reference. Once you’ve extracted as much meat as your patience will allow mix the white and brown meats together and season well with sea salt, black or white pepper and Cayenne pepper. Stir in one whole egg and two egg yolks (keep the whites) and 8 fluid ounces of whipping cream. Now add a tablespoon each of Cheddar and Parmesan cheese and stir in. Whisk the two egg whites until firm of peak and fold it into the crab mixture. Pour the whole thing into the case and bake at 220°C for 5 minutes and then turn the heat down to 190°C and bake for a further 25-40 minutes. The tart is ready when it has set and lost its eggy wobbliness.

Not the most photogenic of tarts, I know, but tasted lovely.

Griggers says to serve straight away with brown bread and butter, but to be extra-seasonal, I made a quick salad from rocket, sliced radishes, olive oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper. It went very well.

#140 Crab Tart 7/10. I really enjoyed cooking with and then eating crab. The brown meat dissolved into the cream and eggs making it deliciously sweet and moist and the white meat gave the whole thing good texture. The genius of the dish was the whisked egg whites, which lifted to so well. A definite success that really made me feel Spring is finally here! Great stuff.

Getting Seasonal

It’s tricky to choose recipes to cook when there are still so many to choose from in the book – plus, many ingredients are unknown to me, and because of a certain amount of trepidation I’ve ignored some. I have decided that the best thing to do here is to follow the seasons more closely (I try to do this as much as I can anyway). This means that anything new to me as a cook, should be in tip-top shape and therefore be much less likely to go wrong. At least that’s the theory. So, after a little bit of research on the internet, here’s a list of meat, fish, vegetables and fruits that are in season and/or at their peak in May. Not all are used in English Food, but I’ve included them for completeness. We shall see how many I can do this Maytime:

Lamb
Salmon
Sea trout
Sea bass
Crab
Beetroot
Cabbage (all kinds)
Carrots
Cauliflowers
Kale
Turnips
Samphire (I don't know where I'm going to get thhis from! Help anybody?)
Asparagus
Jersey Royal potatoes
Watercress
Radishes
Rocket
Spinach
Spring onions
Cherries
Rhubarb
Elderflowers

Not quite the Good Life, but it's a start...

Aside from a bit of baking to help me relax I’ve been attempting a little bit of gardening. I have no idea what I’m doing at the minute, but I’m aiming for two things: one, some kind of fresh produce for myself – though in very small amounts as my back yard is tiny; two, British flowers that will not only look nice but attract any passing wildlife that has dared enter darkest Levenshulme. I’m hopefully choosing plants that tick both boxes simultaneously. Thus far: rosemary, red basil, chives, leaf beet spinach, mint, marjoram, blackberry, raspberry and blackcurrant. I also plan to attempt some broad beans and maybe some peas too, as well as extra hard-to-get herbs like tarragon and chervil, plus some wild flowers too. All this should add up to a lovely little oasis in a sometimes miserable South Manchester.

Thus far only the red basil has germinated, I shall keep you posted. Has anyone got any tips or suggestion as to what else I can plant? It has to be something easy to look after that takes up little space. Any comments are very welcome. Ta!

Everything you wanted to know about bouquet garnis but were afraid to ask...

Ok, you weren't afraid to ask...

Not really had time to add extra entries other than the stuff I’m cooking from the Tome. However, I did come across this information in the very excellent book A Celebration of Soup by Lindsey Bareham on the subject of bouquet garnis – I usually guess as to what should go in mine, and try and match it to the ingredients of the soup/stew etc, but Lindsey gives an ultimate list here, which I’m reproducing – I’m using it as a benchmark from now on and thought you might like to know too… So whenever I mention that I’ve used a bouquet garni, unless Griggers is very specific as to what should go in it, it’ll be one of these and I’ll link back to this post. Hope it’s useful!

Poultry – stick of celery cut in half, parsley stalks, a couple of sprays of tarragon, a bayleaf, a sprig of thyme and leek trimmings.

Game – A sprig of rosemary, ½ an onion, 3 inches of pared orange peel and a sprig of thyme.

