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African Volcano Peri Peri Sauce & Marinade

19 May 2012 4 Responses »

May 192012

I am a chilli wuss. For someone of Indian descent, this can be quite embarrassing. People are constantly surprised by my inability to tolerate chilli heat and even my mum has to tone down the heat a little when cooking for me. And North Indian cuisine isn’t that hot to begin with!

It’s not that I don’t like chillies at all – the wide variety of flavours can be wonderful. But anything too hot burns my taste buds and lips so badly that not only am I in genuine pain but I’m also quite unable to taste any of the other flavours of the dish in question.

So I’ve been left pretty cold by the current craze for extremely hot sauces.

I do use chillies in my own cooking, where I can carefully control the heat levels, and have enjoyed experimenting with dried Mexican dried chillies.

But ready-made hot sauces? I’ve steered clear of those!

I met Grant Hawthorne, highly talented and experienced master chef, when he lead the enormous brigade of chefs for the Kai We Care charity dinner last year. Grant hails from Cape Town but has been living and working in the UK for 12 years. He’s one of those people you can’t help but warm to – hugely knowledgeable and talented yet quiet, thoughtful and unassuming in mannerism, with a genuine warmth and concern for others that is heart warming.

Grant has recently developed and launched a brand new product, his African Volcano Peri Peri sauces and marinades.

Peri Peri (also known as piri piri and pili pili) is a marinade and seasoning sauce of Portuguese origin and is particularly popular in parts of Southern Africa (presumably as a result of the culinary diaspora that occurred during the centuries of European empires). It’s usually made from chillies, onion, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper and a mix of spices and herbs.

Grant’s version uses a variety of chillies including Scotch Bonnet and Dorset Naga. All are sourced from Edible Ornamentals in Bedfordshire. The good news for me is that Grant, like me, is not a fan of extreme chilli heat. So he’s developed his peri peri products to give flavour first, which lingers pleasantly in the mouth, and then a gentle heat that warms rather than burns the mouth.

Since South African chain Nando’s opened in the UK, in the mid ’90s, peri peri chicken has become far better known here than it used to be. What you may not know is that Nando’s originated within the Mozambiquan Portuguese community in South Africa, as Mozambique was part of Portugal’s East African empire.

Grant originally learned how to make a great peri peri from a Mozambique-born woman who fled the revolution in Mozambique and settled in Cape Town. Since then, he’s modified the recipe gradually over the years, resulting in today’s African Volcano.

The sauce (which is a cooked version of the marinade) we use on its own straight out of the bottle and, as long as I don’t dip too generously, the level of heat is just within my comfort zone. Good with nachos or home made chips.

The marinade does just what a good marinade should do – imbues the meat with wonderful, deeply delicious flavours.

Note: don’t worry if the oil separates from the rest of the ingredients a little during storage. This is a natural product and a vigorous shake will emulsify the oil back into the rest of the sauce very quickly.

Breast fillets in neat African Volcano marinade; boned chicken thighs in full fat crème fraiche and African Volcano marinade

As Pete can tolerate more heat than I, we use the African Volcano marinade neat on his preferred chicken breast fillets. For me, I mix it with either full fat natural yoghurt or crème fraiche and liberally coat my preferred chicken thighs.

Both are either grilled or baked in a hot oven.

This time, I doubled up portions, so we could enjoy the rest with a salad the next day.

You could grill or barbeque the meat, but so far, we’ve baked it in the oven, which has worked very well. The meat remains incredibly moist (even the breast fillet, which is a dryer cut) and the flavours are just wonderful.

Please don’t think I’m recommending African Volcano to you because Grant has become a personal friend over the last year. He has, but, as he and other friends know very well, I’m always honest about what I like and don’t like, and that’s probably even more so when it comes to products and services offered by friends and family rather than by strangers.

If I didn’t genuinely love African Volcano Peri Peri, I would not be suggesting you buy some for yourself. And in case it’s not clear, I am!

And if that weren’t reason enough already, Grant is donating 30 pence from every bottle sold to support the work of Habitat for Humanity, a South African charity that encourages those with money and skills to work alongside members of South Africa’s poorest communities, providing capital and co-workers in building affordable housing.

To buy your own African Volcano Peri Peri, either visit Grant at his stall in Maltby Street Market on Saturdays, or purchase from one of his retail stockists. You can also drop him an email via his website, to organise mail order.

Quick & Easy Triple Mint Choc Chip Ice Cream

15 May 2012 17 Responses »

May 152012

This month’s Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream challenge theme is chocolate. Instead of making a straight chocolate ice cream, I decided on mint choc chip as it’s a flavour I love but have never made before.

Of course, it couldn’t be just any mint choc chip, oh no!

I envisaged a triple mint affair using fresh chopped mint leaves, crème de menthe liqueur and after eight mints. In the end, I couldn’t find any crème de menthe on sale locally, so I made my own substitute, though if you have a bottle lurking in the cupboard, I’m sure it would work nicely.

I’m absolutely delighted with how this came out, as I made it up completely. Not only did the crisp flavour of the peppermint flavouring (in my crème de menthe substitute) come through, so too did the lovely herby flavour of the fresh mint. An unexpected bonus was the slightly chewy texture the chopped after eight mints took on once frozen – and of course, the casing gave that delicious dark chocolate hit that so perfectly balances with mint, while the filling gave a third element of mint!

