Snow Snow Gone Away But Please Come Back Another Day!

Luxuriating in not working at the moment (having taken several weeks off between contracts) I've been rather excited about the snow over recent weeks. To be honest, I always am, but that childish delight is usually tempered by the frustrations of trying to get to and from work on roads or public transport that's often brought to a standstill by the shock of winter weather! This time, I have been able to snuggle up at home or pull on waterproof snow boots for short treks to the supermarket and local restaurants, delighting in making footprints in fresh, untrodden snow!

Today, the snow has finally been melting away and my winter wonderland of white is virtually gone. I don't think I'll be preparing any salads just yet, though!

Here are a few images taken in the last couple of weeks:

Bye, bye, Snow!

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Thorntons Chocolate Blocks

I had just started secondary school when Thorntons hit the big time.

Apparently, they've been around for nearly a hundred years, but I think it's fair to claim that the eighties was their decade. Suddenly, soft-centred contintental chocolates were readily available and at affordable prices too! At a time when top quality chocolate wasn't easy to find in the UK, let alone the mindbogglingly wide range of choices we take for granted today, their Belgian-style chocolates quickly became a top choice when looking for a sophisticated gift. Or so it seemed to my pre-teen eyes, at any rate... My friends and I delighted in having personalised messages iced onto their shaped chocolate moulds and a box of Thorntons was so much more elegant than the ubiquitous Milk Tray or Black Magic.

But, as so often happens to chains that experience such rapid growth and become part of the mainstream, they seemed to get stuck in a rut and were left behind as palates changed and the nation demanded more innovation and higher quality from our chocolate.

Certainly, my chocolate tastes moved on, and Thorntons simply no longer delivered the quality I was looking for. I wanted something better, and I wasn't alone.

Hotel Chocolat were, to the noughties, what Thorntons had been to the eighties, building upon their successful chocolate tasting club by launching a great many high street stores. It must have been hard for Thornton's to watch market share slipping so fast to this new contender!

But now Thorntons are fighting back as the launch of their new range of chocolate blocks attests. Ranging from plain white, milk and dark chocolate options to exciting combinations such as milk chocolate with tonka bean, dark chocolate with macadamia and balsamic in dark chocolate each square bar weighs between 70 and 90 grams and is priced between £1.79 and £1.99.

The first block I tried - the milk chocolate with strawberry - didn't impress. The 32% cocoa madagascan chocolate tasted overly sweet. My husband described it as "cheap easter egg chocolate" and I agreed, which wassurprising given the sticker on the front telling me it won a gold in the great taste awards 2009. And whilst there was a generous amount of strawberries, virtually no fruit flavour came through at all!

Second under the tonguescope* was the milk chocolate pistachio block. The same madagascan 32% cocoa was, this time, combined with a generous portion of salted pistachios! Better: in this block the excessive sweetness of that chocolate was balanced out by the lip-licking saltiness of the nuts. A decent bar and this time, I could see why it might garner a great taste 2009 gold award, though the chocolate was still too sweet for me.

*Tonguescope is a perfectly cromulent word! ;)

Third to be tested was the dark chocolate with macadamia. Combining dominican republic 60% cocoa with lightly salted macadamia nuts, I hoped this block might cater to those looking for less sugar in their chocolate. Unfortunately, this was not the case: I found the chocolate both too bitter and too sweet at the same time - a curious incongruity! I liked the macadamia nuts but could not eat more than two squares of this before pushing it away. This bar won a bronze at the Academy of Chocolate awards.

Last on the block was the milk chocolate with tonka bean. This one was made from venezuela 38% cocoa infused with tonka beans which gave "delicate flavours reminiscent of almond and vanilla". The description on the back of the box was spot on, those flavours came through subtly but clearly. The chocolate itself was silky smooth. And not too sweet! This block was the runaway winner of the selection, for me and the only one I could recommend to others, based on my own chocolate preferences. Of course, if you like your chocolate sweet, you may absolutely love the previous three! Apparently it only won a silver in the at the Academy of Chocolate awards, but it's my pick of the four blocks.

I'm keeping an open mind about the other blocks - certainly after the tonka bean one I'm up for giving them a try. I'll keep you posted if I do!

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Making More Of Eggs! (Comté Baked Eggs)

So! Eggs then. One of the most versatile ingredients available to us and one of my personal favourites and yet, I've shown such a lack of imagination in using them.

Yes, I enjoy them boiled, fried, scrambled and as omelettes. Yes, I have made eggy quiches and flans. And yes, I use them plentifully in baking.

But I've really not shown much initiative in making them the star of the meal in more varied ways and that is something I'm putting right with the help of Michel Roux's book on Eggs, which I posted about recently.

The second recipe Pete and I made from the book was baked eggs at it's simplest - just eggs and cream, really.

To Roux's succinct list of butter, salt, pepper, eggs and double cream we added some grated Comté.

