What's for Dinner? (Friday 16 Nov)

Friday's dinner was venison burgers with wedges and buttered greens.  

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The burgers were one of Jamie's clearance acquisitions from the freezer, and I also found some homemade rolls in there.  I sauteed some leeks and finely shredded spring greens, and put them directly on my burger.  Jamie had them on the side.  But the best part was the potato wedges.

Best Wedges Ever

500g potatoes, well scrubbed

1 T vegetable oil

any combination paprika, oregano, cumin, chili powder to taste

salt and pepper

1 T semolina flour

Slice the potatoes lengthwise into wedges about 1/2 inch thick.  (Don't bother peeling them.) Lay the slices out on a tea towel and pat dry.  In a bowl, toss them with the oil and spices, and then again with the semolina.  Lay out in a single layer on a tray lined with foil or parchament paper and bake at 400°F for 20-30 minutes, flipping once. 

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The semolina makes them extra crunchy, and has been proven over the years to be superior to both regular flour and cornmeal.  They are excellent with ketchup, sweet chilli sauce, or (my favourite) savoury onion and thyme applesauce.  

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What's for Dinner? (Thursday 15 Nov)

Thursday's dinner was red spaghetti.  We had it with a particularly good baguette I brought home from the Wee Boulangerie, and dipping oil mixed with some of Mom's spice blend.

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Red Spaghetti

1/2 small onion, sliced thinly

a few sundried tomatoes in oil

1 clove garlic, minced

1 bunch ruby chard, leafy parts only

salt and pepper

spaghetti

Put the spaghetti on to boil  Chop up the tomatoes and put them into a cold pan, then turn the heat to medium-high.  When they start to sizzle, throw in the onions and cook until they are soft and translucent.  Meanwhile, chop up the chard into thin slices.  When the onions are ready, throw in the garlic and stir through.  Add the chard and stir-fry, moving it around so that all the pieces wilt evenly.  The spaghetti will be done about now, so put it with a splash of its cooking liquid into the pan and stir to combine.  Salt and pepper to taste.

I like this recipe because the sauce cooks in the time the pasta would boil anyway, so it takes about fifteen minutes all told.  I've used same technique for spinach and spring greens, and it is always delicious.

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What's for Dinner? (Wednesday 14 Nov)

Wednesday's dinner was salmon and bulgar wheat pilaf.

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I had planned cous cous, but realised at the last moment that I was out, so I topped up my vegetables with bulgar wheat.  I baked the salmon with slices of lemon I had reserved from making my lemon yogurt bundt cake.

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This is one of those recipes I pull out again and again.  It doesn't contain butter, so it requires no softening or creaming, so it's a super-quick cake.  It's based on a traditional French gâteau au yaourt.

Lemon Yogurt Bundt Cake

2 eggs

1 C yogurt

1 C sugar

1/3 C vegetable oil 

zest of one lemon

2 C flour

1 1/2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

Icing: Half a cup of icing sugar mixed with the juice of one lemon, just enough to make pourable.

Beat together everything up to the zest, then fold in the dry ingredients. Pour batter into a well-buttered bundt tin and bake at 350°F for 30-35 minutes.  Let stand 10 minutes before turning out. Ice only when fully cool. Most delicious the second day.

 

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Baking with Sheena III: Ginger Biscuits

THESE THINGS ARE AMAZING.

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Thursday is Jamie's night out with the nerds, and there were no Poirots recorded that I haven't seen, so I rifled through Gran's recipes and found a tempting one: 

 

42. Peggy (Garpin) Ginger Biscuits

3/4 lb S.R. flour

1/2 lb castor sugar

3 oz syrup

4 oz butter or marg.

l level tsp. Bicar. of Soda

1 tsp gr. ginger

1 small egg

Melt sugar, butter + syrup in pan + add to all other ingredients.  Roll into small balls, place on baking tray.  Bake in mod. oven.

 

That's the recipe as transcribed exactly from her card.  I wish I had them here so I could take a picture of the original.  Garpin is either the name of a family or a farm.  I will consult the in-laws and update you.