Quick & Easy Triple Mint Choc Chip Ice Cream

Ingredients
500 ml pot of fresh ready made custard (or fresh if you prefer)
Generous bunch of mint
12 after eight mints
50-60 ml crème de menthe or home made substitute, see below

Note: for a non alcoholic version, skip the crème de menthe and add half a teaspoon of peppermint flavouring plus a few drops of green food colouring, if you like.

Method

Pick the mint leaves from the stems; wash and finely chop the leaves.

Chop the after eight mints into small pieces.

Mix the custard, crème de menthe and fresh mint together and pour into the ice cream machine. Add the after eight mints straight away.
Churn until the ice cream is reasonably solid.

Serve immediately or transfer into the freezer to solidify further.

Home Made Crème De Menthe Substitute

Ingredients
30 ml caster sugar
45 ml gin or vodka
Few drops green colouring
1/2 teaspoon peppermint flavouring

Method

Combine ingredients. Heat in microwave for 30-60 seconds, to help sugar dissolve into alcohol. Set aside to cool.

This is my entry into the May Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream challenge and the May Herbs on Saturday challenge on Lavender and Lovage.

Enjoy!

Purple Sprouting Broccoli Flan

11 May 2012 6 Responses »

May 112012

With just under 200 grams of shortcrust flan pastry leftover from making the pea, mushroom and mint flan plus a generous harvest of purple sprouting broccoli from the allotment, I decided to use both in a second flan.

The pastry was just enough to line a smaller oven dish, and I used the scraps to make one small individual flan too.

My rolling wasn’t too great (as I didn’t have Pete to do that for me this time!) but the pastry was soft enough to tear off bits from the overhang and use them to patch up the cracks and thin bits.

I didn’t weigh the broccoli, so I can’t give a complete recipe, but I made up the liquid mix using 170 ml double cream (based on the size of the pots my supermarket sells) and two eggs. Michel Roux’s mix for the pea, mushroom and mint flan uses one egg and two additional yolks, but I didn’t want to have more egg whites left over.

This post is really about encouraging you to make up your own flan recipe, using whatever vegetables you have to hand. If you’d like to make a larger flan just increase the amount of pastry, fillings and liquid accordingly.

Rough Recipe for Purple Sprouting Broccoli Flan

Ingredients
200 grams shortcrust flan pastry
Purple sprouting broccoli to fill flan dish
170 ml double cream
2 large eggs
Salt and pepper

Method

Preheat oven to 190 C.

Roll out pastry and line your dish. Use offcuts from the edges to patch up cracks or thin areas.
Trim the edges, leaving a generous amount of pastry around the rim.
Line with baking paper and fill with baking beads.
Bake for 15 minutes, then remove from oven, take out baking beads and paper and bake for another 5 to 10 minutes, until pastry appears pale golden brown.

Set aside to cool, leaving the oven on at 190 C.

Optional: Chop off the thicker part of the stems from the purple sprouting broccoli and cook them in the microwave for 30 seconds to soften. If you do not have a microwave, you could steam for a couple of minutes instead.

Line the bottom of the flan case with the stems, and cover with the broccoli florets.

In a bowl, combine the double cream and eggs, season generously with salt and pepper and mix thoroughly.
Pour gently over the broccoli.

Bake for 25 to 35 minutes until the surface shows some browning and a knife inserted into the flan comes out clean. Smaller individual flans will take less time than larger ones.

Leave to cool for a few minutes before serving warm.

This was a delicious way to enjoy our home grown produce and use up leftover pastry and it’s definitely encouraged me to make more flans going forward. I’d always imagined I’d need to follow an exact recipe, but using my own estimates worked very well this time and has given me more confidence.

Michel Roux’s Pea, Mushroom & Mint Flan + Review of Pastry

10 May 2012 5 Responses »

May 102012

I already own Eggs and Sauces, the first two titles in Michel Roux’s series of reference books on classic techniques and recipes. So I was very happy to receive a review copy of Pastry: Savoury and Sweet.

There are chapters for shortcrust pastries, enriched sweet pastries, puff pastry, raised pie pastry, brioche dough, croissant dough, choux pastry, pizza dough and filo pastry and each chapter starts with the basic dough recipe and then provides a wide range of recipes making use of it.

One of the things I like about the book is its use of step by step pictures and instructions for pastry techniques such as lining a flan tin with pastry, making a pastry lattice top and decorative borders, shaping croissants and so on. In addition each type of pastry has several photographs of how the dough looks as you make it. And there are lots of recipe photographs too.

Knowing what you are aiming for gives much greater confidence during the process, for me anyway.

Pete is pastry king in our house so I got him to make the pastry, roll it out into the flan dish and bake it for me, ready for me to do the rest.

Together, we made this absolutely delicious pea, mushroom and mint flan – a recipe I shall definitely be making again once our home-grown peas start cropping.

The flan calls on two recipes in the book, the first for flan pastry and the second for the flan itself.

The two shortcrust pastry recipes provided are for pâte brisée and flan pastry. The former is described in the book as a more delicate, crumbly and light; the latter as less fragile, crisper and just as good in taste.

One downside of the pastry recipe is that it creates about 430 grams of pastry, whereas the flan recipe calls for 260 grams. We used the rest to make some simple purple sprouting broccoli quiches a couple of days later.

The recipe also calls for 500 grams of mushrooms. We used only 400 grams, which filled our our flan dish pretty well.

We also substituted frozen petit pois for fresh peas.

Where the recipe requires steeping the mint in the cream, blending it and then sieving it through a chinois, I went for the rustic approach and decided to leave mine in. My stick blender didn’t do a great job on the leaves, and I’ve amended the recipe for next time to simply chop the leaves much smaller and leave out the blending altogether.

