What's in stock

I'd made a point of finishing off all the soup recipes before the warm weather arrived, but there was still one recipe from the soup chapter that remained uncompleted: brown meat stock (p85). The thing is, I had to have something to use it for, so I scoured the remaining recipes and found that beef stock is required for tomato sauce (p103).


The next step was to get myself some beef bones. They don't have them at the supermarket (or not at this time of year, at least) so I made a mission to the butcher in Barrington on Saturday, where I got a bag of meaty bones without any difficulty.


I got the bones home and set about making my stock. I arranged the bones in a roasting dish and put them in the oven until they were nicely browned, then transferred the bones to a stock pot and added water. I used a small amount of water to rinse out the juices in the roasting dish, before pouring it into the pot with the rest.

I brought the water to the boil, then added chopped celery, peppercorns, a bay leaf, some thyme and a sprig of parsley. That was all the effort required for the time being - I just had to let it simmer for six hours. It was already mid-afternoon when I got the stock on, so it was well into the evening before it was finished. I'd originally planned to make the tomato sauce that evening, but it soon became clear that I would run out of time.


When the stock was finished, I strained out all the bones and bits, and placed the stock in the fridge to cool. In the morning, the stock had set into the apparently desirable jellyish texture, and there was a thin layer of fat over the top, which I scooped off and threw away.


It wasn't until Monday night that I got around to making the sauce. I began by cooking onion, garlic, bacon and celery in a saucepan. When these were cooked through, I stirred through flour, and cooked that for a minute or so before mixing in some tomato puree, and a little sugar.


At this stage, you're supposed to take the sauce off the heat and allow it to cool slightly before gradually stirring in boiling stock. Since I didn't really understand the reasoning behind this, I only did it in token fashion, leaving the pan off the heat while I heated the stock.


As I gradually stirred in the stock, the thick tomatoey paste in my saucepan became fairly liquid. That was expected, as the next step is to simmer the sauce for 45 minutes, or "until sauce consistency". It actually only took about half an hour, during which I discovered that the pasta containers in my pantry (usually full of various pastas) were almost entirely empty. Luckily I found some that would do, and cooked it when the sauce looked like it was nearly ready.


I spooned some sauce onto my pasta and topped it with a few torn up bits of basil from the garden. I realised at this stage that I'd forgotten to season the sauce (yes, again!) and had to add a little seasoning on top to stir through.

The tomato sauce was ok, but not brilliant. I didn't much like the flour-thickened consistency, and it seemed quite sweet for a pasta sauce (which admittedly could be improved if I paid more attention to seasoning). It certainly wasn't worth the time it took to cook: I'd much prefer a sauce thrown together in 15 minutes, using a can of tomatoes and whatever else I've got on hand. That's just my preference, of course. You'd have to try this sauce yourself to see whether it suits your taste or not. Meanwhile, I've got to come up with some ways to use the rest of my beef stock!

Traditional treat

I felt like doing a bit of baking yesterday afternoon, so I whipped up a seed cake (p53). I've been keen to try this cake for a while, but it had to wait until I'd got around to buying caraway seeds. To our modern 'cakes must be rich, sweet and thick with icing' mindset, it might seem a bit odd to put seeds in a cake, but I'm pretty sure seed cakes have been around for a good long while.


There's nothing difficult about the recipe; you just cream butter and sugar, then stir in a bit of brandy (or whiskey, or skip the grog altogether if you prefer. I used brandy). Next, you alternately add beaten eggs and sifted dry ingredients, and finally, stir through the caraway seeds.


This made for a fairly thick mixture, more like a biscuit dough than a cake batter. I smoothed it out into a cake tin and placed it in the oven for half an hour. When it came out of the oven, I let it rest in the tin for ten minutes, before turning it out onto a wire rack - and immediately cutting myself a chunk, because who can resist cake warm from the oven?


I've decided I like caraway seeds. They have an almost aniseedy flavour, which is always going to appeal to me. They impart flavour and texture to the cake, which without the seeds would be soft and sweet, but very plain. Seed cake might be a bit old-fashioned, but it sure tastes good!

Bits and quiches

 There were quite a few leftovers from the dinner I cooked Mum and Dad the other day. I had half a bowl of the veges and a fair few scraps of chicken. I figured that a sensible way to use these would be to make some wholemeal pastry (p80) and turn them into quiche-type things.


Wholemeal pastry is a variation of the plain short pastry recipe; you just swap the white flour for wholemeal, and add a little baking powder. Often wholemeal recipes have a bit of white flour as well, but this one's just plain wholemeal. I was concerned that this would make the pastry a bit heavy, but there was only one way to find out.

