Baking: Lemon Drizzle Cake

Difficulty: Easy
Ingredients:

■2 unwaxed lemons
■175g of unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
■200g of self-raising flour
■1/2 teaspoon baking powder
■3 large free range eggs
■175g of granulated sugar (for the sponge)
■100g of granulated sugar (for the icing)

Method
1.Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4 and grease a 900g loaf tin with some butter before lining with baking paper
2.Grate the zest of the two lemons
3.Put the butter, flour, 175g of sugar, baking powder, eggs, and the lemon zest into a large mixing bowl and mix until thick and smooth
4.Spoon the mixture into the loaf tin and level off with a pallette knife
5.Bake until golden brown, and the cake bounces back when you press it (this may or may not take more than 35 minutes)
6.Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool for 5 minutes before placing on to a wire rack and turning it the right way around
7.Squeeze out three tablespoons of lemon juice and mix this with the remaining 100g of granulated sugar to make the crunchy glaze
8.Spoon half of the glaze over the cake and let it dribble down the sides before leaving for 5 minutes. Repeat the process again after this time has passed
9.Leave the cake to set for an hour, until the icing has crystallised

Suggestion: The cake is classically made with lemons, but to give it a twist, why not use oranges or limes instead? You could even make a lemon and lime cake by adding lime zest to the sponge mixture and having a lemon topping!

Heston's Feasts: Mostly Gastronomical!

For the past five weeks I've been following Channel 4's series "Heston's Feasts" in which science-minded gastronut Heston Blumenthal picks a theme or era for a banquet for six celebs and redesigns the food associated with the topic. So far he's tackled Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory (i.e. the 60s), the Titanic, Gothic Fairy Tales and the 70s and has yet to tackle the 80s.

Every week Heston himself is the star of the show, getting up to strange antics in all sorts of locations as he tries to suss out what recipes are good and bad by testing them on the British public - not all the results are that great. The joy of this part of the program is that he actually sticks entirely to the original recipes, so he's eaten brains and raw blood, the vile stamina-foods of Sir Walter Scott and has eaten a traditional Moroccan camel recipe just like Lawrence of Arabia (that was the bit of the true story obviously left out of David Lean's film!)

Heston then re-imagines these original recipes to make something more exciting and extraordinary... as well as edible - we've been given the delights of the Humpy Meal (camel meat redifined as Happy-Meal-style fast food), the Pot Heston (a non-processed, fun Pot Noodle that's high on nutrition, low on those pesky E-Numbers) and blood risotto (really not as gruesome as it sounds, it's just a posh risotto with a small amount of concentrated blood, or purer black pudding, with some red beetroot dye to make it look devillishly evil).

Heston's ideas are nearly always inventive but sometimes they fall just that little bit short of the mark. In the weakest episode of the series so far, "Heston's Titanic Feast", Blumenthal swaps invention for the notion that he wants to serve the actual meal that the people on the Titanic never got to experience. As a result, his dishes were flat and uninspired and while all of his food must taste phenomenal, it's hard to get the impression of magic just by watching some celebrities fawn over a plate. Basically, when the fun and games aren't there Heston's Feasts turns into a posturing, high-brow show that could easily be found on inferior cooking shows like Masterchef, or even The Restaurant.

Luckily though, that hasn't happened in most of the episodes in this series. While that single episode was tedious to watch, Heston's charm and intelligence are there for all to see - if you can stand some of the slightly sycophantic celebrities and their comments, the gastronomy on the show is brilliant. If you haven't already seen any of Heston's Feasts, please try and see an episode (er, just not the Titanic one!)

My Bank Holiday

I put an excalamtion mark at the end of the post title to make this seem a lot more interesting than it probably has been: basically Bank Holidays are always the same. You've got football on the telly, rubbish TV programmes, the weather's terrible and everyone thinks that it's a good idea to rush to the seaside because, er, that's what you do on a Bank Holiday.

Well, it's been pretty much the same for me. Today was the seaside day, and even though I didn't see much of the beach (because it's absolutely freezing cold out there) I did get my mitts on fish and chips:



Well it's actually a fish cake, which is why it's so round! I have to say that these paticular variety of fish and chips are very delicious - it's a good job that I don't live nearer to where these are made otherwise I'd be the size of a house! I had ice cream too, but I'll have you know that I was good and only opted for a small tub: I'm not the pig I may seem to be!