You can also see that our mushroom and peas stuck out proud from the creamy custard flan, which I thought looked lovely, but didn’t resemble the clean flat top of the one in the book.

Pea, Mushroom & Mint Flan

Ingredients
260 grams of shortcrust (flan) pastry, cold from the fridge
500 grams very firm medium button mushrooms, trimmed and cleaned
60 grams butter
250 grams fresh or frozen peas
200 ml double cream
25 grams fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
1 egg
2 egg yolks
Salt and pepper

Note: We made the pastry according to the recipe provided earlier in the book. It came together very quickly indeed and was easy to roll out and use. You could use ready made if you prefer.

Method

Preheat the oven to 190 C.
Roll out the pastry to a thickness of 3mm and line a 20 cm diameter flan dish.

Lightly prick the base, line with paper, fill with baking beads, and bake blind for 20 minutes. Remove the beads and paper and bake for another 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside.
Increase the oven temperature to 200 C.
Halve or quarter the mushrooms, then sauté in butter until they have released their liquid. Drain, season and leave to cool.
Cook the peas briefly. I used the microwave on its defrost setting for about 2 minutes, as I didn’t want to the frozen peas to lose their freshness.
Heat the cream and mint leaves in a saucepan, over low heat, allowing the flavours to infuse.
Whisk the minted cream with the egg, egg yolks, salt and pepper.

Put the mushrooms and peas into the pastry case.

Pour the minted cream and egg mixture over the fillings. Mine had clumps of mint leaves, which I could have removed from the surface, but decided to leave in.

Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 180 C and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes until ready. Test by inserting a knife tip into the flan; it should come out clean.

As our flan ring doesn’t allow the flan to easily be removed onto a plate or rack, we left it to cool down in the dish for 5 minutes before serving.

We both really enjoyed the flan – the combination of flavours was excellent with earthy mushrooms, fresh sweet peas and vibrant mint. Our flan bottom was a little soggy, perhaps we needed to bake it a little longer, or possibly brush with egg to create a protective layer against the wet custard.

As I mentioned, there are plenty of classic pastries in the book. Pete’s already made the brioche dough, which he used to make brioche bacon twists, also in the book. We didn’t take any notes or photograph these but they were delicious, if rather less beautifully shaped than those in the pictures!

This promises to be another great reference book to have in our collection.

Kavey Eats received a sample review copy of this book from Quadrille Publishing.

Pastry: Savoury and Sweet by Michel Roux is currently available in paperback on Amazon for £6.79 (RRP £9.99).

The Kavey Eats Jaffa Cake Taste Test!

08 May 2012 16 Responses »

May 082012

I’ve really enjoyed the taste tests I’ve run so far – for Christmas pudding, chocolate Easter eggs and alcoholic ginger beer.

It’s fun to get together with fellow food lovers to focus on one chosen food or drink.

And in terms of generating a useful and fair result, my feeling is that amalgamating feedback from a panel of testers means that one person’s personal preferences don’t skew the results. What I mean by that is the results generated by a panel will hopefully be more representative of the wider public than a ranking of products decided by one taster on their own.

So last Wednesday, my latest team of volunteers assembled at The Bull in Highgate (who’d very kindly allowed us to hold the tasting in the private corner of their upstairs dining room) and peered at, smelled and chomped our way through 12 different brands of jaffa cakes.

Before the panel arrived, Pete and I removed the biscuits from their boxes (which we hid) and then placed all the jaffa cakes onto numbered plates, so they could be tasted anonymously. I had created tasting sheets which had space for notes about appearance and smell, the cake base, the jaffa jelly and the chocolate coating, overall feedback about the jaffa cake and a score out of 10.

Having worked through all 12, we went back to the early ones to assess them against the rest of the pack, as scoring the first few is always hard without the context of those to follow. Some tasters went back through all 12 again, to make sure they’d given each jaffa cake a fair try (and because they’re greedy bastards!)

All the jaffa cakes were judged on how good they were against the others. Prices were not taken into consideration, so when you read the results below, you may be even more impressed to see how well some of the less expensive brands performed against the most expensive ones.

1st place Asda Chosen By You

Score 8.3
Price per 12 = £0.65

All of us were surprised when I revealed the identities of the jaffa cakes at the end of the tasting session and we quickly realised that the winner was a jaffa cake made by Asda and on sale for just 65 pence for 12.

Most of us commented that our first impressions were good. The jaffa cake had a "glossy", "thick coat of chocolate", "even/ smooth", providing "good coverage", which was deemed "posh looking". A number of us could pick up a "good smell of dark chocolate".

Beneath that, we liked that the jelly extended "near to the edge" and was a "very deep" layer with a texture that was quite "jam" like. Taste wise the jelly had a "good orange flavour" which suggested it was "made from proper oranges", we liked how "citrusy" it was, "tangy" and reminiscent of "marmalade", indeed the flavour was "a bit more complex" than the others.

The cake itself was "more like proper cake", with a "good consistency", whereas the majority of the others were a little too dry. One panellist felt it was a "bit thin".

Back to the chocolate, it was deemed to have a "nice dark chocolate flavour" which "complements the jaffa" with a good "bite". One panellist found it a touch bitter, the rest liked it.

This jaffa cake was felt to have a "good overall balance" though a number of us did notice it was a bit smaller in diameter than a few of the other circular jaffa cakes.