I put the flour and baking powder in a bowl with a bit of salt, then rubbed in butter. The recipe actually says to 'cut in', possibly because not touching it would keep the butter colder, but I've never had much luck with that method: I just rubbed it with my fingers until it looked like breadcrumbs.


I mixed in a little cold water, just enough to make a stiff dough. It had a better consistency than I'd expected from a wholemeal dough - I was able to roll it out smoothly without any difficulty. There was quite a lot, though: the recipe says it makes around 375g, but when I weighed by ball of dough it was just over 500g.  I'd planned to use my four little tart tins, but I still had plenty left over when those were all lined. I rolled out the remaining dough, making it just slightly thinner, and lined my pie dish as well.


There's no indication in the recipe of how the pastry should be cooked or for how long. I assumed blind baking before I put in the filling would be best, since it's a short pastry.


While the pastry cases were blind-baking, I mixed up a filling based around my leftover veges and chicken. I added eggs and cheese, though not as many eggs as I would have liked: I found I had only two in the fridge, so made do with that. When the pastry cases were ready, I spooned in my filling and bunged them back in the oven until the filling looked cooked.

My quichey things are nothing to write home about, but they're not too bad. The wholemeal pastry is quite a bit drier than a white-flour pastry, but it has a crispness about it that I like, and somehow it seems more substantial than plain pastry. It's a whole lot better than I was expecting, anyway!

Feeding the Folks

Mum and Dad were passing through Christchurch yesterday, and planned to be at my place for dinner. I reckoned I had just enough time to roast a small chicken with basic bread stuffing (p135) and do some curried vegetables (p161) to go with it.


I rushed home and got the chicken in the oven, and was preparing the stuffing when Mum and Dad turned up. I'd chosen to cook it separately from the chicken, which I find quicker and easier. I mixed chopped onions with breadcrumbs, sage, melted butter and egg, then rolled it in tinfoil and set it aside for a while.


There's no instruction that indicates how long the stuffing should be cooked for, since it's supposed to be inside the chicken, and there's timings given for that. I was doing a half recipe as well, so it was only a small package of stuffing. I bunged it in with about 45 minutes to go, and hoped for the best.


While the chicken was cooking, I prepared the vegetables. The base ingredients are potato and onion, then you just add in whatever else you've got. This turned out to be a convenient way of using up some of the courgettes, beans and carrots I now have in large quantities from the garden.


I allowed about 15 minutes for the curried vegetables, beginning by cooking the potato and onion gently for five minutes or so. After that, I threw in the rest of the veges, along with curry powder, lemon juice, flour, salt and pepper, and water. I bunged the lid on that and left it to simmer.


Meanwhile, the chicken had finished cooking. I carved it up (fairly ineptly, as usual, but at least it was in manageable bits) and cut the log of stuffing into slices. By the time that was done, the veges were ready and  I soon had dinner on the table.


This was a reasonably successful meal. The stuffing was quite palatable, and you can't really go wrong with a roast chook. I had expected the vegetables to have a stronger curry favour, but it was actually fairly subtle - just enough to impart a bit of warmth into a chilly wet evening, and quite a good accompaniment for roast chook and stuffing.

Smelly-breathed partygoers?

Since I don't have any parties planned between now and my fast-approaching March deadline, I decided I'd make the last two 'party finger food' recipes as nibbles while I watched a DVD on the weekend. Both are fairly traditional canapés, but personally, I don't think I'd serve sardine savoury (p194) and stuffed eggs (p196) at  a party: fishy or eggy breath is not ideal in a social situation!


I started by hard-boiling a couple of eggs (the recipe is for 8, but I wasn't going to eat all of that) and making something resembling canapé bases by grilling slices of ciabatta roll. I probably should have had another go at the proper canapé bases recipe, since I made such a hash of it the first time. Never mind, I had the ciabatta rolls there and decided to use them.


When the eggs were boiled and cooled, I cut them in half, scooped out the yolks and mashed them with mayonnaise, curry powder and a bit of salt and pepper. Once I'd got it to a usable consistency, I spooned the yolk mixture into a piping bag and piped it back into the egg whites. It's actually a bit tricky, since the eggs skid away as you try to pipe into them, but I managed to get it done.


I was supposed to garnish the eggs with slices of stuffed olive, but I didn't have any on hand. Since it was only me eating them, I wasn't particularly bothered that they weren't garnished properly. All they got was a bit of parsley.


