Pumpkins

I'm not the biggest fan of the whole hallowe'en thing, but one thing I do love is pumpkins. Lantern carving is a lot of fun, and there's so much potential to embrace the River Cottage nose to tail ethic so to speak, although I'm still trying to come up with a veggie alternative phrase. From seed to stalk maybe, or something like that. We've got at least 4, maybe 5 items out of this one - and first of all is the lantern of course...

Chop off the top of the pumpkin to form the lid. Once you're in, set aside the seeds for later. Scoop out at least half to two thirds of the thickness of the flesh and set this aside for later too, then carefully score and cut out the pieces. Be careful not to scrape the walls too much as I did though - the face is already going soft and starting to implode, I'm a little worried it's not going to stay intact until Wednesday!

Place a tealight or two inside and enjoy. I also like the slightly burnt smell it gives off as the heat from the candles starts to char the lid. I'd go for that over a sickly scented candle any day!

I made a couple of knitted pumpkins too, based on Curly Purly's pattern. They were really quick and easy, both of them completed in one day. Perfect prop for customising a hallowe'en cat.

So all that scraping wasn't ideal for the lantern itself, but here's what I've been up to with the results...

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Rinse and resudual fibres and slime off the seeds and allow to dry. Coat in a little olive oil and season with smoked paprika, cayenne, cumin and salt. Roast at 180 for 10 mins or so.

With the reserved flesh you could make pumpkin soup or add it to stock, but there's also the American classic:

Pumpkin Pie Filling

• 1.5 lb pumpkin flesh
• 2 eggs plus 2 egg yolks
• 1.5tbsp treacle
• 4.5oz soft dark brown sugar
• 1 heaped tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 heaped tsp each of ground cloves, allspice, nutmeg and ginger
• 15fl oz double cream

Cook the pumpkin flesh over a gentle heat until soft, blend until smooth. Whisk the eggs and yolks in a large bowl until combined. Heat the other ingredients until they reach simmering point, pour onto the eggs and whisk, then whisk in the pumpkin flesh.

This is enough to fill 3 ready made pastry cases - place the empty cases on the oven shelf before filling so that you can pour in as much as possible. Bake at 180C for 35-40min.

I still had some extra flesh left over, which Rebecca is going to use for pumpkin scones - looking forward to those! Finally, I reckon it'll still be possible to roast the remaining pumpkin flesh still on the lantern once we've enjoyed it on the mantlepiece for a few days. Et voila, nothing wasted!

Here's a pair hallowe'en snaps... the two-headed cat/girl with a freaky borg eye, and the four-eyed ghost cat...

Jam hot

I had a lovely package delivered through the internal mail the other day - a selection of chillies that Jean had been growing in her glasshouse. I wanted to make something that would preserve them so that we can keep on enjoying them for as long as possible.





Two other happy events coincided to lead me to make chilli and tomato jam this evening. The first happy event, was the 'christening' of my newest and current favourite book: Darina Allen's Ballymaloe Cookery Course (for the scientists...Darina's book is to cooking as Stryer is to biochemistry, or Alberts to cell biology).


The second event, is the bountiful harvest of chillies from the lab of Dr Kate Storey. I'm not sure she intended it, but she has two very green fingered post-docs in the form of Marios and Barry who have been growing chilies on their office window sill. The two plants love it in there and have been producing heaps of fruit continuously for several months now and still continue to produce yet more flowers. Every time I go in there, Marios is franticly triyng to give them away. I particularly like this curly one I picked tonight, and the cute tiny little (HOT) ones from Jean...





I had some yummy langoustines with chilli jam at the Lochinver Larder when we went to the NW coast with Kirsty and I've been wanting to have a go at something similar since then. Thanks to Darina for an inspirational chapter on jams and preserves, and even more thanks to Jean for the most exciting thing I've had through the internal mail system!!!


Tomato and Chilli Jam

• 500g very ripe tomatoes



• 2-4 red chillies...I used 6 :)



• 4 garlic cloves



• 2.5cm ginger, peeled and roughly chopped



• 2tbsp nam pla



• 275g golden caster sugar



• 100ml red wine vinegar
  
  
  
  Puree the chillies, garlic, ginger and nam pla in a blender. Peel the tomaties and cut to a 1cm dice. Add all the ingredients to a pan, gently bring to the boil and cook gently for 40mins, stirring occasionally. Pour into sterilised jars, allow to cool and then refrigerate.
  