2nd place Bahlsen Messino

Score 6.7
Price per 12 = £0.89

Available in a range of supermarkets including Asda, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, Bahlsen Messino was one of two oblong jaffa cakes in our test.

Quite a few of the panel were surprised or put out by the "cubular" shape which was deemed by some to be "wrong"!

We noted the "smooth", "even appearance" of the "thick layer" of chocolate with it’s "vertical striping".

The sponge cake was "not stale" but we did have a mixed reaction with one person commenting that it "stuck in the teeth slightly", another describing it as "dense and flaky" and one stating simply that it was "soft". It was felt to be a bit "thin".

The jelly was in a "thin layer" but did extend "all across" the sponge. It was "very soft", "very sweet", "strong in flavour". Texture wise, it was "very soft", some felt it wasn’t much like a jelly.

The "thick covering" of chocolate "good", though "still not strong [enough a] flavour" for some. But it did have a little "bitter taste to temper the very sweet jelly".

Overall, we liked it, though there was some surprise that the main taste was orange, despite that thick layer of chocolate. One felt it "looked posher" than others but wasn’t actually better.

3rd place Marks and Spencer

Score 6.1
Price per 12 = £0.99

Some of the panel found the Marks and Spencer jaffa cake virtually indistinguishable from the Bahlsen Messino one, and certainly most of the comments were very similar.

Quite a few of the panellists were surprised or put out by the "cubular" shape which was deemed by some to be "wrong"!

We noted a "strong chocolate smell" and the "smooth", "even appearance" of the "thick layer" of chocolate.

The sponge cake was "not stale" but we did have a mixed reaction with one person declaring it "a bit mealy", another describing it as "dense" and one stating simply that it was "soft". It was felt to be a bit "thin" but with "good texture".

The jelly was in a "thin layer" but did extend "all across" the sponge. It was "very sweet", "strong in flavour" though one panellist felt it "needed more orange". Texture wise, it was "very soft", one person found it "slightly grainy", some felt it wasn’t much like a jelly.

The "thick covering" of chocolate was "good", though "still not strong {enough a] flavour" for some.

Overall, we liked it, though there was some surprise that the main taste was orange, despite that thick layer of chocolate.

4th place Lidl Sondey

Score 6.0
Price per 12 = £0.43 (sold in packs of 24 for 85 pence)

For one of our panellists, this was their favourite of the 12 jaffa cakes. For the rest, our findings were mixed between those who felt it was pretty good and those who weren’t as keen.

Appearance wise, it had a "good covering of chocolate" which was described as "dark" and "looks fancy" and even "a cute little biscuit".

The sponge was variously found to be ""a nice texture, not dry at all", "a bit mealy" and with "nice solidity but still soft". Nearly all panellists noted that it was rather "thin". One felt it to be a bit "dry" though more of us found it "soft", one panellist commented that it was "a little too soft and cakey".

The jaffa jelly was a "nice even spread", "to the edges". In texture it was "like a decent jam", though "a bit grainy". In flavour not as strong as some of us would have liked but with a balance of bitter and sweet.

Some of us liked that we could smell the chocolate, and that it was a good thick coating but felt there was "not much taste".

Because of the "even coating of jelly" this jaffa cake offered "an even flavour between bites" and one who marked it highly appreciated the "lasting flavour".

it was a bit smaller in diameter than some of the circular jaffa cakes.

5th place McVities

Score 5.7
Price per 12 = £1.15 (also sold in packs of 36 for £3.12)

This well known brand was the second most expensive (by quite considerable margin).

This cake had a reasonable coating of chocolate, though uneven on some biscuits leading some panellists to comment that it was "thick" and others to describe it as a "cheap", "thin layer".

The cake received more varied comments than most. On the texture front it was described as "an airy cake, quite dry", "dry and crumbly", "good texture but a bit dry", "less stale" in comparison with others. The thickness was "medium". On the flavour front it was "distinct from previous ones" (it was number 5) and "a bit sweeter", with a "slightly eggy taste" and a "taste like hazelnuts".

The jaffa jelly was only in the centre but still more "generous" than some. Most didn’t comment on texture, though one found it "slightly crystallised" and another "more sticky". In taste it was "mild", "not strong enough".

There were no comments on the flavour of the chocolate, which didn’t come through well at all.

Overall, the scores for this one were in the middle, though some didn’t like the "strong synthetic aftertaste of orange" or "bit of an odd taste". One person thought it a "bit floral", another "unimpressive" and another "perfectly eatable but nothing special".

Joint 6th place Aldi Belmont

Score 5.6
Price per 12 = £0.43 (sold in packs of 24 for 85 pence)

A good looking biscuit with a small diameter and medium thickness of sponge, a little dry but not overwhelmingly so. Thick jelly, almost to the edge, not very orangey in flavour but does stand out from cake and chocolate. Chocolate layer thin but fully coated and even, with nice flavour.

Joint 6th place Tesco (regular range)

Score 5.6
Price per 12 £0.69

This was one panellist’s favourite jaffa cake.

A bit small with a very thin layer of cheap chocolate through which one can see the jelly in quite a few places, chocolate a bit thicker around edges. Texture of sponge dry on outside edges, almost crispy, but softer inside, slightly stale feeling. Nicely set thick layer of jelly in centre only, not very orangey in flavour, pleasant enough. Can taste the chocolate, though cheap. Most found this jaffa cake quite average. Comments include "overall pretty good" and "nice balance of flavours".