In other Bank Holiday news, I was so desperate for a game that takes longer than 10 hours to complete (including min-games, collectibles, side-quests and all the rest of it) that I resorted to getting my ancient Nintendo 64 working again:



I decided to start with Donkey Kong, since it's a game I haven't played for ages - I think this game actually holds the record for the amount of collectible items in a single game (including bananas, golden bananas, fairies, battle crowns, blueprints, banana medals, boss keys, oranges, ammunition crates, two special tokens, banana coins, headphones and camera film. That's quite a long list!) Also on the cards to play is the first two Banjo-Kazooie games (Banjo-Tooie is hilarious and also takes an age to complete 100%) and Zelda: Majora's Mask, for me the most criminally underrated in the franchise.

So other than this and blogging it's been a pretty mundane Bank Holiday really. I'll sign off with Beck's "Youthless" a song that's been on repeat for me over the weekend and also has a very simple yet oddly ingenious video:

Salad: Let the Boredom Commence!

So yesterday I decided to be good and try and slightly healthier dinner than normal. I'm not going around eating subs and having fast food every lunchtime (actually it's completely the opposite, I normally just have cheese and biscuits) but yesterday I had the niggling feeling that I wasn't getting enough greens. This resulted in me making this:



It's a cheese, lettuce and red pepper sandwich,with all the goodness probably taken out of it by the fact that I've put it on a white crusty roll. Anyway, I have absolutely nothing against lettuce in a sandwich - this actually turned out to be quite yummy with the cheese. The thing I struggled with here was the peppers. Now, I love peppers when they're cooked: they're succulent, juicy and not boring at all. But that awful crunchiness and rawness just didn't do it for me here: it wasn't anywhere near as bad as raw tomatoes but.... ergh. Conclusion: lettuce good, raw peppers baaad. Now I have been trying to get some extra vitamins in by drinking pure fruit juice:



Don't kill me: that really is crisps behind that glass of cranberry juice. Well, I did say I was trying, and not necessarily succeeding! The cranberry juice is actually a lot less bitter with every glass you have altough this variety is particularly weak. My favourite type at the minute is apple and raspberry juice, and if I could get all my daily vitamins and minerals just from drinking that it would really save me the trouble of trying to choke down various bits of boring salad... But that's not going to happen. At least I didn't have the sugar-fest that is coronation chicken though:



This was my mam's creation. After a comment from myself that my sandwich looked a bit like Pacman, she decided it would be a good idea to go one better and put button mushrooms on the top of the bun to give it googly eyes. Well, maybe the sweetness of that chicken will cancel out the goodness of the mushrooms...

Baking: Cornish Pasties

Makes about 8

Difficulty: Medium

 

Ingredients

For the pastry:

• 450g of plain flour
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder
• Salt to taste
• 120g of unsalted butter
• 2 free-range egg yolks
• Water
• 1 beaten egg for glazing

For the filling:

• 50g of swede, finely chopped
• 150g of potato, peeled and cut into cubes
• 50g of carrots, peeled and cut into cubes
• 50g of onion, finely chopped
• 100g of lean beef mince
• 1 tablespoon of parsley (or more, depending on how herby you want the nix to be)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. For the pastry, rub the flour, baking powder, salt and butter together with your fingers until it looks like breadcrumbs
2. Add the egg yolks and mix in until it looks like breadcumbs again
3. Gradually mix in the water, a tablespoon at a time, until the ingredients come together in a dough
4. Roll the dough into a ball, put cling film over the top of the bowl and then place in the fridge for an hour
5. Meanwhile, for the filling, bring a pan of salted water to the boil (the pan might need to be a decent size to get all of the vegetables in it)
6. When it is boiling, add the swede, potato and carrot and cook for 4-5 minutes until tender
7. Drain the pan well
8. In a separate pan, brown the beef mince and then mix in the onions
9. Add the tender vegetables and stir around again
10. Season well with salt and pepper and add as much parsley as you want
11. Take the mix off the heat
12. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4
13. If an hour has passed, roll out the pastry on a clean, floured work surface
14. Cut medium sized discs out of the pastry - using a saucer as a guide is the easiest way to do this
15. Place some of the filling in the middle of the discs - don't go overboard or you won't be able to close up the pastry!
16. Brush the edge of the discs with some of the beaten egg
17. Draw the edges of the pastry together and then crimp them with your fingers to seal it up (see the photo above to get the idea of the effect this gives)
18. After doing this, brush the pastry with the beaten egg to give it a golden glaze
19. Place on to a baking tray and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden-brown

Baking: Coffee Streusel Cake

 

Difficulty: Medium

 

Ingredients:
For the Sponge:

• Butter, for greasing
• 275g of plain flour
• 1 tablespoon of baking powder
• 75g of caster sugar (this isn't a lot and the cake isn't sweet, so if you want to add more to suit your sweet tooth then go ahead!)
• 150ml of milk
• 2 eggs
• 100g of butter, melted and cooled (it's very important that the butter has properly cooled!)
• 2 tablespoons of instant coffee mixed with one tablespoon of boiling water (or add more coffee if you want the taste to be stronger)
• 50g of almonds, chopped
• Icing sugar for dusting

 

For the topping:

• 75g of self-raising flour
• 75g of demerara sugar
• 2 tablespoons of butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 teaspoon of ground mixed spice
• 1 tablespoon of water

Method

1. Grease a 23cm/9 inch loose-bottomed roud cake tin with a little butter and line the base with baking paper
2. Pre-heat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas Mark 5
3. Sift the flour and baking powder into a large mixing bowl and then stir in the caster sugar
4. Whisk the milk, eggs, melted butter and coffee mixture together and pour into the dry ingredients
5. Add the chopped almonds and mix lightly together until a cake mix is formed
6. Spoon the mixture into the tin - don't put it into the oven yet!
7. To make the topping, mix toether the SR flour and demerara sugar
8. Add the butter and mix together with your fingers until the mix is crumbly
9. Sprinkle in the ground mixed spice and the water
10. Bring the mixture together into loose crumbs - this is the tricky bit, and you might have to use a knife. Don't worry if the mix is too stodgy, just keep adding small amounts of SR flour until the mix is less stodgy. Mine wasn't really dry, but as long as it's a little crumbly in texture it should be fine
11. Sprinnkle the topping evenly over the surface of the cake mixture in the tin
12. Bake the cake in the pre-heated oven for one hour - keep an eye on the topping and if it's browning too quickly, cover it loosely with tin foil
13. After it is baked, leave to cool thoroughly in the tin, then turn out - don't forget to take the greaseproof paper off the bottom of the cake!
14. Dust with icing sugar to finish

Saturday Cooking: Welsh Cakes

I've made these Welsh Cakes a few times now and they've always turned out perfectly. Sorry that this is on a Saturday: I made fish cakes yesterday but had no battery in my camera so couldn't take a photo to show that the recipe actually works! Don't worry, I'll post it in the near future when I make them again. In the mean time try these, they're absolutely gorgeous and the recipe makes around 15-18 for the thickness you can roughly see in the photo.

Ingredients

250g of plain flour

1.25 teaspoons of baking powder

125g of butter cut into small pieces

112.5g of caster sugar (I worked this out from a conversion but don't be exact, I never am and it's always okay!)

Sultanas - as many or as little as you want but don't go overboard or the mixture won't clump together

1 beaten egg

2-3 tablespoons of milk

Method

1. Sieve the flour, baking powder and caster sugar into a large mixing bowl
2. Add the butter and rubb together with your fingers
3. Add the sultanas
4. Make a well in the dry ingredients
5. Add the beaten egg and the milk and using a bread knife 'cut' the ingredients together
6. Flour a cool, hard surface and place the mixture on to it
7. Roll out to your desired thickness and cut out using a cutter. Keep repeating steps 6 and 7 until you can't get any more cakes out of the mixture (we don't want any waste!)
8. Dry cook on heavy bottomed griddle with a low heat until nicely browned on both sides. If you're unsure of when they're cooked, split one open to see if they're cooked through. Also, don't worry if they look a little burnt on the top and bottom - it doesn't make an ounce of difference to the taste!
9. If you want, you could add a little cinammon or nutmeg for an extra kick. It's more traditional to dust them with caster sugar though!

Well I hope you'll be successful with this recipe as I have been!

Baking Friday (On A Sunday)

This photo I took makes my buns look like they're just floating in space, doesn't it? Admittedly, these little cakes are nothing special and were the result of panicking after a batch of flapjacks had gone seriously wrong (I over-buttered the tin, and my mixture was too sticky and watery to solidify). Still, this isn't too bad of a result for panic-baking - it felt like an episode of Ready Steady Cook with the annoying music and the audience doing the countdown from ten to one. I don't think it's bad, considering I can't bake to save my life.

Even though I'm blogging about this on a Sunday, it will actually be a Friday feature (er, I finished these at an awkward time on Friday night and didn't upload the photo until yesterday, so let me off the hook!). I was going to post the recipe, but I'm sure most people can bake a very simple cake mixture.... I hope. The real reason is that I've forgotten the exact amounts of S.R. flour, sugar and butter needed, even though they're written down and I improvised the technique without a recipe book.