  
  It's cheeky!!
  
  ooh, Heston Blumenthal has just come onto Jonathan Ross, excellent :)

Sugar High Friday #35: apples and alcohol

I've been a lurker of the Sugar High Friday event for a little while now, so this month I thought I'd give it a go and join in. SHF#35 is hosted by Spittoon Extra and the theme is alcohol and apples. We must have been on the same autumnal wavelength, it was a perfect theme for me because I'm disappearing under a heap of apples at the moment, especially after last weekend's trip to the Newburgh Orchard Group sale. I love cider, and I love nice sharp British apples like cox - here's a cake with both.

There's no doubt about the 'sugar high' factor in this one, and it definitely has a strong alcoholic taste with all that cider and bourbon in it. The main taste in the cake itself was definitely the bourbon actually, but I think my favourite thing was the sauce. Reducing down all that cider and sugar from well over a liter down to just 1 cup made it VERY apple-y, and with a kind of sticky caramel feel. I'll definitely be making the pumpkin seed brittle again - it was quite fun watching them jumping all over the place as they toasted, and the final article went down very well with the visitors as we watched the rugby last night.

Apple Cider Cake with Cider Sauce and Pumpkin Seed Brittle

Pumpkin Seeed Brittle

1/3 cup sugar

2tbsp light corn syrup

2tbsp water

heaped 1/4 cup toasted pumpkin seeds

Pinch baking soda dissolved in 1tsp water

Line a baking sheet with well buttered paper. Combine sugar, syrup and water, and bring to the boil over a high heat. Boil undisturbed until a deep caramel colour develops. Remove from the heat and add the seeds and baking soda. Quickly mix to combine, spread to a thin layer on the baking sheet, and leave until cold and hard.

Cider Sauce

4 cups cider

1/3 cup bourbon

1/3 cup dark brown sugar

1/4 cup golden syrup

2tbsp cider vinegar

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 vanilla pod, split and scraped

1 cup double cream

Place cider, bourbon, sugar, golden syrup, vinegar, cinnamon and vanilla in a wide shallow pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for 10 minutes, add the double cream then boil over a medium high heat until reduced to about 1 cup.

Cider and apple cake

1 3/4 cups and 1tbsp plain flour

1tsp each salt

1tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup and 2tsp cider

3tbsp vegetable oil

1/4 cup bourbon

7tbsp softened unsalted butter

seeds of 1/2 vanilla pod

2 large eggs

2 sharp apples such as Cox

Preheat oven to 180C. Butter and flour a base lined 9 inch tin. Combine flour, salt, baking powder and soda. In a separate bowl combine cider, vegetable oil and bourbon. In a large bowl beat the butter until fluffy, then beat in the sugar and vanilla. Beat in the eggs a little at a time, then beat in the other dry ingredients and liquid alternately a little at a time.

Spread 2/3 of the mixture in the tin, drizzle 1/2 cup cider sauce over it, and then spread over the rest of the cake mixture carefully. Peel apples and cut into segments. Score the segments and lay cut side down on the top of the cake. Bake in the center of the oven for 40 minutes.

Serve warm, with the rest of the re-warmed sauce and shards of pumpkin seed brittle.

One less WIP

...and one more FO! Yay for me! Utopia hat from Smariek Knits... done. DB Rialto Aran, less purple and more maroon than the pics, but lovely and springy and thick. A v quick knit, and I used just over one ball. I'd like to use the rest of the second to make a scarf although I think I'll be buying a third to make it long enough next time we go to Newburgh.

Chicken out!

Another food post I know, the knitting is suffering because I've gone WIP mad and can't stop casting on new things. Next post will be knitting, I promise!

I wanted to draw your attention to the River Cottage 'Chicken Out!' campaign. At the risk of being dismissed for biased vegetarian propaganda there's a few facts below for you to think on, but I really urge you to visit the Chicken Out website to sign and register your support. These guys are total grass roots carnivores so take it from them if not me!

The average Brit eats almost 25 kilos of chicken a year, and of these hundreds of millions of chickens, most of them - more than 95% - are reared inside, produced in industrial conditions in vast, enclosed sheds. In fact, this intensive poultry production is so slick and efficient that chicken is actually cheaper now than it was 20 years ago.

Standard chickens are now grown from newly hatched chick to oven-ready bird in an astonishing 39 days, which is half the time it took 40 years ago under less intensive conditions. Regardless of whether you're interested in animal welfare, how can that meat be good quality?? You get what you pays for! The aim of the Chicken Out campaign is to ask people to vote with their shopping baskets so to speak and go free range.