 

Garpin Ginger Biscuits (Em's first try)  Yield: 31

8 oz castor sugar

3 oz golden syrup

4 oz salted butter

12 oz plain flour + 1 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

1 t ginger

1 medium egg

In a medium saucepan, heat sugar, butter and syrup until just melted.  Leave to cool for a few minutes until you can put your finger in it comfortably.  Mix together dry ingredients in a bowl, then pour in warm mixture and one pre-beaten egg.  Roll into smaller than usual balls, and bake at 350°F for fifteen minutes, or just until the inside of the cracks have turned the same brown as the rest of the cookie.

 

Verdict: Awesome.

 

Part of the delight of these family recipes is that they come with no picture, and also they're from a culture of which I'm not a native.  So who knows how they'll came out.  It was great to watch them through the oven door as they puffed up, then melted down, then formed cracks, then turned a deep golden brown.

 

I think I slightly overbaked the first dozen, and they ran into each other.  So for the second batch I used smaller balls on a bigger pan and took them out sooner.  The best example from the first batch is on the left, and from the second on the right.

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They are flat and crispy and sweet and gingery and just a bit caramelly from the syrup.  Would definitely make again.  Mmm.

 

 

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What's for Dinner? (Another Tuesday)

This Tuesday's dinner is stir-fried vegetables with steamed rice.

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The refrigerator contained bok choy, carrots, the rest of the red pepper from the pizza, and half a leek.  I stir fried them all in a large pan in a little oil, then tossed in my standard sauce made of arbitrary amounts of soya sauce, vinegar, mustard, honey, ginger, coriander, turmeric and water.  I let that reduce for a bit, then turned off the heat and drizzled a little sesame oil on top. We ate it with sweet chilli sauce.

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And for dessert, rice pudding because the milk was starting to get a bit old, and the extra heat from the oven kept me warm while I was working. 

Rice Pudding

3 oz arborio rice

2 oz sugar

1 oz butter

2 pints milk

1 t vanilla extract

pinch nutmeg

pinch cinnamon

Throw everything into an oven-proof dish that has a lid, and cook it in a 150 oven for 2-2.5 hours, stirring every half hour or so.  It's done when it resembles a pudding, but will keep thickening as it cools. 

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Rice pudding is Jamie's childhood favourite.  It takes so little effort to make him so happy.

 

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What's for Dinner? (Another Monday)

Pizza day!  (It's the best day.)

After a bus ride back from the Borders, errands in the city, an eye appointment, and a cold walk home to a cold house, I pulled a half batch of pizza dough and a dish of sauce from the freezer.  In a few hours it was defrosted enough to throw together with leeks, broccoli, red pepper and mozzarella, and the result was a delicious homemade pizza.  

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Our house pizza dough recipe is based on Billy Reisinger's, but Jamie has done the maths to use up our abundance of digestive crumb "sand."

Digestive Pizza

1.5 cups warm water

141 g digestive crumbs (gold glitter optional)

2 t salt

26 g oil

14 g yeast

413 g bread flour

Mix water, digestives, and yeast in a large bowl.  Let sit for ten minutes. (This allows the yeast to bloom and the crumbs to soften.)  Add salt and oil, then flour, 100g at a time.  When it becomes too hard to stir, turn it out and knead it on the counter until all the flour is combined and the dough is smooth.  Put back in the bowl, cover loosely, and leave to rise for at least an hour in a warm place. When ready to make pizza, knock back and halve the dough.  Put one half in the freezer for next week, and bake the other half in a 200 oven until the cheese is almost about to burn.

I was too excited about to get a picture of the cooked pizza before we dug into it.  It was delicious.

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Baking with Sheena II

Today I finished transcribing all 123 of Gran's hand-written recipes.  The Australian Tea Cake card is my favourite, because of the warning at the top.  

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Recipes 19, 23, 59 and 106 are all for chicken liver paté, which either means that she really loved it, or could never find a recipe she liked.  The recipe for beetroot chutney is covered in purple splatters.