Joint 8th place Morrisons

Score 5.4
Price per 12 = £0.65

A thin and messily applied coating of chocolate, looks cheap. Sponge quite deep, a little dry and crumbly but with a nice flavour. Jelly in centre only, making this jaffa cake mostly cake. Chocolate thin over jelly but a little thicker around edges and has nice "crunch". Decent flavours. Comments include "not a lot of love here".

Joint 8th place Sainsbury’s (regular range)

Score 5.4
Price per 12 = £0.65

A good even spread of chocolate, and a discernable chocolate smell. A pleasantly soft vanilla sponge. Nice jelly and reasonably generous, though mostly in centre, but not a strong enough flavour ("Where’s the orange, no orange!"). Chocolate smooth but doesn’t add much overall flavour. Comments include "indistinguishable".

10th place Cadbury’s

Score 3.7
Price per 12 = £1.29

Given that this was the most expensive jaffa cake in the test, by quite a large amount, the performance of the Cadbury’s jaffa cake was disappointing.

Chocolate coating uneven, variously thick and thin, though overall more generous than some. Not much flavour at all and has a cheap chocolate aftertaste. Sponge is chewy. Jelly layer a little thin, though extends quite near to edge of the cake. Very little fruit flavour though one panellist thought it had a hint of alcohol about it. Comments include "not a pleasant sensation" and "tastes of sad".

Joint 11th place Sainsbury’s Basic

Score 3.3
Price per 12 = £0.40 (sold in packs of 24 for 79 pence)

Small size but thick sponge. Sparsely coated with chocolate so that jelly shows through. Sponge is crispy, crunchy, dry throughout. Smooth jelly, in centre only, but not much flavour, very mild. Chocolate doesn’t taste chocolaty, is more like really cheap cooking chocolate. "Looks cheap", tastes "meh".

Joint 11th place Tesco Everyday Value

Score 3.3
Price per 12 = £0.40 (sold in packs of 24 for 79 pence)

Small size but thick sponge. Sparsely and unevenly coated with chocolate so that jelly shows through. Sponge is crispy, crunchy, dry throughout, stale. Measly amount of jelly in centre only, and not much flavour. Chocolate doesn’t taste chocolaty, is cheap milk chocolate flavour. "Very cheap", "synthetic aftertaste", "unpleasant".

So there you have it, all twelve jaffa cakes tested, with their average scores and a representative description of how we found them.

I hope you find these results interesting, surprising, useful!

Thanks to my panel of taste testers: Pete, Simon, Jacqui, Tonnvane, Jason & Becca.

With additional thanks to Aldi, Asda, Lidl and Sainsbury’s for review samples. Rest were purchased directly in store.

Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream: April Roundup

29 Apr 2012 10 Responses »

Apr 292012

We might not have had quite enough sunshine this month to really make us yearn for light, bright and refreshing sorbets, granitas, shaved ice desserts, slushies and spooms but that hasn’t stopped us from getting creative in the kitchen.

Here are all the entries, in the order they were posted. If you like what you see, do pop over to the participating blogs and leave them a nice comment.

I’ll be posting the May challenge in a day or two!

Solange from Pebble Soup was very fast off the mark, posting her entry only two days after the challenge was announced! Solange has combined rhubarb, currently in season in the UK, with ginger in her rhubarb and ginger sorbet, a marriage made in heaven. But fiery ginger can easily overwhelm and she advises that less is more for this recipe. I love the pretty pink colour she has achieved in her finished sorbet; it looks so pretty!

Soma is the author of the vibrant eCurry blog, home of Indian recipes and more. Her blood orange granita with ginger and orange mint is suitably colourful and really brought to life by Soma’s beautiful photography. And I was intrigued by her mention of her new orange mint plant. I’ve grown peppermint, spearmint and even chocolate mint, but had not come across this one before. Of course, I want to grow it myself now!

Rosana, author of Hot & Chilli blog, is a party girl – whenever I see her she has a huge smile for the world and a glass of something tasty in her hand. So the fact that she’s turned to the national cocktail of her birth country, Brazil, for inspiration, is no surprise and her caipirinha sorbet with caramelised lime peel is rather appealing. The key components are cachaça, a liquor made from fermented sugargane juice, as well as sugar and lime.

Given that the very name makes me giggle, I knew from the start that I had to make spoom! I decided on lemon spoom based on a classic lemon sorbet, mainly because I had some frozen lemon juice lurking in my freezer. To my delight, the addition of raw meringue to the sorbet really made a difference to the texture, making it smoother and lighter. I’ll definitely spoomify future sorbets, now I know!

Millie from Kitchen Princess Diaries made a gin and tonic sorbet. Not enough gin, she said, but otherwise very refreshing. She used a BBC GoodFood recipe which she followed exactly and you’ll find the link to it within her post.

As I said, we’ve had a lot of rain this month, but the sun has been shining now and then. I think Jo’s lemon and lime sorbet is just the ticket for a sunny day, light and refreshing. Jo, who writes the Comfort Bites blog, only recently bought herself an ice cream machine, and has busily been churning out ice creams such as blueberry, vanilla and chocolate, so I’m hoping she keeps up the momentum and enters upcoming challenges too.

Unsurprisingly, given that his blog is called Pete Drinks, and he’s rather a fan of beer, my husband Pete decided on something beery. A Zebedee beer slushy, in fact. With no real idea on how to make it, he decided to pour a bottle of his homemade Zebedee Spring Ale into a plastic container and shove it into the freezer for a couple of days. Fortunately, with the help of a fork it flaked very well. As it froze, it separated a little, and the more concentrated beer defrosted to create a beery syrup that collected at the bottom of the glass.

