All Butter Shortbread

December is now creeping past and it's time to do one of our usual Christmas treats. Shortbread is something that is just right for this time of year. A recent trip to Scotland has only heightened my seasonal desire for this traditional treat! Rather than just opting for the usual recipe, I decided to take a little longer over this one - and it has been a while in the baking: 8 kg of shortbread mix has been made to multiple recipes, 9 different flavours have been tested and different shapes have been baked. The winning four flavours are listed below, along with the best base recipe.

There are at least three ingredients in traditional shortbread and generally all in a fixed ratio. 1 part sugar (normally caster, sometimes icing), 2 parts butter and 3 parts flour. Its that last part that differs from recipe to recipe (according to whose 'Scottish grandmother' you ask). The flour part is generally subdivided into two parts plain flour and one part something else: semolina, ground rice, rice flour or corn flour. The test bakes with semolina and ground rice came out wonderfully crumbly but after a few chews left something reminiscent of eating biscuits on a sandy beach. I even tried using all plain flour but this came out more like a biscuit than shortbread!

Recipe:

• 125g sugar 
• 250g butter 
• 250g plain flour 
• 125g corn flour 
• pinch of salt 

Plus choose one flavour:

• 1 tsp vanilla extract 
• Zest of one lemon
• 3 tsp green tea, ground
• 25g very fine milk chocolate (the sort used for making fancy hot chocolate) plus 50g dark cooking chocolate, chopped.

1. Rub in the butter with the base ingredients. In my case I just put it all into the kenwood. 
2. Once it reaches a fine powdery consistency add the flavouring and continue to work until it comes together as a nice dough.
3. Roll out on a well floured surface to a thickness of 1/2 cm and cut into circles. If the dough is too stiff to roll, knead it for a few moments to help ease up the mix (you can even knead it in batches if its really stiff). The lazy alternative at this point is to roll a thick sausage of dough and slice it thinly but it is hard to get a perfectly round biscuit.
4. Bake on a greaseproof sheet at 170 degrees for 15-20 minutes, until starting to colour. The mix will spread a little so give enough space between the rounds!
5. Leave to cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

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Pickled Onions

I have never pickled anything before. It has been on my to-do list for years (my culinary to-do list is diverse, mostly in my head and only partially shared with a few people). Whilst at the farm shop I discovered they had pickling onions in stock. Suddenly a reckless urge overcame me as I looked at this box full of shiny, brown onions and before I knew it I was asking my wife to pick up vinegar on the way home from work!

Many of the things on my to-do list involve traditional methods of preseving: smoking, curing, salting, pickling, fermenting... I want to do them all! At some point I'll get round to trying some more of these, and when I do pictures will follow. But for now, on to the onions...

Ingredients:

• 600g pickling onions (small)
• 40g salt
• 400ml vinegar
• 3 blades of mace
• 1 tsp juniper berries
• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• 1 lump of cinnamon stick
• 1 tsp of corriander seeds
• 3 bay leaves
• 1/2 tsp cloves

1. Step one - peel the onions. Lots of them. Those who know me will realise this was a mistake. I start crying before I finish chopping even one onion. I am not sure what possessed me to buy an entire pile of them to peel at the same time. I do have one avoidance method - goggles. A snorkel mask lives in the kitchen cupboard (much to the amusement of my brother in law who decided to do the washing up in it for some reason). Despite this, I managed to peel them all in only an hour or so. Right about this point, shop-bought pickled onions looked really tempting!
2. Step two - Salt the onions and leave overnight to draw-out as much excess moisture as possible.
3. Step three - Rinse and drain. Most of the salt should have dissolved in onion juice and the onions should be ready for pickling.
4. Step four - Add the spices to the vinegar and pack with the onions into jam jars. (Some recipes involve boiling the vinegar and spices and leaving to cool, and some just involve it all sitting in the jars. I opted for the throw-it-all-in-a-jar method.)
5. Step five - Sit in a cupboard for at least 3 weeks.  Results to be announced...

Update - The Results (5 weeks later):

The onions are nicely pickled and perfect with some mature cheese (gooey brie in this case) and crusty bread. The onions have browned slightly from using black peppercorns, but the flavours from the spices are coming out nicely. I might make half the next batch with chilli to give it some more kick, but I shall have no problem with polishing-off these first!

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Bad days and bad meals (or Comfort food and Nachos)

I live in hope that my wife and I are not the only ones who have "bad days". These are the times when your computer crashes, you can't seem to make any headway at work and it's dark and wet outside. You can tell you're having one of these days because you're curled up on the sofa underneath a patchwork quilt watching a trashy movie. Well I can at any rate! Jenny and I plan for these little crises in life. Normally with food. There are several meals we just refer to as "bad meals". We can have them on a good day too but they are definitely comfort food. Some of our favourites are actually quite healthy. Not this one. 