Birds commonly develop severe problems associated with unnaturally fast weight gain and restricted movement, and many die prematurely: 45 million factory-farmed birds are thrown away each year before they even reach slaughter-weight. If nothing else, that's just a shocking waste of food!

CHECK OUT http://www.chickenout.tv/ AND GET INVOLVED!!

Food and Yarn in Newburgh

Last weekend saw the monthly trip to knitting group at Twist Fibre Craft Studio in Newburgh. It proved to yield a bountiful harvest, both woolly and foody. I was rather good and only spent a couple of quid over the £10 bonus I had on my twist card – I bought some lovely springy and stretchy DB Rialto Aran in a dark burgundy colour, a nice long circular needle for an upcoming project (MUST finish SKB first!), and some lopi for Diane.


I had visions of making gloves/mittens with the rialto by modifying a pattern for fingerless gloves from knitty. The cables came out beautifully, but things started going off the rails once I’d completed the part the pattern covers and started freestyling instead. I think this yarn is just a bit too thick and chunky for doing individual fingers, and even mittens would end up more like oven gloves. I like the fingerless ones, but I don’t think I’d really wear them all that much so I pulled it all out again. Maybe a nice cabled hat instead? I’ve got my eye on this from Brooklyn Tweed (probs better in tweed tho) and this from Smariek Knits.





When we arrived, we found that Newburgh Orchard Group were having their last sale of the year on a little stall near where we parked. It’s really nice to see a bunch of people getting together and selling stuff that they’ve been growing, and that you just can’t get in the supermarket. I bought some Newton’s Wonder apples, some Concorde pears, and some cooking apples which I can’t remember the name of. They are a variety that goes soft and fluffy when cooked, unlike Bramleys. I also bought a jar of beetroot chutney, and some sloes.

Last night I used one of the apples together with some blackberries that I picked at the top of my road, and made a sponge pudding with the fruit at the bottom and loads of custard on top. Yum yum. I just had salad for tea so that I could have an extra large helping of dessert!
I felt a bit of a cheat buying the sloes rather than picking them, but they were complete with leaves and bits of twig, and I’m sure they came from a Newburgh hedgerow, and it’s good to support the orchard group so I think it’s ok ☺ Just about the only good use for sloes is making them into sloe gin, hurrah! My mum makes sloe gin but she’s very protective of it and won’t let me take any home with me, so I’m excited to have a go at making my own…

Sloe Gin

1L Gin
around 450-500g Sloes (best picked after first frost, or can be frozen first!)
100g sugar

Clean the sloes and remove any bad ones. Gently dry, then prick all over and put into a sterile bottle or jar with the sugar and the gin. Shake every day for a few weeks, then every week after that for another 2 or 3 months.

The bottle must be stored in the dark to encourage good colour development.

Different sources have different suggestions about when to strain the mixture and decant the liquid, but it seems like anything from 3 months to a year. I guess the trick is to keep tasting it until it seems good, and adding more sugar if necessary. Many recipes have much more sugar than this, but I want to keep it to a minimum to avoid the finished product being to sickly sweet.

My first publication (sort of!)

...and it's not in a scientific journal!! HaHa. I was very excited on Saturday morning to open up the Guardian magazine and see a full page photo of the biscuits I made at River Cottage staring back at me. Lots of out of proportion pride and joy! I kept having a little peek to check they were still there all weekend. At risk of my head getting too big I took it to work yesterday as well. Judith very kindly got quite excited too, and photocopied the article. Bless her.




There isn't a pic in the online article, but the recipes are there.

There's got to be a mushroom around here somewhere!

It seems that there's a genetic component to successful mushroom hunting: a good amount of Italian DNA is a distinct advantage for sure. Last weekend however, Barry and I took our pale English selves off to Tentsmuir with a nice basket (thanks Nikki!) and our fingers crossed. No luck however. There were a few fungi dotted around here and there, but we certainly weren't tripping over them and there were absolutely no porcini to be seen. I think it was too dry. Oh well, next time perhaps. Here's Barry strolling along as I scrabbled about underneath the trees and occasionally popped out to straighten up and remove the twigs from my hair. As well as no mushrooms, I also came home with no tics this time, so it's not all bad!!

There's been a distinct dropoff in both the knitting and the baking this weekend due to an awful lot of rugby world cup excitement (and rugby-related hangovers on Sunday). But I did make some rocky road chocolate bars and some honeycomb for match snacks on Saturady afternoon. The Coopers Australian ale was just a bit too tasty...