Fish – A couple of fennel stalks or leaves, a sprig each of chervil and tarragon and leek trimmings.

Meat – One clove of unpeeled garlic, parsley stalks, a bayleaf, ½ an onion studded with a few cloves and a sprig of time. (I’m also adding a spring of sage with pork and rosemary with lamb).

#139 Bakewell Pudding

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve got quite a lot on at the minute – the main ball-ache being that I’ve been in work almost everyday over the last few weeks including weekends. Therefore, on Saturday after a big lab sesh, I really felt the need to do some baking, so for pudding on Saturday evening I plumped for the Bakewell Pudding. Don’t be getting this confused with a Bakewell tart – they are similar, but with important differences: Bakewell tarts have a pastry base, a thin layer of cherry jam, frangipane, and then a covering of icing with a cherry on top. A Bakewell pudding, pastry, raspberry jam, then a layer of egg custard mixed with ground almonds (in fact, in days of yore, there would have been no almonds at all, so the emphasis is definitely on the egg custard). These may not seem like important differences, and they are not, but just pointing them out for any pernickety people out there who like their factoids.

Anyways, have a go at this pudding – serve it warm or cold. Griggers doesn’t mention cream when serving it or anything like that, but I can’t imagine it would do any harm!

Start by making a sweet shortcrust pastry – I made mine from 6 ounces of plain flour, 2 ounces of icing sugar, 4 ounces of butter and a little milk. Griggers says to line an 8 inch tart tin with the pastry, but I found that there was mixture left over, so make it in a 9 inch tin if you have one – alternatively make additional mini ones as I did! Once lined, spread over a thin layer of raspberry jam – not too much, a good dessert spoonful will do it.

Now make the main filling: gently melt 4 ounces of unsalted butter in a pan and leave to cool. Then beat or whisk together 4 eggs with 4 ounces of caster sugar until creamy and frothed up (use an electric whisk/beater, unless you like doing it by hand). Slowly pour in the butter and mix gently before folding in 4 ounces of ground almonds with a metal spoon. Pour the mixture into the case and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the filling has set, at 200-220⁰C.


#139 Bakewell Pudding – 7/10. A real homely comforting pudding/tart, very sweet and moist. It reminded me of the cakes my mum used to make when I was little – I think hers was coconut rather than almonds, but the effect is pretty much the same. Really nice with a cup of tea or a glass of milk.

#138 Cheese Souffle

For the last few weeks, I’ve been dreaming about soufflés – I don’t know why but I had a real hankering. I hope I’m not pregnant. Luckily for me Lady Grigson always obliges – there are loads of soufflé recipes in English Food. Obviously the soufflé does not have English roots, but up until recently, they were pretty popular – particularly in the 1970s and 1980s when English Food was written. They do have a bit of a reputation for being tricky little devils – I had only cooked one once before when I was about 10 – I remember it completely sinking, but being delicious.

I like one comment Jane makes about soufflés when they are ready to come out of the oven:
“…it is better to have everyone sat at table. In a properly trained household, the cry of ‘Souffle!’ should have the same effect of assembly as ‘Fire!’”

We loves her.

FYI: the soufflé was invented in the late eighteenth century – around 1782, but the first recipes didn’t not appear until 1813, when several were published in Louis Ude's The French Cook of 1813. The idea being they were cheap as they are essentially just eggs and air with some kind of flavouring so they were a good meal the common man.


This cheese soufflé feeds between 2 and 4 people depending upon how greedy they are. There’s a couple of stages, but they're pretty straight-forward and not as tricky as people seem to make out:

First of all make sure you have a soufflé dish (or similar) that has a capacity of around 2 ½ pints and grease it with butter, then preheat the oven to 200°C. Next, heat ½ pint of milk to just below boiling point and melt 2 ounces of butter in another (decent-sized) saucepan and add 1 ½ ounces of flour to it. Allow to cook for a minute, take off the heat, and add the boiling milk. Whisk well to form a smooth sauce and then incorporate 4 large egg yolks, one at a time. Mix in 3 ounces of Cheddar (or Lancashire) cheese and season with salt, pepper and Cayenne (which I forgot!). Put back on a low heat and stir until all is nice and smooth. Easy-peasy thus far.