My first realisation that nachos could be more than greasy pub snack food was courtesy of dinner at a friend's house. Instead of the usual stack of nachos buried under a layer of cheese, served with amorphous blobs of coloured goo, a roasting tin emerged from the kitchen with far more than just nachos and cheese in (there was meat and vegetables and everything!). Rather than sinking under the weight of grease, this meal was light enough that it felt natural to have salad with it (rather than having salad as a way of guiltily trying to offset the badness). Alongside it all was some lovely fresh bread. It was definitely a light summer meal and it actually felt healthy. Above all it made me think about nachos as a platform for distributing flavours through rather than just as shovels for salsa!

In the quest to make ultimate nachos a certain focus on the comfort food side of things means ours are not light and summery but they certainly tick all the boxes on a bad day! It is, in fact, so bad that we are yet to serve it in polite company. Please enjoy our naughty little secret:

Joe's Nachos:

Serves 4 (6 if you added salad and nice bread)

• 1 Large Onion
• 3 Cloves of Garlic
• 2 Peppers (colour doesn't matter)
• 200g Chorizo (or as much as you like)
• 1 Tin of Refried Beans
• 300g Grated Cheese (I like to use cheddar)
• 1/2 tsp Paprika
• 1/2 tsp Cumin
• 1/2 tsp Black Pepper
• 400g Tortilla Chips (cheap ones are fine)

For the Salsa:

• 1 Small Onion
• 2 Cloves of Garlic
• 6 Tomatoes
• 1 tbsp White Wine Vinegar
• 1 tbsp Good Oil (I use rapeseed oil out of preference but anything you would use on a salad is fine)
• Coriander (if available)

Optional Extras:

• Pickled Chillies
• Soured Cream

First thing to make is the salsa - it needs time to sit and allow the flavours to blend. In a push 10 minutes will do but 24 hours is a whole heap better! Chop the onion finely, mince the garlic and add with the oil and vinegar into a glass bowl. Hack up the tomatoes into small lumps and mix it all in. Add a pinch of salt and, if you wish to, chillies to taste (the onion and garlic provide a decent kick to begin with so taste as you go).  We didn't have any fresh coriander around so we left it out but a little herbs help lift the salsa. If you want to feel extra summery add some lemon or lime juice as well (you may wish to use a little less vinegar to keep the acidity balanced). Shove this mix in the fridge for later (or eat it with a spoon whilst cooking the rest).

For the main nacho's dish, halve the onion and slice, frying it off with the garlic (minced) and the chopped up chorizo. Cook this slowly and long enough to start to crisp up the outside of the chorizo. Whilst it is cooking add in the spices (ground first of course), chop up the pepper into strips and preheat the oven to 180 C. Once it is all looking a little brown add in the peppers and continue to cook until they are al dente.

Layer up your roasting tin with tortillas, refried beans, cheese and the mix from your pan and bake for 5-10 mins until the cheese is starting going golden brown.

Serve with pickled chillies, a pile of salsa and an (un)healthy dollop of soured cream.

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Glazed Pork Chops with Celeriac Mash

Autumn must be one of the best times of year for celeriac. The ugliest of the root vegetables (and possibly of all vegetables) has a wonderful earthy flavour with aromas of celery. Not loving the sound of it so far? I can understand - celery is somewhere down the bottom of my list of things I enjoy eating on its own. Somehow celeriac manages to take the essence of celery and remove the stringy, chewy wateriness and turn it into a hearty root.
My mother is to blame (or thank) for first introducing me to celeriac. I first encountered it added to mashed potatoes. There is little chance of a bland mash when topped up with a healthy pile of diced celeriac. Mixed amongst roast vegetables it adds a freshness that delights the palate. I have even heard it makes pretty good soup (but I am yet to try this). Mash, however, is where I feel it is truly at its best.

Ingredients:

• 4 pork chops
• 1/2 tsp dijon mustard
• 1tsp balsamic vinegar
• 2tsp honey
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• good pinch salt
• 1/4 tsp smoked paprika
• splash of Worcestershire sauce
• a small glass of sage wine (my own home-brew; sherry or cider would be an acceptable substitute)
• 1/2 medium celeriac
• 6 potatoes (about enough for 2-3 people)
• a small knob of butter
• a splash of milk

This has to be one of the simplest meals I cook and you can do lots of variations - almost any bit of meat will work. Simply mix the mustard, vinegar, spices and Worcestershire sauce in a bowl before marinating the meat in it overnight (or for a few hours if you are pressed for time). Chop the potatoes ready for making mash. Cut the tentacle-like array of roots off the celeriac along with the shoots off the top. Peel it and chop it so that the pieces are about half the size of the potato pieces.
Boil the celeriac and potatoes for about 20 - 25 minutes (or until nice and soft).
Whilst this is cooking fry-off the chops over a medium-low heat in a non-stick pan. The glaze will go very brown and sticky as it caramelises. When cooked de-glaze the pan with the remaining wine (or cider, sherry, etc.),turn the heat up high to reduce by about a third. Once the celeriac and potatoes are cooked drain, return to the pan with butter and milk, and mash.