When I get the recipe properly, I'll edit the post so you know.

Next week, Orange Biscuits. Hopefully.

Falafels: The Nation's Favourite!

Get me a towel! I love falafels and this little bit of falafel-on-pitta action is very tempting. It's too bad that falafels are hard to come by as it has been well documented that kebabs (donner kebabs) are the nation's favourite when it comes to takeaways after a night out.

Currently, the only place where I can get my hands on a few slices of the slightly dry, vegetably, bhaji-esque treat is in Pret-a-Manger where they do a lovely wrap with sun-dried tomatoes and feta cheese. The red onions aren't that great though.

But this might all be about to change! A recent report says that falafels are increasing in popularity after the increase in the number of Middle-Eastern restaurants and takeaways in the country. Hopefully this will mean that I will have easy access to falafels in the near future - it is my belief that they have to be better for you than a kebab which contains a mass of connective tissue.

I still love a kebab though. I don't care about the contents.

Gastronomic: Part Two

Ah, what a difference a week makes! No sooner had I watched in awe at "Heston's Victorian Feast" that I find out that Mr. Blumenthal's restaurant had been closed down because 400 customers complained of feeling ill!

So cue the jokes in the second of the series - a Medieval Feast. At some point during the initial history part, the Black Death was mentioned and suddenly from the corner I heard "Is that what you're gonna be serving in your restaurant then?"

It was funny, if in slightly bad taste (but then again I laugh at the strangest of things). But alas, no Black Death was served. Instead for appetisers there was Meat Fruit. Yep, meat disguised cleverly and convincingly like fruit. The plums were the least appetising (made out of an ingredient you're likely to see on something like I'm A Celebrity... 'nuff said). But the parma ham grapes sounded nice, I would've eaten that.

Oh, but the starter was vile! Blood sucking lamprey! Urgh! Even the guests couldn't stomach it - the raw head and tail were put either side of a griddled middle piece with the spinal cords of the little monsters fried and served as a garnish. Blech. Blood sauce as well. Double blech.

The main course looked at sounded nice. Pigeon pie baked the Medieval way. I.e. inedible crust but everything else about it seemed quite nice. At least until I realised how it was going to be presented. There is a showpiece for every one of these installments, and this week it was four and twenty blackbirds baked live in a pie. Only Heston replaced them with pigeons since blackbirds are now endangered. So, crust baked using some industrial equipment (steamrollers, cement mixers etc - it was one heck of a big pie!) he started putting the pigeons under the crust. When it came out and the lid was removed the birds flew everywhere.... and the dinner was taken out from the big pie. I don't know about anyone else but I wouldn't want to be eating a pie that's been near any sort of bird, let alone a pigeon (what if it hadn't emptied its bowels in a little while - actually one of the birds did on one of the guests' heads).

Dessert was clever but incredibly messy. Edible tablewear served with pork pie. Yeah, pork pie. Not real pork you'll understand but faux-mincemeat made from rasberry sorbet and vanilla ice-cream, strained through a grid and solidified with liquid nitrogen. Aha, really. Still, I wouldn't want to eat the crust which appeared to be a real pork-pie crust instead of a sweet treat.

Ooh, I can't wait for the exploding cockatrice next week!

Gastronomic

This is an image of some normal food - to me this looks like a little bit of steak with some mash potato or pastry placed on the top with a tomato and cream sauce (ooh, getting hungry!)

Now imagine this - absinthe and strawberry jelly, turned luminescent green and wobbling backwards and forwards thanks to the help of... four stripped down vibrators. Yes, really. But then, what would you really expect from pioneering yet insanely strange gastronome Heston Blumenthal?

The jelly was just the dessert in his show, Heston's Victorian Feast, based on the Mad Hatter's Tea Party and other elements from Alice In Wonderland. The appetiser was based on the Drink-Me Potion that turned Alice small. So he managed to find some way to separate six pink fluids, flavoured like pineapple, burnt toast, turkey (and I shockingly can't remember the others), and keep them separate in a strange shaped glass so that it wasn't a taste disaster. But still, surely creating mock turtle soup that is made like a cup of tea is going a bit far? Well, apparently not: for the main course there came an entirely edible garden. Everything from the soil to the pebbles was designed to be eaten. And that included a variety of insects such as worms, locusts and wasps filled with a tomato paste using a syringe.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this show though was the fact that he mixed the production and eating of the food with little interjections about the history of the different foods, showing where his inspiration had come from. It was quite fascinating seeing what the Victorians ate, who ate it and what it believed it would do to them and society. For instance, in the hard economic times of the Victorian age, insects were suggested as food because they were in vast supply in the country! Wonderful bites of trivia!