Next, whisk 5 large egg whites together with a pinch of salt until they reach the stiff-peak stage – you should be able to upturn the bowl without any of the contents to fall out. Take a tablespoon of the whites and mix it in to the cheesy sauce to slacken the mixture, then tip in the rest, folding the whites in carefully with a metal spoon until incorporated. You need to do this with minimal stirring, so don’t worry if there’s a few specks of white knocking around. Stir in a tablespoon of grated Parmesan cheese and pour/spoon the mixture into the soufflé dish. Lastly, sprinkle over another tablespoon of Parmesan and a tablespoon of stale breadcrumbs. Bake for 30 minutes – do not on any account open the oven door until the time is up. Serve straight out of the oven with a nice green salad.

#138 Cheese Soufflé – 8.5/10. This was really nice, and definitely English – just like Chicken Tikka Masala become part of our cuisine more recently. The top was very crisp and the centre was just cooked and extremely light. We wolfed it down. Bring on the other ones, I say – but which to do next..? You have to make sure everything is ready – salad dressed, plates laid out etc – otherwise as it does collapse, but I have to say, not that much. All I have to say is – give it a go if you’ve never made one, it’s no way near as tricky as I thought it would be.

#136-137 Sponge Cake II and Butter Cream I

April has not been a bumper Grigson month like March was. This is due to the fact I am uber-busy with my PhD work at the minute, plus I’m doing the tiling in the kitchen too which does not help. No indeedy. Anyways, enough of the excuses… A kick up the arse came from the fact I had to provide a cake for the Dictyostelium group lab meeting, so I thought I’d do something straightforward – a sponge cake with butter cream. Great stuff; they have separate recipes in the book, so it would be two Grigsons with one stone. There are two recipes for sponge cakes and two for butter cream in English Food and I have already attempted one of each (see here and here), although in a funny order as you can see – this is because the Butter Cream I required a sugar thermometer, which I didn’t have at the time.

Ok, here’s the cake recipe. A word of advice though before I carry on – do not attempt this cake unless you have either an electric mixer or a very strong wanking hand…

Start off by whisking three whole eggs together with 6 ounces of caster sugar until light and frothy – this took 10 minutes using the Kitchen Aid on full whack. Stop when the eggs have reached the ribbon stage. Whilst you are waiting for that to happen, heat the oven to 190°C and grease and lightly flour two 7 inch sandwich tins. Also, gently melt 2 ounces of slightly salted butter with two tablespoons of water. Once melted, leave to cool until at least tepid. When the eggs are whisked, gently stir in the butter. Now fold in 4 ounces of self-raising flour by sieving a small amount in at a time and gently folding it in with a metal spoon to prevent the air bubbles from popping. Divide between the two sandwich tins and bake for 15-20 minutes until cooked – use a skewer, or whatever, you know the drill. Cool on a wire rack. Griggers says jam and cream is the best, or a nice butter cream, like this one…

The butter cream can be made whilst you are waiting for the cake to cook – especially if it takes two attempts to get the bugger right!


Melt 4 ounces of caster sugar and a tablespoon or two of water in a small saucepan. Once dissolved, raise the heat and boil it until it reached the ‘soft crack’ stack, or 135°C. Be careful here: use a very small pan – too large and the sugar overheats too easily becoming a caramel, which will ruin the whole thing. Whilst it is heating up, put two egg yolks into a bowl and lightly whisk them. When the sugar is ready vigorously beat it into the eggs with a whisk. The mixture thickens up as the yolks are cooked by the hot sugar. When just tepid, beat in 4 ounces of unsalted butter in small amounts until it is all amalgamated. Once cool, you can add all sots of flavourings – I went with some vanilla, but Griggers recommends plain chocolate or a tablespoon of slaked coffee granules. Just go crazy, kids!

#136 Sponge Cake II – 9/10. When Griggers this recipe is foolproof, she did not say it was foolproof and brilliant. The sponge extremely light and not at all rubbery like the usual Genoese sponge on account (I assume) the addition of the melted butter. This is the best sponge cake recipe I have used. Excellent – go make it right now!


