Nettles yseethed

 

I spent last Saturday helping cook our annual medieval banquet, and decided to entertain myself by having a go at a stinging-nettle dish, something I'd never attempted before. After all, I figured, it's hard enough to get people to eat veggies at a feast - why not go the whole hog and serve something they're actually frightened to try?
;-)

Here's the recipe I made up. It is heavy on the calories and fat, and believe it or not it's delicious!

 

Funges and Nettles yseethed in Cream, upon Sops:

 

• Sufficient fancy-ass crusty white bread (french loaf or pain du campagne or bruschetta bread) for a slice each per diner.
• Butter
• Single or double cream. Delia Smith says soured cream will curdle if boiled, so use fresh cream.
• Mushrooms - chestnut or exotic woodland varieties, or little field mushrooms, or a mix as preferred.
• Salt and pepper.
• Stinging-nettle tops - a plastic shopping bagful will feed about 20 people.
• Dry white wine - about a cupful. 

1. First, pick your stinging nettles. You want to wear heavy gardening gloves for this bit, and thick trousers and long sleeves. You want the only top whorls of young, fresh growth - not the older leaves. And try to find tall ones that dogs won't have peed on.
2. Switch to rubber gloves and wash the leaves thoroughly. Pick out all the more fibrous stems.
3. Toast the slices of bread on each side until golden. Keep warm. In medieval meals, "sops" (stale bread used to soak up juices) were a staple.
4. Wash and dice the mushrooms. Set aside.
5. Slice the leek finely and fry gently in lots of butter until soft.
6. Add wine to the leek.
7. Add nettles to the leek. They will collapse down as they cook, just as fresh spinach does:  a huge panful will reduce in a couple of minutes. And they will stop being painful to touch at this point!
8. In a separate frying pan, start frying the mushrooms in yet more butter, gently.
9. Salt and pepper the greens. Add cream and bring to a simmer, for about 3 minutes.
10. Before anything is reduced to mush, plate up a slice of bread each, topped with butter-fried mushrooms, topped by a slop of creamy nettles. Serve it forth. Yum.
 
Here's some more pics of the banquet food, btw:

 

Roasted cockatrice.

The "subtlety" or "conceit" - a display piece in which the food is made to look like something it is not. In this case, sugar and marzipan made to look like a snow-scene. Sadly, I cannot take credit for this gorgeous artistic creation!

What day is it?

Pictures from Christmas day...

"I'm on my 4th glass of mulled wine but I'm bloody getting this roulade filled"

The recipe for Sage and Parsnip Roulade is here, btw. It's delicious, and it's by Delia Smith, which means it's fairly bomb-proof even for cooks who drink.The hardest bit is finding a shop that still sells Sage Derby cheese.

Glasses of wine knocked over: 3. Glasses broken: 1.  Dinner: Perfect.

Mr Ashbless' Xmas Lime Pie

An after-dinner game of "Touch of Evil". We killed the vampire :-)

And the traditional game of "Greyhound Tetris"

Soup for REAL MEN

[Is there an emoticon for sarcasm?]
... or, indeed, a soup for anyone who likes beer :-)

I can say "indeed" because I've been LARPing, btw. In fact it's more or less compulsory. I've been cooking my annual medivalishy feast, and I'm going to share the recipe for Beer and Cheese Soup that we served as the first course. I think it tastes great- hearty and creamy and moreish, but you do really have to like the taste of beer.

Be careful with the beer if you try this. It gives the dish a distinctly bitter aftertaste, so don't sling the whole bottle in without testing.

Ingredients:
(serves 6)
  

• Butter for frying.
• 1 Onion
• 2 Carrot
• 2 sticks Celery
• 3 cloves Garlic
• 1 Bay Leaf
• Stock - about a pint: vegetable or chicken.
• 1 can or bottle of real Beer (not lager) - I used about three quarters of a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale
• 1 lb Cheddar Cheese (this needs to be a good sharp cheese, none of your sliced crap)
• Whole Milk - about a mugful
• Salt and Pepper to taste
  
• 2 teaspoons Mustard - English or Dijon
• 2 teaspoons Worcester Sauce - I used a vegetarian version
• 3 tablespoons of Plain Flour

Method:

1. Chop and fry the onion, carrot and celery in the butter. Add the bay leaf. Cover and simmer until soft - about 15 minutes.
2. Meanwhile,  chop the garlic and grate the cheese.
3. Remove bay leaf, but retain. Add garlic and then flour, stir and cook for a couple of minutes - it'll make a thick lumpy paste.
4. Take off heat. Puree in a food processor.
5. Return to pan. Put the  bay leaf back in. Stirring, slowly add the milk, beer and stock, allowing the paste to absorb the liquid and become smooth.
6. Add mustard, worcester sauce, salt and pepper
7. Bring to the boil. Simmer 5 mins.
8. Remove bay leaf. You can throw it away this time!
9. Add the cheese, a handful at a time. When it's all melted in you're ready to serve.

