Japonica

Cowie’s parents’ have got a wonderful Japonica plant that produces very attractive green and red fruit speckled with white dots. I’ve been told that it is part of the quince family and therefore could be suitable for making jelly. When I heard this I got pretty excited and thought I’d do some research before I went off half cocked and poisoned people…

Does anyone know if:

a. … the fruit in the picture is a Japonica
b. … it is edible
c. … I can make jelly out of them
d. … there are any other recipes that we can try

If you can help I’d be hugely appreciative. Thanks.

Rhubarb Tart

Rhubarb is brilliant. Anything that can taste so good, yet potentially be deadly gets my vote. And then another. It’s like a fauna version of blowfish. Maybe chefs who cook with rhubarb should be trained for 20 years as well. Imagine what amazing delights we’d be served.

I’m always looking for new ways to cook rhubarb, so when I saw this sensational rhubarb tart over on Cook Almost Anything at Least Once I got very excited. Just to look at the undulating, pink and cream furrows is enough to make you want to give up everything and become a professional rhubarb chef.

So, having rolled out some dessert pastry that may or may not have been bought we followed Cook Almost Anything at Least Once’s recipe to the letter which you can see below:

“Semolina Cream:

1 1/2 cups milk
1 cinnamon stick
55 grams caster sugar
45 grams semolina
3 egg yolks

Topping:

Rhubarb stems
55 grams caster sugar

Make the Semolina Cream:

Place the milk, cinnamon stick, sugar and semolina into a saucepan over a low heat and stir while the mixture starts to thicken and boil, then stir constantly for another 2 minutes or until the mixture becomes very thick.

Remove from the heat and whisk in the egg-yolks, one at a time until well combined. Place the filling into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap – make sure the plastic wrap actually rests against the cream as you don’t want a skin to form. Let this cool to room temperature.

Assemble the tart:

Pour the semolina cream evenly into the tart, smoothing out the top. Lay the rhubarb evenly over the cream then sprinkle over with half of the sugar.

Cover this loosely with foil and place in a preheated 180°C oven – cook for 20 minutes before removing foil. Continue to cook for another 15-20 minutes or until the cream is set and the rhubarb is tender.

Sprinkle over with the remaining sugar and using a blow-torch, caramelise the sugar (you could do this under a grill).”

The combination of slightly grainy semolina cream with soft, tart, full flavoured rhubarb was incredible. It was well worth the effort and is a tart I’m going make every Spring. I’ve now got a rectangular pastry case so I can make my tart look extra smart. As an evolution of this tart, it would be fantastic with ginger and mint ice cream.

For anyone who has noticed the continuity errors it’s because we made several tarts in order to feed a lot of hungry friends.

Baked Plums

“Baked plums” I hear you sigh, “how boring”. But not when they are steeped in rum, marinated in cardamon and ginger, sprinkled with sugar, dotted with butter and then lovingly baked. Before being served with yoghurt that has been blessed with pistachios.

Enjoy the ride.

Halve the plums and marinate in a good slug of Cruzan golden rum, a squeeze of lime, a finger of grated ginger, and crucially some cardamon. I cracked the pods in two and was transported straight back to the market in Munnar where we bought our collection of spices.

Line a baking dish with foil and place the halved plums flesh side up before sprinkling with sugar and anointing with unsalted butter. Adjust the amount of sugar you use to how sour you imagine the plums are. If in doubt add more. And preferably use brown sugar rather than the white stuff I used. Pour the excess marinate around the plums.

Bake for half an hour or so until the flesh has turned an Oscar golden hue. Spoon the now crimson juice back over the plums to ensure you don’t miss out on any of the juicy flavours.

Given that this was a pretty random composition, inspired by nothing more than a cheap bag of plums and a vague recollection of how Cowie’s Mum poaches her pears, it came out brilliantly. We loved the unique flavour that cardamon brings to the party coupled with the sweet boozy taste of rum. The yoghurt balanced the fruitiness without resorting to weighing it down with cream whilst the pistachios added some much needed texture.

I’m definitely cooking this again. I’ve got a funny feeling this might become one of Cowie’s favourites! She’ll be very upset she missed out on its debut outing. This would make a great base to a crumble or cobbler. I’m even toying with the idea of plum and cardamon jam! Roll on the Autumn!

Crab-apple and Chilli Jelly

I’ve got bored of waiting for Summer to arrive. Personally I much prefer Autumn anyway. In Summer you get pissed off when it’s not sunny. Whereas in Autumn if the sun’s out your happy and if it’s not then it means the mushrooms are busy proliferating!