To make the sardine savoury, I mashed drained sardines with curry powder, lemon juice and chutney. The chutney I happened to have open was cashmere chutney, and I didn't really think about it until I'd already put it in, but the sweet fruitiness of that particular chutney wasn't the best match for the sardines.


I spread the sardine mixture over some canapé bases, sprinkled a bit of parsley over the top of those as well, and sat down to nibble as I watched my movie. The eggs were actually really tasty. I guess it's no accident that stuffed eggs are a classic. Even the fruity sardiney things were not terrible. I think they'd be quite tasty if you went with a more tangy chutney. On the whole, a reasonable plate of nibbles - and with noone else around, I didn't have to worry about smelly breath!

How do you like them apples?

I had a handful of Granny Smiths that had been sitting in my fruit bowl ever since I made apple and blackberry jelly almost a month ago. They really needed using, so I decided I'd make Dutch layered pancakes (p216), a dessert made by layering pancakes with stewed spiced apple.


I'd intended to make this as last night, but didn't get around to it. By the time I'd even made any dinner, it was nearly 10pm! Instead, I chose to do the pancakes as a brunch this morning.


I started by peeling and chopping the apples, and stewing them in a pan with sugar and cinnamon. I'm guessing it's the apple and cinnamon that's the 'Dutch' bit in this recipe, though the stack itself might be a Dutch thing too, for all I know.


When the apples were soft, I took a potato masher to them till I had a reasonably smooth puree. It was thick, with very little excess liquid. This consistency turned out to be ideal, as a moist apple mixture would make the pancake stack soggy.


Next, I turned to the pancakes. These are made with Edmonds pancake mix, but you could use your own preferred pancake recipe. If you're going to use this one, make note of the fact that the egg and milk required  for the pancakes are listed in the instructions on the box, but not in the actual recipe, which merely says 'make pancakes according to packet directions'.


I'm not great at making pancakes. My first few were a bit thin and flimsy around the edges, but after that, I managed to make them fairly uniform. I found that the pancake mix had a lot of lumps in it, which I couldn't get rid of, no matter how much I whisked. If you use the pancake mix, put it through a sieve before you mix in the eggs and milk - hopefully it'll reduce the number of lumps.


I got eight pancakes out of the mixture that should theoretically have made fifteen. Still, I guess I was using a bit more batter for each pancake than it said on the box. Eight was plenty enough for my purposes, anyway.


I started layering the pancakes, spreading each with a thin layer of the spicy stewed apple before placing the next pancake over the top. It was quite hard to judge how much apple to use - I was spreading quite sparingly, and wound up with more than I needed at the end. I lifted up the stack in a few places and eased a bit more in to some of the lower layers.


The final stack did not really look that impressive: just a squat little pile of mismatched pancakes. When I cut into it, however, I was delighted to see that both stack and slice held together perfectly, and that all the layers actually looked relatively even.


The slice holds together just like a piece of cake. You can eat it with a cake fork or pick it up with your fingers. More importantly, it tastes delicious. You wouldn't think you'd get that much flavour just from apple, sugar and a bit of cinnamon, but it's just really tasty. Everyone loves pancakes; add a bit of spicy apple and I'm more than happy.

Theoretically for donors

I'm sure I'll have cause to regret establishing the custom of bringing in baking every time the blood drive comes to Hornby. That is, I'll regret it one day, but not as long as I still need excuses to bake Edmonds cakes. This time, it was loch katrine cake (p50).

This cake (which is actually more of a slice) has several different layers. You start with a very plain dough, made by rubbing butter into flour and baking powder, with a little milk to bind. This is rolled out and used to line a sponge roll tin. As always, it took a bit of patchwork to line the bottom of the tin evenly, but eventually I had it all covered.


On the base I spread a thin layer of raspberry jam and topped that with evenly sprinkled currants. The next step was to make the 'sponge': I creamed butter and sugar, then alternately mixed in dry ingredients and beaten eggs. Finally, I stirred through enough milk to make the mixture smooth, and spread it on top of the currant layer.


After half an hour or so in the oven, the cake came out looking beautiful. I let it cool before mixing up a quick lemon icing and spreading that on, with a generous scattering of chopped nuts on top.


As it happened, we didn't have all that many people available to donate blood today. For various reasons, only three people made it across to the blood drive - and I don't think any of them actually got a piece of cake. I did get to try it - luckily, or I wouldn't be able to tell you all how it tastes!


Loch katrine cake is quite tasty. Those different layers add pleasantly contrasting textures, and though the cake itself is fairly plain, plenty of flavour comes through from the jam, currants and icing. Quite a pleasant little mouthful, really.