Recipes for Banana Loaf

 

 

 

 

 

14

15

16

Favourite

bananas

3

3

3

3

butter

4 oz

5 oz

3 oz

2 oz

sugar

4 oz

6 oz

4 oz

8 oz

flour

6 oz SRF

8 oz wheat

7 oz SRF

10 oz plain

eggs

2

2

2

2

liquid

2 T milk

1 orange

 

 

leavening

1 t soda 

1 t powder

1/4 t soda

1 t powder

 

There are also three recipes for Banana Loaf, which Gran made often to dispose of overripe bananas. According to Lynne, she latterly preferred the recipe from the Callum's Trust Home Baking Book (marked Favourite), which has far more sugar.  I hate banana bread, but now I'm tempted to make four in the name of science.

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What's for Dinner? (Thursday)

Thursday's dinner is leftovers.  

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I had the pasta from last night, and for Jamie I put the last of the lentil stew in a pie tin with the last of the mashed potato, grated some cheddar on top and dubbed it "Hippie Pie."  

But for dessert we had individual apple crumbles in adorable apple dishes Jamie's mother gave us for our wedding anniversary.  

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Apple Crumble for Two

For the topping:

1/4 C oats

1/4 C flour

little cinnamon and nutmeg

2 T brown sugar

2 T butter

Pack the apples into two small or one medium oven-safe dish.  Sprinkle evenly with vanilla and brown sugar.  (Few drops of lemon juice optional at this stage.)  In a separate bowl, rub the topping ingredients together with your fingertips until they are homogeneous.  Layer topping carefully into dish(es).  Bake at 180°C (350°F) for 20-25 minutes, or until topping is brown and apples are soft.  Serve with custard.

Apparently, crumble in Scotland has oats and in England does not.  This is because of Samuel Johnson.

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Baking with Sheena

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I found this recipe in Gran's recipe box.  I have no idea what a melting moment is, but the Rural seems to, so I have a batch of them in the oven. They smell like custard, which is both unsurprising and delightful.  I've copied the recipe verbatim from Gran's notecard:

 

Melting moments (S.W.R.I)

3 ozs. S.R. flour

3 ozs. marg.

1 oz. custard powder

1 oz. sugar

METHOD  Cream marg. and sugar.  Add flour and custard powder.  Form into balls, put on to a well greased tin.  Score on top with flat end of fork.  Bake in a good hot oven.  15-20 mins.

 

But I don't have margarine or self-raising flour, so I made some substitutions.  I also had to guess about exactly how hot a "good hot oven" is.  

 

Melting Moments (Em's first try)

3 oz plain flour

1/2 t baking powder

3 oz room-temperature butter

1 oz custard powder

1 oz sugar

Cream butter and sugar.  Add flour, baking powder, custard.  Form into 12 balls, shape like peanut butter cookies.  Bake 15 minutes at 180°C with the fan on. 

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Mmmm.  They are very short and very crumbly and not too sweet.  They would be very nice half-dipped in chocolate.  Next time I think I'll double the recipe.  Same amount of work for twice as many cookies?  Done.

 

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What's for Dinner? (Wednesday)

 

Wednesday's dinner is baked pasta. 
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I always make my own pasta sauce.  This is a holdover from when I first moved to the UK and couldn't find a brand of sauce in Tesco that was worth the price.  Now I find pre-made varieties both too salty and too sweet.  And they never taste enough of vegetable. 

Spaghetti Sauce

1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T oil
1 small onion, diced
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1/2 C water
1 bay leaf
1 T basil
1 t oregano
pinch sugar
salt & pepper
Fry the onion in the oil until translucent; add the garlic and fry one minute more.  Dump in the tomatoes, herbs, salt and water.  Bring just to a boil, then turn down to low and simmer, half covered, at least 20 minutes.  When the sauce looks thick and delicious, fish out the bay leaf and add two turns of pepper.
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In this instance, I added yellow pepper and chard stems for extra nutrition.  The former went in with the onions, and the latter with the garlic.  When the sauce was done, I boiled the pasta, adding the greens to the water for the last 30 seconds.  The drained pasta was mixed with sauce and covered with cheese and oregano, then baked in the oven for a few minutes until the cheese started to bubble. The timings were all screwed up, though, because I decided to make cookies at the same time. 

 

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