Dom from Belleau Kitchen is my blog brother, that is to say our blogs share the same birthday, though he’s at pains to point out, in the blogging world at least, I’m the older, creakier one! His apple and rhubarb sorbet is the very essence of Britain, so it’s rather appropriate that he posted it on St George’s day. He adds cinnamon to complement the fruit and just enough sugar to retain the balance between sweet and sharp.

I had never heard of a Vitamix blender until I read Donna’s post on her blog Beating Limitations. But Donna is a huge fan and uses it to create everything from smoothies to curry paste to milling her own flour! For this month’s challenge, she used the blender to make a simple and refreshing orange sorbet, using honey in place of sugar to sweeten the mix. I bet the pear and honey sorbet she’s envisioning will be great too!

Donna has also been inspired by previous challenges, but missed the deadlines for the roundups, so I’d like to draw your attention to her cookie dough ice cream and her coconut pineapple ice cream posts, both of which look delicious.

So many of us growing herbs really don’t make the best use of them, but that’s not something Shaheen, author of Allotment2Kitchen could be accused of. She’s put her rosemary to good use in popcorn, hot drinks, puddings and scones. I really like her idea to make lemon and rosemary sorbet, combining the sharp citrus flavour with the savoury, woody herb. Shaheen’s method is also a reminder that you don’t need an ice cream machine to take part in BSFIC as she puts her freezer and food processor to good use.

Tales of Pigling Bland is a great name for a blog, no? Taken from the Beatrix Potter book first published about 100 years ago, it’s written by Gill, who also goes by the nickname of Pigling Bland. Having wussed out of making ice cream last month, Gill created a chocolate cherry granita using up a store cupboard jar of cherries in brandy, as well as cocoa, sugar and water. She also added some cocoa nibs over the top of the finished granita “to make it even more grown up”.

Pam, author of Sidewalk Shoes, loves all things frozen so just had to enter BSFIC when she found out about it. She turned to ice cream guru David Lebovitz’ book The Perfect Scoop, looking for a recipe she could make from ingredients already in the house. The chocolate coconut sorbet she made looks lovely and I particularly love her beautiful photography. Fans of cold deliciousness should read the next post too, in which Pam makes lemon frozen yoghurt.

There’s Proper Food In There Somewhere is the home of Jacqui aka Sushi Junki. Jacqui’s entry makes me very happy because it completes the challenge options of sorbets, granitas, shaved ice desserts, slushies and spooms by putting forward a shaved ice dessert, something Jacqui fell in love with whilst living and working in Australia. Jacqui used her food processor to blitz ice cubes into ‘snow’ and then drenched the shaved ice with green tea syrup and condensed milk. She added sweetened adzuki beans, halved lychees and fresh ripe mango.

Finally, Jennie from All the things I eat made a blackcurrant and cherry brandy spoom. She made a proper Italian meringue for her spoom, boiling up sugar syrup and adding it to the whipped egg whites and whipping some more. The sorbet was made using frozen fruit mixed with cherry brandy and lemon juice and blended into mush before being frozen briefly to make it a little more solid. Combining the two together resulted in a light, “frozen mousse” dessert.

I’m usually rather strict about the deadline – call it the school marm in me – but when Laura from How to cook good food dedicated her very first creation using the ice cream machine she was given for her birthday just a few days ago to the BSFIC challenge, how could I say no? So I’m adding Laura’s lemon and ginger sorbet to the round up a few hours late. Happy belated birthday, Laura!

And there we have April’s Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

New Covent Garden Company’s Soup of the Month

25 Apr 2012 No Responses »

Apr 252012

The New Covent Garden Soup Company have recently launched an idea to community source a new soup each month. The winning soups will be sold nationally as Soup of the Month specials.

Recently, they asked me to get involved in trying the shortlisted soups for their first such soup, which will be on sale in August. The competition theme was "Fetes, Festivals & Shows" and they asked people to submit soup recipes which celebrate British summer time, something they would be proud to present at any local fete, festival or show.

Once the entries were all in, they started by narrowing down the entries to 5 or 6 which were made up in their test kitchens to the consumers’ exact recipes. These were then narrowed down to the three with the most potential to appeal to their customers, and the recipes were tweaked to ensure good quality results when made in the factory, in larger volumes. They tasted their own versions against the submitted recipes again, to ensure they were true to the originals, and then sent them to me to review.

Tim Doran’s Summer Heat soup combines roasted red peppers with tomatoes, spinach, asparagus, onion and stock with a whole scotch bonnet chilli to add heat. Crème fraiche, basil, lemon juice and seasoning are also included.

Lisa Aimal’s Courgette & Camembert soup adds onions, chicken stock and crème fraiche to the two signature ingredients of courgette and camembert.

Abbie Eales’ Fezziwigs Coconut Shy soup includes sweet potatoes, ground coconut, chicken stock, ginger, garlic, cayenne and paprika.

I enjoy Tim’s Summer Heat, but for me, it’s something best suited to cooler months, when the heat from the scotch bonnet can help warm me up. That said, the red peppers and tomatoes are reminiscent of warm Mediterranean sunshine.

Lisa’s soup combines two of my favourite ingredients, but lacks punch in terms of flavour. Neither the courgette nor the camembert really shine; perhaps they are a little too watered down by the onion, stock and crème fraiche. Almost there, but not quite.

My favourite is Abbie’s entry, which is, as she describes, "sweet and spicy and exotic enough to bring up images of sunnier climes". I also really like her note that it works well both hot and cold, and indeed I tried and enjoyed it both ways. Today’s Britain is multicultural, and many ingredients from around the world have found a place in our regular repertoire.