Our orchard is laden with fruit. Bright red crab-apples. Gnarly green pears with brown spots. Lobster coloured apples. Deep purple plums. And one singular mulberry!

Mum’s Apache Chillies are doing well too. They are the Joey Barton of the chilli world. You know from the moment you set eyes on them that they will cause trouble, yet you give them an ill fated second chance.

My Grandfather was at home this weekend – so it gave me great pleasure to go foraging together. He very carefully picked the crab-apples – gently placing them in the bucket to avoid damaging their crimson skin. Meanwhile I was up a ladder stripping them off and lobbing them into the bucket below! I am guessing I may be the culprit for all the bruised skin and not him!

I vaguely followed a recipe from The Cottage Smallholder. I topped and tailed 1.5 kilos of crab-apples before throwing them in my Grandmother’s old jam sauce pan which is big enough to have a bath in! I poured in enough water to make them float and then went to work on the chillies. I cut up around 150 grams of a variety of chillies including, Pinocchio’s Nose, Prairie Fire, Jalepenos from the office and Mum’s Apaches. On contact with the now rather hot water the acrid fumes hit me in the face and almost stopped me from breathing! At this point I was worried that I was in the process of making the world’s hottest and least edible jelly!

As the pot bubbled the fruit yielded and became tender and the juice took on a heat that made a vindaloo seem mild. I strained the mixture through a series of tea towels before Mum emerged and handed me her jamming sieve! I put the solid back in the pan and added more water to get a second batch.

After a lot of straining and many hours later I was the proud owner of some very spicy pink, sour liquid. All 2 litres went into the pan and was accompanied by 2 kilos of granulated sugar which dissolved very quickly. 20 minutes of aggressive boiling and plenty of scum skimming later and our thermometer said we had jam!

I very carefully poured my liquid jelly into 10 sterilised jars and quickly sealed the lids. By the time I had finished pouring the left over liquid that had cooled in the pan had become wibbly wobbly jelly! Success!

Since making it on Saturday I have eaten some with every meal since! It was great with chicken chasseur followed by cheese and biscuits, awesome on toast for breakfast and magnificent with roast lamb for Sunday lunch! The heat from the chilli has become far more subtle, mellowing with the addition of sugar, but you still know it’s there.

Sauza Agave Recipe Challenge: Blueberry Pie

We found an awesome book about cooking with agave nectar at work on Slashfood and have decided that a different member of our team will cook a different recipe each month from it.

The book is called Baking with Agave Nectar and can be bought from Amazon.

Jenny bought the book so had the honour of cooking the first dish from the, now cherished, agave cooking book.

Rather than waffling on, I am just going to let the pictures do the talking…

If the pictures above tell you nothing else, it’s that Ed likes cream on his pie!

Jenny’s blueberry pie made with agave nectar was stunningly good. The rest of us have got our work cut out to top Jenny’s opening gambit. Another fresh and unexpected use of agave from the Beam team.

Rhubarb Souffle

This month’s “In the Bag” competition over on A Slice of Cherry Pie asks entrants to incorporate forced rhubarb, an orange and sugar into a recipe. After last month’s lamb and pear tagine we decided to create a sweet recipe rather than savoury.

Cowie has been making some very good souffles recently, so we decided to create a rhubarb and orange souffle. I bought some nice rhubarb from Waitrose and chopped it up before simmering it. The pink, fibrous stemmed rhubarb crunched like celery as we prepared it.

We simmered some rhubarb with some sugar until it became thick and syrupy.

We mixed some eggs yolks with sugar, orange zest and stem ginger.

And whisked up some eggs whites with some sugar.

Before gently folding them together.

Meanwhile we buttered and dusted some ramekins with icing sugar.

And then spooned the mixture in.

We cooked them in a pre heated oven for 12 minutes, making sure that the tops didn’t burn.

They emerged from the oven with beautiful golden tops and a wonderfully sharp smell of rhubarb. Best of all though, their tops didn’t collapse and they stayed bouyant and perky!

And they tasted even better. The rhubarb was the star of the show with the orange peel and stem ginger coming in to balance out the sharpness with some warmth and zing.

Well done Cowie for being so creative on a weeknight. After a long day of work it was so much fun to create something so light, tasty and exotic. And it was fun taking the photos too.