Broccoli Optional

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Pumpkin Pie

I have been salivating over the idea of pumpkin pie all week. My work colleagues have been discussing Halloween and all the trimmings, and for some reason my mind visualised pumpkin pie. By happy co-incidence my mother-in-law asked us if we would like her to bring a pumpkin when she came to visit. Oh the hardship! Being British I have a definite lack of a family recipe for pumpkin pie so some research was needed. A quick bit of tastespotting later several useful websites had inspired me to head for the cookbooks!
Well I lie, first I baked the pumpkin off (halved and gutted) wrapped in tinfoil parcels until soft and fork-able. Make sure you use a good eating pumpkin, not one of the big bland flavourless monstrosities designed for carving. You can just about carve an eater but really don't bother eating a carver!
Pie in my mind normally calls for shortcrust pastry and sweet pie calls for sweet shortcrust! The recipe below is fairly standard and for that I can thank dear ol' Delia  - scaled up slightly and adjusted for my love of bunging it all in the Kenwood!

Confession number one:

I like power tools in the kitchen. I find that I can get a very good pastry out of the Kenwood Chef just by bunging it all in the bowl and turning it on. If I can do this with a recipe I will. I have tried (probably not to Royal Medical Society standards) blind taste-testing recipes that call for rubbing-in gently by hand with the same recipe done in the Kenwood and not noticed a discernable difference. This is not true of all recipes but where it's possible to use a Kenwood, I will!

The Kenwood tends to abuse a pastry so much that you can bring it together with next to no water so I always try and add water fairly early into the mixing process. For this pie I used the following recipe:

Sweet Shortcrust Pastry:

• 225g plain flour 
• 2 tbsp caster sugar 
• Pinch of salt 
• 110g butter 
• Water to bind (I used 30ml - 2 tbsp)

All thrown in the Kenwood and mixed it until it looked rather like bread-crumbs. At this point you should be able to coax a lump of it into a ball in your hand. A very swift knead later and the pastry is nicely balled and ready for chucking in a bag and into the fridge for 30+ minutes. This pastry is normally a nightmare to work but delightfully crisp and crumbly once baked.

While the pastry rested I made the filling. The recipes for pumpkin pie all seem to come from the States and are subsequently in cups. I have done my best to convert between units but I should warn you (and I expect this to not be the last time) that I can be a little cavalier about converting between units! I have a measuring jug with cups on it so that was my cup measure (not one of the wife's one-pint tea mugs). I noticed that the pumpkin (once scooped out of the skins) was rather wet - it was in fact sat in a puddle of its own juice so I squeezed it out as best I could and tipped the extra liquid away before measuring it.

Filling:

• 2 cups prepared pumpkin (bless the Americans - thats near enough 1lb or 500g in real money) 
• 3/4 cup soft brown sugar (about 4oz / 100g) 
• 1 cup milk (250ml / just under 1/2 pt) 
• 1/2 cup double cream (125 ml) 
• 2 large eggs + 1 extra yolk 
• 2 tsp total of mixed spice and allspice (I grind my own just for the fun of it but shop bought will work too!)

To Finish:

• 1/2 cup double cream
• Walnuts

For those who want to play with grinding their own spices I used a slither of mace, a grating of nutmeg, 3 cloves, a pinch of coriander seed, a shake of ginger and a slightly larger shake of cinnamon. For this recipe I also threw in 3 allspice berries. And grind.

To make the filling load up your blender and let it rip! 

Once the pastry has rested I rolled it out and baked it blind for 20 mins at 180 C (350F). Here I made rookie mistake number one. I forgot to seal my base. This filling is very wet - its a modified egg custard! Brush your base with egg and bake for an extra couple of minutes uncovered to seal it (or you will get a soggy bottom).  I left my pastry overhanging the flan tin for the blind bake and trimmed it before filling.

Load up your mixture into the base and slide it back into the oven for 30-40 minutes. Once it is cooked it will not be runny in the middle but should still wobble a little. At this point you can enjoy the pastry off cuts from the blind bake. Flour, butter and sugar baked until golden brown? Little wonder it tastes like shortbread and goes very well with a cup of tea.

To finish I let it cool enough to be able to pile whipped cream on top without cooking that as well, and then garnished with walnuts. The mother in law said she actually liked this pumpkin pie (soggy bottom and all)! I don't think this will last long even without extra mouths to eat it.

Changes for next time:

• seal the pastry case
• a little more ginger needed

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The Beginning

For a while I have posted photos of particularly successful meals onto Facebook for the world in general to browse - everything from roast potatoes to profiteroles. I decided recently that this should change. I like taking photos, I relish food and enjoy cooking. I feel it is a small logical step to attempt to take things further and share my (sometimes obsessive) attempts to produce good food with the world.

I intend (although we shall see how this intention works out) to shift towards regular postings, across as wide a breadth of categories (genres / areas / styles - what should one call the groups into which we subdivide our food). Imminently I hope to produce a pumpkin pie worth posting about (the pumpkin is baking off as I type) and we shall see what follows. To kick things off however one Black Forest Gateaux, with cherries soaked in improvised kirsch (artisan vodka soaked over the cherries with sugar until a wonderful sweet cherry vodka was achieved).

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