#137 Butter Cream I – also 9/10. Griggers totally slagged-off the half-butter (or even margarine, heaven forbid!), half-icing sugar as essentially awful. Having a soft spot for that type of butter cream I was keen to see the difference. The difference is huge – I know it is a bit of a faff using the sugar thermometer etc., but it is well worth it. Once you’ve tried it, ladies and gents, you’ll never go back…

#135 Butterscotch Cake

I was a little bored on Tuesday evening so I thought I’d bake a nice cake for Cake Wednesday at work. I knew there had been no takers this week with it being close to Easter. Plus I’ve not made a normal cake for ages. This one is a variation on the pound cake – I’ve made them before (here is the blog entry) so I won’t go through it. The only difference is that caster sugar is substituted for soft dark brown sugar which gives it a richer, denser molasses flavour. The exciting thing being the butterscotch icing – I’d bought a sugar thermometer recently and not used it yet. I went a bit wrong with icing. Because I was in a rush, I heated it too rapidly before the sugar dissolved properly. Plus I accidentally heated it to the firm ball rather than the soft ball stage, which meant it went a bit too stiff. Hey-ho. If you try it, remember that slow and steady wins the race here. A little practise is required I feel. Any hints and tips are happily accepted!

For the icing (do as I say, not as I do…):

Slowly heat 6 ounces of soft dark brown sugar, an ounce of butter and two tablespoons of double cream until everything had dissolved. Now raise the heat and boil until the sugar reaches the soft ball stage using a sugar thermometer (turn the heat off as it approaches the temperature, as it keeps on a-rising!). Allow to cool until ‘tepid’ and beat. I’m not sure what it’s meant to turn into, but mine was a very stiff blob of sugar. I managed to spread it over the cake top with a wet palette knife and everything looked okay.

FYI: In case you were thinking that butterscotch doesn’t sound very English, but rather Scottish, you would be a fool (as I was). Scotch is a ye olde English word for score as proper butterscotch is hard and needs to be scored before it is broken.

#135 Butterscotch Cake – 6.5/10. I liked the cake as it was piled with dark brown sugar, so it could not be bad, but it was a little dry. I have a feeling that it was overcooked though – I still haven’t got to grips with the old fan oven and sponge cakes. I remember getting a handy hint from Anthea (a sometimes commenter on the blog) that you should put a some boiling water in a roasting tin and place it in the bottom of the oven to stop it drying the cake out. Needless to say, I forgot to. Oh well. The butterscotch topping was very sweet and very tasty, even though it didn’t quite turn out as expected…

#134 Mushrooms, or the Pearls of the Field

The male cook/chef that seems to appear often in English Food is one Alexis Soyer – he wrote a book called Shilling Cookery for the People in 1854. I’ve done one of his recipes before (reproduced in English Food) using oranges. This one is a method of doing good service to a large field mushroom, should you find one, as I did in Asda the other day. I thought I’d quote what he says about this dish straight from English Food as the language is brilliant, though the people for whom he was writing probably thought he was a right old ponce:

“Being in Devonshire, at the end of September and walking across the fields before breakfast to a small farmhouse, I found three very fine mushrooms, which I thought would be a treat, but on arriving at the house I found it had no oven, a bad gridiron and a smoky coal fire. Necessity, they say, is the mother of Invention, I immediately applied to our grand and universal mamma, how should I dress my precious mushrooms, when a gentle whisper came to my ear…”

This is what he did:
Place the mushroom on a round, or rounds of toast, depending on size, that have been spread with clotted cream (I had some left from the junket I made the other day). Have the mushroom stalk side up and spread that with more cream. Season well and place in inverted Pyrex dish over it and bake in a hot oven (200°C) for 30 minutes. He used a glass tumbler – to prevent the smoke spoiling the flavour of his precious mushrooms. It’s a good method, as it does keep all the mushroom juices in.