Shallot Tatin a la Ramsay

Ramsay, you may be a loud mouthed bully and multi millionaire… but your recipe in the Times on Saturday for Shallot and Goat’s Cheese Tatin was incredible. Unctious. Oozey. Sweet. Gorgeous. So tasty in fact Cowie’s Dad, David, said it was the finest onion based thing he had ever eaten!

Pic from The Spine

Victoria and I pottered off for the day to Clark’s village near Glastonbury where I demolished a very tepid hot dog covered in lashings of mustard and ketchup. I cleaned myself up furiously to try to stop the news getting back to Cowie Junior! I managed to resist buying too much stuff from Le Crueset, just picking up some extra strength pan cleaner and a few odds and ends from a closing down sale around the corner. I left the chav ridden shopping mecca with damp feet but with a great sense of relief at the level of restraint I had shown!

Victoria and I nipped into Morrison’s in Glastonbury which has to go down as the worst supermarket in the world! Why do they have so many automatic barriers to get in and none to get out?! Maybe it’s to stop people having to endure their disgusting shop! The cheese, meat and fish counters were terrifyingly bad. Only one type of goat’s cheese was on offer at the inept but pleasantly staffed cheese counter. It took them a good minute and a half to realise they had a customer… Still the cheese was delicious and perfect for the job. If I was doing this recipe again I would like to pay a trip to le Fromagerie first…

The beauty of cooking in the Cowie’s kitchen is that they have everything on hand. AGA. Check. Perfect cast iron, oven ready skillet pan. Check. Sprig of thyme from the garden. Check. Glass of chilled white wine. Even better.

The smell of the caramel, shallots, hint of garlic (not in Ramsay’s recipe – does that make this recipe my own?), white wine and stock bubbling up together was enought to make you want to give up work and devote yourself lock stock and barrel into the cooking world.

Here’s Gordon’s recipe coutesy of the Times.

Shallot tatin with goat’s cheese and roasted tomatoes

Serves 4

If you can’t get hold of Dorstone, look out for Sainte-Maure de Touraine, Chabichou du Poitou, Rosary or Pantysgawn in good cheese shops.

2 large vine-ripened tomatoes

3 tbsp olive oil

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 sprig of thyme

65g caster sugar

75g unsalted butter, cut into cubes

3 tbsp balsamic vinegar

300g shallots

150ml chicken or vegetable stock

300g puff pastry

Flour, to dust

120g Dorstone, cut in to 4 thick slices

Parsley sprigs, to garnish

1 Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6. Halve the tomatoes lengthways and place them, cut-side up, in a small shallow roasting tin. Trickle over 2 tbsp of olive oil; season with salt and pepper. Strip the leaves from the thyme and sprinkle over. Roast for 20 minutes, until the tomatoes have softened a little but are holding their shape. Remove from the oven; set aside to cool.

2 While the tomatoes are roasting, make a caramel. Sprinkle 50g of the sugar into a 20cm ovenproof shallow frying pan and melt over a moderate heat. Once the sugar has completely melted, turn the heat to high and cook to a mid-golden brown. Remove from the heat, stir in 50g butter and then the vinegar (watch out as it will splutter). Leave to cool in the frying pan.

3 Blanch the shallots in their skins in boiling water for 30 seconds. Drain and refresh under a cold running tap. Peel off the skins, trim the root ends and cut any larger shallots in half so that they are all roughly the same size.

4 Heat the remaining oil and butter in a large frying pan and add the shallots and last bit of sugar. Sauté over medium heat, tossing and turning them, for 10 minutes until they are golden-brown all over. Pour in the stock, bring to a boil and braise the shallots in the liquid for a further 10 minutes until tender. Drain the syrupy liquid; arrange the shallots on top of the caramel in the other pan. Leave to cool.

5 Roll the puff pastry out on a lightly floured work surface to a 23cm round. Use the rolling pin to lift the pastry over the shallots in the pan and position centrally. Tuck the pastry edges down the side of the pan, enclosing the shallots. Transfer to the fridge to cool for 1-2 hours.

6 Preheat the oven to 200C/Gas 6. Bake the chilled tart for 20-25 minutes until the pastry is golden-brown and crisp. Remove from the oven and leave to stand for 5 minutes before inverting on to a large, flat serving plate. Reheat the tomatoes; arrange on top of the tart with the goat’s cheese. Drizzle over any tomato juices from the roasting tin; garnish with parsley.”

Photos to follow once I get them off Victoria’s camera!