Eat with good bread and butter.

Eyecandy Monday

 

 "Ooh, I could just do with a bit of Xmas pudding now."

How are you, peeps? Survived Xmas okay then? We ate way past the limits of sanity, I'm afraid. Mango & nut roast, and asparagus loaf and all the trimmings ... followed by two puds.

Here's the recipe for Mr Ashbless' Annual Xmas Lime Pie, made on special request for Lucilla, who doesn't do other desserts. It is simple, yet wonderful:

Ingredients

• 200g packet of ginger biscuits (ginger snaps?)
• 50g butter
• 500g marscapone cheese
• 40g icing sugar
• 2 limes

Method:

1. Crush the ginger biscuits, using either a food processor, or extreme violence and a rolling pin. 
2. Melt the butter and mix with the ginger crumbs, then press into the bottom of a flan dish to make a base. Mr Ashbless goes for a 24cm dish but you may prefer your pie deeper and narrower.
3. Zest and juice the limes.
4. Beat together lime zest and juice with the cheese and sifted icing sugar.  Spread over the ginger biscuit base.
5. Chill for 30 mins.
6. Decorate with grated chocolate. Or sugared white grapes. Or don't bother, just eat :-)

This is the only thing that the dogs never get to taste at Xmas, because there's never any left over.

:-)

Honey(moon) Cake

I'm up early because today's a very important day. Far too important for me to waste time watching anyone get married, for a start. Today I am BAKING - because this weekend I've got to cater a medieval feast for 20 LARPers :-)  Dust off the corset again, Janine, and get cooking!

The menu:

Pea & Mint Soup, with bread and butter

Brie & Saffron Tart

Mulled Pears

Beef & Vegetable Stew, with dumplings

Chestnut Cobbler

Rocket & Herb Salad

Date Slice

Honey Cake

Cheeses, Dried Fruit, Oatcakes, Sweets

All for less than £10/head...
Here's my recipe for Honey Cake:

Ingredients: 

4oz / 125g margarine
7oz / 200g caster sugar
4 tablespoons runny honey
2 eggs, separated
half a teaspoon salt
half a teaspoon cinnamon
half a teaspoon mixed spice
half a teaspoon ground cloves
6oz / 175g self-raising flour


For the topping: 
2oz/50g soft butter
4 tablespoons runny honey
1 heaped teaspoon cinnamon

Method:
1) Cream the sugar and margarine. Blend in the honey and yolks.

2) Mix the salt and spices with the flour and stir in.

3) In a SPOTLESSLY CLEAN AND DRY BOWL, beat the egg whites until stiff. Fold gently into the mix.

4) Bake in a 8" square tin at G4 / 350F / 180C for 40-45 minutes until set. It's quite a wet mix.

5) In the meantime, whisk the topping butter until light and fluffy. Then whisk in the honey, a teaspoon at a time, until smooth and shiny. Whisk in the cinnamon.

6) Spread it on top of the hot honey cake and bake for another 5 minutes so the top goes all gooey. (Actually, you can spread it on toast and forget the cake altogether if you like. Yum.)

This cake tastes better underdone rather than overdone.
See y'all next week!

A Faire Tarte

I actually like cooking so long as it is something special, and for an appreciative audience (And nothing goes horribly wrong!). Tomorrow, I'm producing a LARP meal for 14. That means lots of courses and medievalish recipes, and today will be spent largely in the kitchen. I say "ish" because LARPers don't fuss much about historical accuracy, so long as it gives the right feeling. The menu goes:

The First Remove:
Pottage of Barley yseethed
Brede and sweet butter

 

The Seconde Remove:
A faire Tarte of Brie Cheese and Saffron
Salat of Herbes

The Third Remove:
A Grete Pye of Beeff and good Beer
A Coffyn Pye with Rootes laid thereto
Sweet Apple Rapeye

The Fourth Remove:
Hony Cake
A white rosewater Leche

Faire Cheeses shall be served thereafter

The most inaccurate thing on the menu, btw, is the vegetable pie.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the recipe for Brie and Saffron Tart, which is quite easy to make for a special meal. It's not cheap, it's not low-carb and it's not low calorie, but it's well worth it, I promise! And you'll be hooked on saffron forever...