Abbie’s original recipe, as submitted to New Covent Garden Soup Company, is below.

The New Covent Garden Soup Company are now calling for entries for their October soup of the month, the theme of which is Halloween. The deadline for entries is May 10th and you are encouraged to get creative with the name of your soup as well as the recipe!

Abbie Eale’s Fezziwigs Coconut Shy Soup

Ingredients
500 ml chicken stock
3 large sweet potatoes, cut into 2cm cubes
1 large onion, finely chopped
100 grams ground coconut
100 mls hot water
1 inch of root ginger, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Cooking instructions

Put the ground coconut in a bowl and add the hot water to rehydrate it. Leave for 20 minutes.
In a pan heat the sunflower oil and lightly fry the onion until it becomes translucent.
Add in the chopped garlic, ginger, cayenne and paprika and fry quickly.
Add in the coconut and water mixture, and stir for a minute until it thickens slightly.
Pour in the chicken stock and heat until it starts to simmer.
Add in the cubed sweet potato. Leave to cook until the potato is nice and soft; about 15-20 minutes.
Use a hand blender to blitz your soup. I like it with a bit of texture still, so you can tell there is ground coconut in it rather than coconut milk.
Serve hot or cold.

Kavey Eats received samples from the New Covent Garden Soup Company. Recipe reproduced with permission.

Lemon Spoom: (Meringue-Softened Sorbet)

17 Apr 2012 14 Responses »

Apr 172012

Until I set the April Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream challenge, I’d never heard of spoom.

But as I checked the definitions for sorbet, granita and shaved ice, I saw a mention of spoom and followed the link to spoom’s own wiki page.

I learned that spoom is a frothy sorbet, once very popular in England. Like sorbet, it is made from fruit juice, wine, sherry or port. As it begins to set, it is mixed with Italian meringue. It is served in a tall glass, often with a little champagne spooned over the top. The name comes from the Italian spuma (foam).

Of course, I couldn’t resist! As I had some lemon juice in the freezer, I decided to make a lemon spoom.

Because I left things later than I planned, once I had made my sorbet I popped it into the freezer overnight, and continued the recipe the following day. Of course, that meant the sorbet had frozen too hard to easily mix the meringue into it, so I left it out to thaw a little while, then used my Magimix food processor to give it a blitz, thinking its motor would easily handle this. I was wrong, the blade stuck in the sorbet, slipped off centre and shredded the spindle very badly. I suspect the cost of repair will be prohibitive. *cry* So do give yourself time to finish the whole process in one go.

Both Pete and I really loved the result, essentially a lighter style of sorbet with an incredibly silky, smooth mouthfeel. We tasted the base sorbet before and after, and were impressed enough with the results that I’d definitely ‘spoomify‘ sorbets in the future.

Note: As the egg whites are not cooked in this recipe, this may not be suitable for pregnant woman, or anyone with a weak immune system. You may wish to make an Italian meringue, cooking the egg white by adding sufficiently hot sugar or sugar syrup.

Lemon Spoom: (Meringue-Softened Sorbet)

Ingredients for sorbet
150 ml lemon juice
300 grams caster sugar
450 ml water
Ingredients for spoom
Lemon sorbet (above)
3 large egg whites
50 grams caster sugar
0.25 teaspoon cream of tartar

Method

Put the sugar and water into a pan on low heat until the sugar is fully dissolved.
Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice.
Leave to cool.
Once cool, churn the lemon syrup in an ice cream machine until it firms into sorbet.

As the sorbet is churning, prepare the meringue:
Beat the egg whites until frothy and add the cream of tartar.

Increase the speed (if you’re using a mixer) and add the sugar gradually.
Continue to beat the eggs until they form glossy, stiff peaks.
Once the sorbet is finished churning, tip into a large mixing bowl, add a third of the meringue and beat together. This should loosen the sorbet.

Now carefully fold in the remaining meringue and mix together very gently.

Either serve immediately, in tall glasses (with or without a little sparkling white wine spooned over), or pour the soft mixture into a suitable container and freeze for one to two hours.

This is my entry for the April Bloggers Scream for Ice Cream challenge.

Rich, Comforting Chicken Savoyarde

15 Apr 2012 4 Responses »

Apr 152012

Tamasin Day-Lewis’ Chicken Savoyarde recipe appeals to me for more than one reason.

Firstly, the initial part of the process is essentially how I already poach a whole chicken, so the recipe lends itself very well to being made with leftovers. (I’m sure it would work with roast chicken leftovers too).

Secondly, it features chicken, cheese, cream, white wine, mustard, bread and tarragon – what’s not to like?

And thirdly, a friend made it for me for dinner once, and I absolutely loved it!

I adapted Tamasin’s recipe by poaching my chicken in my usual slow cooker way and using only half of the meat from my smaller whole chicken, along with some of the poaching liquid stock. I also switched both the parmesan and gruyere to comte, as I had some in the freezer. And lastly, I substituted dried tarragon for fresh, as the supermarket was out of stock when I went to buy some. Apparently, there’s been a shortage!

This is a very simple dish and doesn’t take long to make, especially if you have a food processor to grate the cheese and make breadcrumbs.

Chicken Savoyarde

Adapted from original Tamasin Day-Lewis recipe, here.