He goes on to say:
“The sight when the glass is removed, is most inviting, its whiteness rivals the everlasting snows of Mont Blanc, and the taste is worthy of Lucullus. Vitellius would never have dined without it; Apicius would never have gone to Greece to seek for crawfish; and had he only half the fortune left when he committed suicide, he would have preferred to have left proud Rome and retire to some villa or cottage to enjoy such an enticing dish."

OK...

#134 Mushrooms, or the Pearl of the Fields – 8/10. I have to say, although he talks a load of nonsense, he knows how a treat a mushroom fairly. This simple supper dish is maybe the best way to show off the earthy flavour of those large meaty, juicy field/Portabello mushrooms. The clotted cream soaked into the crispy bread and also formed a rich sauce in the cap. Brilliant.

#133 Welsh Supper Herrings

After the creamy and rich oyster loaves last night, I thought I’d go for something a little bit more fresh-tasting and the Welsh Supper Herrings seemed to fit the bill. I chose herring because, like oysters, I’d never knowingly tried them except, of course, in the form of kippers. Herring are quite cheap as are most of the other ingredients so it didn’t break the bank. The odd ingredient here is the Bramley apple, but apparently it’s a traditional thing, herring and apple. First I’d heard.

Gut, clean, descale, behead and fillet a pound of herring – ask your fishmonger to do this, I tried to fillet them myself and was reasonably successful but was a bit of a ballache. Now mix an ounce of softened butter with a tablespoon of mustard made up from mustard powder (Why? Because Griggers says so, that’s why). Spread the butter over the cut side of the fish fillets and roll them up.

Next get to work on peeling and then finely slicing a pound and a half of firm potatoes – Jane recommends using a mandolin for this. Please, please, please be very careful here – I managed to slice a piece of my thumb off doing this last night so watch out. You have been warned. Don’t go suing me if you open a vein… Plunge the potatoes into boiling salted water for a minute she says – though I would do them for 2 or maybe even three (see below). Then slice a large onion and two Bramley (or other cooking) apples that have been peeled and cored. No need for the mandolin for those. Use a little more softened butter to grease a pie dish and make a layer using half the potatoes, then half the apples and half the onions, seasoning as you go with salt and pepper. Next, the rolled up herring fillets and sprinkle them with half a teaspoon of dried sage (Why not fresh? Because Griggers says so, that’s why). Then add the remaining apple, onion and potato, adding a brief painting on of melted butter to the last layer of spuds. Pour boiling water so it comes around half way up the dish. Bake for around half an hour until the potatoes are cooked.


#133 Welsh Supper Herrings – 3.5/10. Not sure if this was a bad dish or a bad recipe for a good dish. The potatoes, apples and onions were very nice – the apples especially lifted it, but the potatoes were not cooked after half an hour even though I blanched them in the boiling water. They were done after an hour, but unfortunately this meant that the herrings had cooked down into a mush not unlike cat food. So pretty disappointing seeing as I almost sacrificed a digit for it. Hey-ho, such is the nature of this undertaking…

#132 Oyster loaves

One of the least-explored chapters in English Food is the Fish chapter. The main reason for this is that I have the least experience of the foods therein. Being English (I won’t say British as Wales, N. Ireland and Scotland may be different) means, generally, the only fish you get to eat is white fish – cod and haddock. Though I love the fish I’ve tried, one thing we have never eaten as a family growing up in Yorkshire is shellfish. The only exception is prawns because my Mum likes them. Because I’ve never really tried the bivalves – cockles etc., I find them tricky to get my head around them – they look like something from a biological specimen jar and do not resemble anything else that might turn up on the dinner table. I felt an inauguration coming on, and “why not” I thought, start at the top, with the king – oysters.