Honeycomb

100g caster sugar

4tbsp golden syrup

1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Heat the sugar and syrup until dissolved and turning golden (don't stir too much). Remove from the heat and quickly whisk in the bicarb, then pour out onto a greased surface. Break into chunks once cool and hardened.

Secret knitting, and new techniques

This week it has really started to to get cold and dark, and my urge to knit lots of nice winter things has definitely kicked in. It's also the time of year to get going on knitted Christmas pressies too. Can't post the pics or the recipients might see (I'm bursting to tell already, this is going to be hard!). That's my excuse for a few months of sparse knitting posts anyway.

I came across an interesting technique while I was getting ready to start new projects - something I think Andy will particularly like ;) It's all about how to knit in the round without double pointed needles. Circular needles are good if you're doing a round project with a larger diameter (like the body of the SKB), but for smaller stuff like hats and sleeves and beginning at the center of a flat circle, you'd usually start on several double pointed needles. Well I have discovered some funky alternative methods with circular needles that allow you to do small diameter projects without having to buy a set of matching double pointeds. I don't think I'd like to do a whole sleeve or hat like this, but it's an excellent way of getting started on something that starts small later progresses to circular needles.
It's one of those things that would sound very complicated written down, but it's actually not too bad. Have a look at these v handy vids to get the idea, I'm having a go at 'magic loop knitting' right now!...

Extreme sugar art

Oh my goodness, look at this dessert from Habeas Brulee! Amazing! Bubbles of caramel actually blown like glass, then yummy cardamom/lemon custard piped inside through a tiny hole. Looks very tricky indeed, but definitely one to impress. I sense an impending weekend of burnt fingers and sticky sugar strands all over the kitchen and all over me. Now where can I get my hands on a good metal tube...

Profiteroles recipe

Choux pastry is fairly quick and easy, and leaves you with lovely puffed up hollow shapes for filling with tasty stuff. A quick poll of my French colleagues at work taught me that the traditional filling for profiteroles is ice cream (with hot choc sauce on top). I’d heard of this before but didn’t realise it was the ‘proper’ filling. Not wishing to disappear off into the kitchen to do last minute ice cream filling after the main course when Eris and Iain were here, I decided to opt for a crème patissiere filling instead which can be made in advance. It’s a good carrier for other flavours too, and this time I made this batch with 2tbsp strong coffee.

Crème patissiere:
5 egg yolks
140g sugar
450ml milk
80g sifted plain flour
knob of butter

Extra flavourings can be included once cooked for example vanilla, coffee essence, liqueurs, lemon, orange etc etc

Bring the milk to the boil in a pan. Beat the sugar and yolks for 2-3mins until pale and slightly thickened. Beat in the flour, and then pour on the milk gradually to incorporate it. Return to a clean pan and bring to the boil, whisking constantly for a few minutes until thickened. Remove from heat, beat in the butter and transfer to a clean bowl. Allow to cool with the surface in contact with a sheet of cling film to prevent a skin forming.

This mixture will keep in the fridge for a few days.

Choux pastry (serves 5-6 generously):
200ml Water
75g butter
pinch salt
100g Plain flour
3 eggs

Chocolate sauce:
200g dark chocolate
250ml double cream

Heat the water, salt and butter in a pan until butter is melted. Bring to the boil and remove from the heat. Immediately beat in the flour until the mixture is smooth and comes away from the sides of the pan. Allow to cool for a few minutes then gradually beat in the eggs bit by bit. The mixture should remain stiff enough to hold its shape when piped onto a baking sheet so you might not need absolutely all the egg.
Run the greased baking trays briefly under the tap so that they have small drips of water on them – the steam helps the pastry to crisp up in the oven. Spoon the dough into a piping bag and pipe into blobs for profiteroles (about the size of a walnut), or sausage shapes for éclairs. Leave plenty of space between them for expansion. Bake at 200 for 10 minutes and then turn up the temperature to 220 for another 15 minutes or so, until the profiteroles are crisp and golden brown. Slit them open whilst still hot in order to let the steam out otherwise they’ll go soggy as they cool.
Just before serving fill the profiteroles with crème patissiere and make the chocolate sauce: Heat the cream until it reaches boiling point and pour it over the chocolate broken into small pieces in a bowl. Allow to sit for 5 minutes while the profiteroles are being filled. Whisk the chocolate and cream vigorously until smooth and glossy. Arrange the filled profiteroles on a serving dish and cover with warm chocolate sauce. Serve immediately!