Oh, everyone who is able MUST tune in next Thursday to watch his Medieval Feast - it promises to be the same mix of OTT gastronomy and informative nuggets!

Liverpool: Odd Shots

So to finish my strand on my trip to Liverpool I've left my 3 daftest shots. This one perhaps the weirdest. It's supposed to be advertising "Pink" nightclub which on the window invites you to "come in and have a sherry". Anyway I think most people thought I was mad that I wanted a photo of a bright pink furry car but hey, I thought it was funny and stuff everyone else (putting it nicely!)

Ahem, I thought this was the most ridiculous name for a takeaway. Is it just me or does "Hot 'n' Tender" sound a bit, er, wrong when put in the context of food? Besides, it conjures up images of undercooked chicken - considering it's meant to be fried chicken, this isn't a good image to have. "Eat In Style" the sign says. Walk right past, I say.

Heh, now if there really was a fly in the loaf you'd complain but this makes for gold dust when you're going around pointlessly snapping pub signs. Actually, it didn't look too bad in there! They sell a beer from the Isle of Man (Babooshka? Any comment?) and have chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The red sign above this one says "Bakers to the Queen". Flies must give bread a nice taste, then.

Liverpool: Foodie 2

Another food experience, this time on the second night of my stay - this was at the PanAmerican Bar and Grill at the Albert Dock where I stayed. The dish in question is South-East Asian Chicken with soy noodles and stir-fried veg. It was tasty enough. I was a bit skeptical about the noodles at first because in all honesty I've never had soy sauce before but it was actually lovely! I think sometimes you've got to take the plunge - I wouldn't eat anything incredibly readical but changing a little bit of your food here and there is okay if you're trying stuff out. Then when people ask you if you've even eaten something and you say it's horrible you can actually say you've eaten it! I suppose it gets on people's nerves when you say you don't like something but have never tried it before.

Anyway, getting back to the food, it was pleasant enough. It made a bit of a change since I ate pasta on all the other nights! I think the place needs a bit of TLC though - the furniture was ageing a bit since they haven't changed it in all the years I've been going.

Liverpool: Foodie 1

So on the last night of my stay in Liverpool we went to eat at the Sports Bar. It's run by Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher and is commonly known as "Carra's Bar". It markets itself as a family restaurant with a healthy twist and the only deep-fried food on the menu was the fries, which were still made out of the healthiest potatoes and cooked in the healthiest oils (which I believe is Sunseed, but I could be wrong).

The first pic is of my meal, the penne primavera. So it was basically penne pasta in a tomato sauce with chicken, tomatoes and courgettes. I was surprised to find how spicy it actually was! I thought it might have been a safe option to test the water but instead it turns out that they must have added more than a fair share of chillies or spices - not that this was a bad thing, it was a very enjoyable dish and I ate it all, despite eating three large slices of garlic pizza bread beforehand.

The second pic is of my friend's meal, the spinach and ricotta ravioli. I know she really likes spinach and ricotta anyway so I had a funny feeling she was going to pick that. Anyway, despite not looking like too much on the plate it was apparently filling and had a nice kick with the added black pepper. I think it was enjoyed, even though she eats like a bird.

To drink I had two smoothies, one a Jamaican 8 (so that just had loads of tropical fruit in it like pineapples and mangoes with fat-free frozen yogurt) and the other was a berry-flavoured smoothie that I can't rightly remember the name of. Anyway, this one had loads of berries in it (duh) so it was more like the type that I drink whenever I go to the juice bar in town.

We got kicked out a bit earlier than we might have liked because another group had booked the table for about 8-ish. But it didn't really matter, it was likely to fill up because of the match that was on anyway (the whole place had massive TV screens everywhere, some showing SkySports News and others showing DVDs of sports - our table was showing a DVD that was a combination of when motorbiking goes bad and when skiing and snowboarding goes bad. Good, cringey action.).

I'd go there again, maybe try a pizza and sacrifice the garlic pizza bread - there's a huge selection and everyone will probably find something they like.

P.S. I am sorry about the bunched up writing on some of my posts recently - I've complained to blogger but they haven't done anything about it. I'm afraid you'll just have to cope for now! Sorry -- Scarlet x