I popped on down to the Arndale Market in Manchester, got some rock oysters for 70p each and an oyster knife for a fiver from the cooks stall. Hopefully I’ll get to use it more than once…

I thought I’d better not go straight in at the deep end with a raw squirming oyster, but instead get there by degrees. First step – oyster cooked and smothered in some kind of sauce with lots of other flavours. Second step – oyster cooked but by itself. Final step – raw oyster. Griggers was there to help, natch, with this recipe straight out of the 1970s:

This recipe is per person, so multiply up depending on how many you’re cooking for:

Begin by heating your oven to 220°C whilst waiting for it to heat up, open 4 oysters with an oyster knife. This can be tricky if using large rock oysters with big gnarly shells, but with a bit of patience it’s quite easy to get the knack for opening them. Give them a rinse and a scrub under the cold tap first and make sure you hold the flat side of the oyster uppermost and with your grasping hand wrapped in a tea towel. Use the knife to prize the hinged back part of the oyster open. Do this over a bowl so you can keep any liquor that escapes – very important for later. I found that placing a sieve lined with some kitchen paper filtered away any sand or cracked bits of shell.

Now hollow out 2 bread rolls by first slicing the top off and then scooping out the centre, making sure you don’t make any holes in the side. Brush the lid and roll inside and out with melted butter – about ½ an ounce – and bake for 10 minutes until crisp and golden.

Meanwhile, melt another ½ ounce of butter in a pan and cook the oysters for around a minute and a half until they are opaque and firm. Remove them and cut them up into two or three pieces. Pour the oyster liquor into the pan along with 2 tablespoons each of double and soured cream, and season with salt, pepper and 3 or 4 drops of Tabasco sauce. Reduce it down to a thick sauce, stirring all the time, and warm the oysters through in the sauce. Check for seasoning. Lastly, divide the mixture between the hollowed bread rolls and serve immediately.

"Feed me, Seymore"

#132 Oyster Loaves – 7.5/10. I really enjoyed this. I’ve heard people say that oysters taste of ‘the sea’, or ‘ozone’ or iodine’; I’ve never been sure what they meant by that, but now I do! The oysters were sweet, rich and very soft and the piquant, yet creamy sauce really worked well. The idea of putting them in a hollowed bread roll might seem a bit naff now, but you could serve on a circle of bread fried gently in butter to make look more with the times. One would make a really good first course. I am very impressed with my first oyster adventure and would definitely encourage anyone who is squeamish about them to give this recipe a try – it simple and not expensive.

FYI: In days of yore, oysters were considered food for the poor and were largely ignored by the posh. They were used as a substitute for mushrooms (hence steak, kidney and oyster pie) in many dishes as they were very rare due to the fact no-one had worked out how to cultivate them. It wasn't until they became scarce due to loss of habitat and pollution that they were thought to be a delicacy.

#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!

#113 Muffins

After the reasonable success of the crumpets, I thought I should carry on the bread theme and use up some more of the yeast. I didn’t even have to look through; I knew straight away that I wanted muffins – the second best breakfast carb after the crumpet… Don’t be confused between these muffins and American muffins – they are two very different beasts. I suppose in America our muffins are called English muffins, non?

Muffins are halfway between crumpets and bread – they are made with soft dough using strong flour and are cooked gently on the hob, rather than in the oven. They’re easy to do, but do require a bit of time and energy to knead them properly… It is worth putting in a bit of effort as it make the dough nice and elastic and therefore fluffier when cooked.

This recipe makes 12 muffins:

Start off by creaming ½ an ounce of yeast in 4 tablespoons of warm water, then warm ½ pint of whole milk and an ounce of butter in a pan until they reach blood heat. Meanwhile crack an egg into a bowl and give it a brief whisk, and pour in the warm milk into it, whisking thoroughly.

Weigh out a pound of strong plain white flour and empty it into a warm bowl (or better, warm the flour and bowl together on a low heat in the oven). Make a well in the centre and pour in the yeast and the milk-egg mixture, along with a teaspoon of salt. Mix together thoroughly, adding more flour or water if required. You want a soft dough, but not one that is sticky. Knead the dough for 5 to 10 minutes, place it, cover it and allow the dough to rise to at least double it’s volume.

Roll out the dough to ½ inch thickness and cut out rounds with large pastry cutters or whatever (I used crumpet rings). Knead the trimmings together and roll them out too, so you get as many muffins as possible from the mixture. Let them rise a little.

Put a heavy-based pan on a low heat and brush it lightly with lard or oil and fry them gently. Griggers says they should expand into something like a “puffball fungus”, and if you leave them to rise slightly they will. Turn them over after around 7 minutes and cook the other side.