Ingredients:

• 1 teaspoon saffron stems (that's the expensive bit!)
• Flakey/puff pastry (you can buy it in packs - you need a 400g lump or approx 3/4lb)
• 3/4 pint (400ml) of double cream
• 1/2lb (225g) Brie cheese (can you get that in the US? I hear it is a cheese wilderness over there...)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• salt and pepper
• 3 eggs + two extra yolks

Method:
1) Roll out the pastry on a floured surface and use it to line a 10-inch flan dish, discarding excess pastry. Bake in the oven at 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) for 10 minutes. It'll expand like a pastry shoggoth balloon, but collapse once you get it out to cool, so don't worry. Turn the oven right down to 200 degrees F (100 degrees C)

2) Put the cream, saffron and chopped cheese (including rind) in a covered bowl in the oven for 20-30 minutes: the cheese should melt and the saffron should dissolve into the cream, colouring it yellow.

3) Transfer mix to a blender and blend briefly - a few lumps add character. Add the ginger and sugar. Season with salt and pepper.

4) In a separate bowl, beat the eggs. Then whip them into the cheese mixture.

5) Pour into the pastry case, and bake at 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) for 30 minutes, until set firm and golden. Eat hot or cold.

I bet you'll want seconds!

Oh fudge!

Danielle has been asking for people to cook their favourite recipes for him, so I thought I'd share my recipe for chocolate fudge. It's simple and it's completely awesome - try this and your tastebuds will pass out with pleasure, I promise! And no, it's not low-carb...

Technically this is tablet (the Scottish variety) and not fudge, because the end result should be hard to the touch but have a melt-in-your mouth texture. I've also used it as a crispy fudge topping for a chocolate cake.

You need:
1lb sugar
half a pint milk
real full-fat butter
1 tablespoon cocoa powder (NOT drinking chocolate!)

1. Butter a clean non-stick metal tray.
   
2. Put sugar and milk in a deep pan - it's going to expand a lot as it cooks. Warm, stirrring with a wooden spoon, until the sugar has dissolved. 
3. Add a knob of butter and the cocoa. Bring to the boil.
4. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for about 20 minutes. The mix will darken and the noise it makes will change - it will start to make a soft "blat blat" sound as the bubbles burst.
5. It's ready when a small drop of the mix, tipped into a bowl of cold water, forms a firm cohesive ball instead of dissolving into the water.
6. Take off the heat. Beat with the wooden spoon. This bit is hard work ... just keep beating.
7. Eventually the mixture will start to feel "rough," or "gritty", as crystals start to form.
   Pour out onto the greased baking tray. Cut into squares before it cools.
8. When cold, store in an airtight container.

(If you don't boil it long enough it will turn out softer, if you overheat it will turn to toffee. And if you don't pour it out as soon as you feel the roughness develop, it will set solid in the pan...)

Enjoy!

Happy Xmas, everyone!

He was supposed to flash...

Anyway, I'm wishing all of you out there in blogland a very happy holiday! Here's hoping you have a warm house, the companionship of those you love (whether family or friends) and something tasty to eat. Like Mr Fairylights above.

Or if he's not to your taste ... how about this recipe for Chestnut Bourguignon, one of the dishes I'm cooking for Xmas dinner? It's vegetarian, but so rich that most meat-eaters don't notice. A great winter meal, which can be served with rice or used as a pie-filling. And no, it's not low-carb, but hell: it's only one day!

Ingredients:

• 25g butter
• 8 small onions or shallots, sliced
  
• 125g chestnut mushrooms, sliced
  
• 125g button mushrooms
  
• 150g carrot, sliced
  
• 1 celery heart, finely sliced
• 200g cooked chestnuts, halved or chopped to taste
  
• 2 teaspoons mustard
• 2 cloves of garlic, chopped or crushed
• bouquet garni, or 2 bayleaves and a sprig of rosemary
• 300ml red wine
• 300ml stock
• 2-3 teaspoons soy sauce.

Method:

Fry the shallots in the butter for 5 minutes or so, until soft. Add the mushrooms, chestnuts, celery and carrot and fry for another 5 minutes. Add the mustard, garlic, herbs, wine and stock.
Bring to the boil in a saucepan. Simmer, covered, for 25 minutes.

Before serving turn the heat up, add the soy sauce and boil to thicken slightly. Don't forget to remove the bouquet garni before dishing up.
Serves 4, with rice.

Merry Xmas!