Serves 3-4

Ingredients
350-400 grams leftover roast or poached chicken meat, chopped into bite sized pieces
40 grams breadcrumbs
25 grams comte cheese, grated
butter, for greasing
For the sauce
45 grams butter
35 grams plain flour
300 ml chicken stock, heated
190 ml dry white wine
170 ml double cream
75 grams comte cheese, grated
2 heaped teaspoons French mustard
2 level teaspoons dried tarragon
salt and pepper, to taste

Method

Preheat the oven to 210 degrees C.
Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour and cook, stirring constantly for 3 minutes. Keep the heat low to medium, to avoid browning.
Add the warm chicken stock, the white wine and the cream and stir thoroughly to combine with the flour and butter roux.
Stir in the cheese, mustard and tarragon. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Cook for a further 15-20 minutes, stirring regularly.
Meanwhile, butter a gratin dish and spread the chicken meat across the bottom.
Pour the sauce over the chicken.

If you are preparing the dish ahead of time to bake later, stop at this stage and store the dish in the fridge until ready to cook. Whilst the oven preheats, finish the preparation, as follows.
Sprinkle the breadcrumbs and cheese evenly over the surface of the sauce.

Bake for about 25 minutes, until golden brown on top and bubbling around the edges.

This is fabulously delicious, though not one for those watching waistlines! We used the chicken fat skimmed off the poaching liquid stock to roast some potatoes to serve with the chicken.

Please excuse the poor quality of images, they were taken on my ancient mobile phone!

I’m submitting this to Can Be Bribed With Food’s new Love Food Hate Waste challenge and Fabulicious Food’s Family Friendly Fridays event.

Slow Cooker Poached Chicken

13 Apr 2012 6 Responses »

Apr 132012

I came across the idea to poach a whole chicken in a slow cooker on the old BBC Food Chat discussion boards a couple of years ago and since then, have used the technique regularly, as an alternative to roasting and other recipes.

Not only is the meat – breast included – wonderfully soft and moist, the cooking liquid becomes rich and delicious stock! And you can leave the slow cooker on for hours while you get on with other things.

Oh and the carcass can go back into the slow cooker to make a second portion of stock. Yes, even after long and slow poaching, there’s plenty of flavour left in the remains and no, the resulting stock is not insipid. Although it does have far less gelatin than the original poaching liquid stock, it’s still great as a soup or risotto base.

A very loose recipe…

Make sure you know the size of your slow cooker when you’re buying your chicken! I buy 1.5 to 2 kilo birds, in general.
Peel and chop some root vegetables and an onion.
Place the vegetables and chicken into the slow cooker. I usually put a layer of vegetables below, then the chicken, and then stuff the rest of the vegetables around the sides.
Pour in water to come about two thirds of the way up the chicken. (Check your slow cooker instructions for recommendations on maximum volume of liquid).
Cook for several hours. I usually start on high for the first couple of hours and then turn to auto or low for another 4 or 5 hours.

Take care removing the whole bird from the liquid. Once cooked, it will be so tender that most of the joints will fall apart very easily, and indeed my bird has broken into pieces more than once at this stage. Using two large slotted spoons works well.

Separate the meat from the bones, tendons and skin. I find two spoons the best tool for this job, or fingers if you wait until it’s cooled down.
Strain the poaching liquid through a muslin-lined sieve and divide into 2 or 3 portions. Store in the fridge or freezer.
Divide the meat into portions and store the extra in the fridge or freezer.
Put the discarded skin, bones and tendons back into the slow cooker with fresh water and leave on overnight for a second portion of stock.

This time, I served the meat plain some buttery mashed potato and the onion, carrots, swedes and leeks the chicken was poached with.

Sometimes I make a crunchy spring or summer salad instead, with ingredients such as thinly sliced raw red onion, fresh raw sugar snap peas, halved cherry tomatoes and a simple vinaigrette dressing.

This time, thee left over meat from this chicken went into an absolutely delicious baked chicken dish, which also used half of the poaching liquid. Watch this space for the recipe!

Please excuse the poor quality of images, they were taken on my ancient mobile phone!

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1st place Asda Chosen By You

2nd place Bahlsen Messino

3rd place Marks and Spencer

4th place Lidl Sondey

5th place McVities

Joint 6th place Aldi Belmont

Joint 6th place Tesco (regular range)

Joint 8th place Morrisons

Joint 8th place Sainsbury’s (regular range)

10th place Cadbury’s

Joint 11th place Sainsbury’s Basic

Joint 11th place Tesco Everyday Value

Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream: April Roundup

New Covent Garden Company’s Soup of the Month

Abbie Eale’s Fezziwigs Coconut Shy Soup

Lemon Spoom: (Meringue-Softened Sorbet)

Lemon Spoom: (Meringue-Softened Sorbet)

Rich, Comforting Chicken Savoyarde

Slow Cooker Poached Chicken

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Quick & Easy Triple Mint Choc Chip Ice Cream

Home Made Crème De Menthe Substitute

Pea, Mushroom & Mint Flan

1st place Asda Chosen By You

2nd place Bahlsen Messino

3rd place Marks and Spencer

4th place Lidl Sondey

5th place McVities

Joint 6th place Aldi Belmont

Joint 6th place Tesco (regular range)

Joint 8th place Morrisons

Joint 8th place Sainsbury’s (regular range)

10th place Cadbury’s

Joint 11th place Sainsbury’s Basic

Joint 11th place Tesco Everyday Value

Abbie Eale’s Fezziwigs Coconut Shy Soup

Lemon Spoom: (Meringue-Softened Sorbet)

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Kavey Eats Archives

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