Profiterole revival

I went all retro at the weekend and made profiteroles when we had Eris and Iain over for dinner. We started with an enormous bowl of mussels, then had beef and stout casserole with dumplings (good work Jane!), and then these babies.....

Drool. I finished off the leftovers for breakfast on Sunday I'm not ashamed to say! I've once again failed to have pics, laptop and recipes all in the same place at the same time so recipe to follow, but I thought you might like the squidgy messy chocolatey picture to look at until then :)

SKB latest

The SKB has come on leaps and bounds this weekend - the 'B' of the SKB is finished. It took me more or less 3 weeks to get through the patterened section with beads in it, which was becoming a bit of a slog. 2.25mm bamboo needles are more or less cocktail sticks so it was pretty fiddly, and not at all helped by the fact that I snapped both needles at one point or another so they were a lot shorter and rougher than they could have been!



Anyway, I finished that section by the end of Friday night thankfully, and moved back up to nice 5mm metal needles to storm through the rest. The entire remainder of the body was finished by Sunday night, although I might re-do the bottom ridges on the smaller needles to make them a bit less bulging. Time for the sleeves now, then all that will remain is to knit a few rows around the neckline. Hurrah!


Friday night...


















Sunday night...

Tayside Blueberries

• Although blueberries are native to North America, they grow extremely well in the cool and wet conditions here in Scotland. At the Scottish Crop Research Institute just down the road in Invergowrie they grow lots of soft fruit crop plants for various studies, a happy consequence of which is that there is a bountiful harvest of unwanted fruit! The raspberries are great of course, being what Tayside is famous for, but so are the blueberries - and a bargain at £5 for an entire kilo. According to wikipedia blueberries are one of only a few human foods that are naturally colored blue. I can’t think of any others (unless you count blue cheese). Any suggestions??
  And of course they’re super healthy – full of antioxidants, vitamin C etc etc, so even in cheesecake form you can convince yourself it’s all good :)
  

I realise this is the second cheesecake recipe in a row, I need to improve on getting recipes into blog form, but it’s a good one so bear with me. Takes a while, but the advantage is that it’s made the day before so all you need to do is whip it out of the fridge when people arrive and leave it somewhere conspicuous to be admired!

Lemon and Blueberry Cheesecake

300g shortbread biscuits

675g cream cheese, softened
400g caster sugar
2tsp finely grated lemon zest
35g plain flour
2tbsp cornflour
1tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp salt
6 large eggs
125ml lemon juice
lots of blueberries

Crush the shortbread biscuits and mix with enough melted butter to lightly coat the crumbs (I didn’t weigh what I used, but maybe something like 50-75g). Press into the base and sides of a greased 9in tin and freeze until required.

Beat together the cream cheese, sugar and lemon zest until smooth, then add the flour, cornflour, vanilla extract and salt, beating until well combined.

Add the eggs one by one, then the lemon juice, beating well between additions.
Put the prepared tin on a baking tray and pour in the filling. Sprinkle a few handfuls of blueberries over the filling using varying amounts of force so that they sink to different depths within the mixture.

Bake on the centre shelf at 130 for 1 hour, then at 120 for another hour, then at 100 for a further 1.5h – book says until internal temperature of filling reaches 79oC although I don’t have a temperature probe.

If there’s time, allow the cheesecake to cool to room temperature then refrigerate overnight. Due to the ridiculous length of cooking time and my own lack of planning/time, I usually end up having to stay up late waiting for the cheesecake to finish cooking. Not wanting to stay up a further hour or two waiting for it to cool, I just turn the oven off without opening the door and leave it in there overnight ready to fridge in the morning.

Once cool the top of the cheesecake will look a bit ugly – higher at the edges than in the middle and probably with some cracks and splits in it. To tart it up and make it look more presentable even off the surface by trimming the edges away, then coat with a thin layer of double or sour cream followed by lots of blueberries.

MRC cake sale

Yesterday we had a cake sale at work for 'diabetes research within the University of Dundee' - ie sell cakes to keep yourself in a job because universities don't have enough money. I'll refrain from ranting about how silly it all seems, and how we should have been raising money for more useful things, but instead here's some nice pictures of lots of cake! First off, some stuff fresh out of the oven on Sunday evening... and the whole lot spread out ready to sell. Thanks to Linda's hard work we raised well over £200. Now which lucky person gets to buy the antibody of their choice with the cash??