Apparently, you should toast muffins whole – they should never be cut, but torn, adding butters as you go. Either way, eat them with lots of salted butter.

#113 Muffins – 7/10. I really liked these – it was easy to make them nice and light as the low heat made them almost impossible to overcook. The result is light and fluffy muffins that eat very well, very hard to get wrong, I think, and you should give them a go. They freeze well too…

#112 Queen of Puddings

I had people coming over for a nice Thai meal and initially thought I’d make some light fresh Thai-style dessert to go with it. Then I though, ‘Bugger that’ and went for the stodge option. I’d heard of Queen of Puddings and seen folk on telly making it, but had never eaten it before. Obviously something called Queen of Puddings must be a delicious taste sensation, mustn’t it? For those that don’t know, QoP is a dessert made of a sweet lemony custard base thickened with breadcrumbs and egg yolks, a layer of jelly, and then topped with meringue. According to Wikipedia, it goes back to the Seventeenth Century.

Begin by making the custard base:

Place 5 ounces of fresh brown or white breadcrumbs in a bowl and stir through a tablespoon of vanilla sugar and the grated zest of one large lemon. In a pan heat a pint of milk and 2 ounces of butter until almost boiling. Pour it over the breadcrumbs, stir it, and leave to stand for 10 minutes and beat in 4 large egg yolks (reserve the whites for the meringue). Grease a shallow dish with a 2 ½-ish pint capacity with butter and pour in the custard mixture. Bake at 180ºC for up to 30 minutes, though it could be much less; dependent upon the dimensions of your dish. Take out the dish when the custard is still slightly wobbly.

Warm up 2 tablespoons of fruit jelly: raspberry, blackcurrant or bramble and spread it evenly over the custard. You could use jam here too, but sieve out any seedy bits. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and then slowly fold in 4 ounces of caster sugar. Spread the meringue over the top and sprinkle a teaspoon or two of sugar over the top. Return to the oven until browned. Serve warm with cream or custard if you like (I served it au naturale).

#112 Queen of Puddings – 6/10. A nice desert; I think I had thirds by the end of the night – was a little tipsy by the end (sorry about the quality of the pic!). It was the crispy meringue that definitely saved it from being blow average. Though good, slightly disappointed that it wasn’t some kind of phenomenal pud.

#111 Jerusalem Artichoke and Shellfish Salad

With the Jerusalem artichokes I bought in Unicorn, I thought I’d do Butters and I a nice swish, yet healthy, salad. For some reason this salad is in the Vegetables chapter; I didn’t realise that prawns and scallops were in the vegetable kingdom. But there you go. Facetiousness aside, I love shellfish and certainly don’t cook enough of it. I particularly like scallops – they’re so pricey though; a fiver for three line-caught ones! (I’d feel too guilty buying the dredged-up ones.)


These amounts make enough for two as a main course, or 4 for a starter or side dish:

Start off by boiling 4 large Jerusalem artichokes in their skins in boiling salted water along with a2 tablespoons of lemon juice. When tender, peel the skin off with your fingers and cut them in neat slices and put in a dish. Mix together 4 tablespoons of vegetable or hazelnut oil with 1 to 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar. Season it well and pour over the still warm artichokes. Give them a gentle stir and allow to cool. Gently grill three scallops that have been brushed with a little oil – just a couple of minutes per side until they have firmed up. Stab them with a skewer if you’re worried they’re not hot all the way through. Allow them to cool and cut in half, then slice down to make thin semi-circles. Next, peel four large cooked prawns, leaving the heads on for presentation purposes. Finally, arrange some watercress in bowls and artistically place the Jerusalem artichokes and scallops on top of the leaves and scatter with chopped coriander and a tablespoon of chopped roasted hazelnuts; and then place the expertly peeled prawns on top of those.

#111 Jerusalem Artichoke and Shellfish Salad – 6/10. A tasty salad, that really brought out the earthy flavour of Jerusalem artichokes. However, the subtle sweet flavour of the scallops was lost, which was a bit of a shame. I reckon you could make it without them and still have a good dish.