Comté Baked Eggs
Ingredients
Butter, salt and pepper
Eggs
Double cream (1 tablespoon per egg)
Grated Comté (1 tablespoon per egg)

Method

• Preheat the oven to 170°C and put the kettle on to boil.

• Butter the ramekins and season with salt and pepper
• Place the ramekins into a baking tray.
• Break an egg into each ramekin

• Carefully spoon in about a tablespoon of double cream into each ramekin. Roux counsels taking care to avoid covering the yolk with the cream, but we found it made no difference to the end result (having done so in one ramekin by accident).
  

• Sprinkle the grated cheese over the top.
• Pour boiling water into the baking tray around the ramekins to come approximately half way up the sides.
  

• Bake for approximately 10-12 minutes until the egg whites are reasonably firm but the yolk still runny.

Two each served with buttered toast made a simple but very satisfying weekday supper.

More elaborate versions in the book include baked eggs with chicken livers and shallots in wine, baked eggd with smoked haddock and grain mustard and eggs en cocotte with girolles! Mmm!

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Michel Roux's "Eggs", published by Quadrille, is priced at £9.99 but is currently (on posting) available from Amazon for just £6.46 (for the paperback edition).

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Mincing Madness and Mini Scotch Eggs

For Christmas, I bought Pete a cast iron mincer. It was an inexpensive (and rather heavy and large) stocking filler which I bought in a charity sale, boxed and brand new. But I had no idea if would even work let alone work well.

So I was happy to find a recipe that allowed us to test the mincer as well as Michel Roux's Eggs cookery book, recently received for review from Quadrille. Having successfully tried a few recipes from his Sauces book recently, I was really keen to get cooking with eggs.

The first recipe I chose? Scotch Eggs! One of my favourite things and certainly enjoying a renaissance these last few years, with creative versions from The Handmade Scotch Egg Company (who I encountered at the British Cheese Festival back in 2008) and traditional versions on offer in many a pub and restaurant.

Before we could start on the recipe itself we needed to convert our pork shoulder steaks to mince. Enter mincer!

Unfortunately, our work surface proved to be deeper than the mincer's clamp could straddle so instead we clamped the mincer to a chopping board and used a clamp from Pete's toolbox to secure the chopping board to the work surface. Phew! Time to start cranking the handle! The mincer worked like a charm. Quite a faff feeding the meat through, and it took quite a while (not to mention repetitive graft, on Pete's part) but the end result was excellent. Job done!

That completed, we had all our ingredients assembled.

Michel Roux's Mini Scotch Eggs
Ingredients
8 quail's eggs (we did 12)
300 grams pork fillet or shoulder, trimmed and finely minced (we had approximately 350-400 grams minced shoulder steak)
2 teaspoons parsley and chives (we used parsley only)
salt and pepper
small pinch cayenne (we used a large pinch of paprika)
1 egg white + 2 medium eggs (we used 2 large eggs in total)
2 tablespoons milk (we omitted this)
seasoned flour
100 grams white breadcrumbs (we knew our bread was too fresh to make into crumbs so we toasted it before blitzing)
300 ml groundnut oil to fry (we used vegetable oil, not sure how much)

(Adapted) Method

• We hard-boiled the quail's eggs and peeled them.

• We mixed the minced pork meat with an egg white, the parsley, salt, pepper and paprika.

• Dividing the meat mixture into twelve shares we took a portion, flattened it ito a pattie in the palm of a hand, placed an egg into it and gently moulded the meat around the egg.

• Each egg was liberally floured; infact we double floured them.

• We beat the second egg with the leftover egg yolk and dipped each floured quail's egg into it and coated it well.
  

• The eggs were then liberally (and gently) rolled in breacrumbs.

• We heated the oil in a small pan. The recipe suggests 180°C but as we didn't use a thermometer we guesstimated. We cooked the eggs in pairs for about 3 minutes rather than the suggested 1.5 to 2 minutes.

• After letting them drain on a kitchen towel, we ate them still warm.

They were delicious! I particularly liked the fresh parsley in the meat layer and the golden crunch of the breadcrumbs.

In retrospect, mincing the meat by hand before hand meant it took us two hours to make these. Next time I'd buy meat in bulk, mince the same way and freeze for later use.

I'd like the recipe to give more guidance on how much seasoning to use as, although we added what we thought was a generous amount of salt and pepper, the end result was significantly underseasoned (and the large pinch of paprika we used was completely lost). I realise that seasoning is to taste, but really had no clue where to start on this one.

What I did like was how straightforward the recipe was to follow. Roux has a simple, unpretentious writing style. The recipe worked and it gave us the confidence to make something we've never made before!

I'll be trying (and sharing) some more recipes from this book in coming blog posts!

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Michel Roux's "Eggs", published by Quadrille, is priced at £9.99 but is currently available from Amazon (at date of posting) for just £6.46 (for the paperback edition).

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The First Rule About Steak Club...

... is that I can't go to steak club!

A comment I made on twitter about feeling like the only food blogger yet to enjoy the legendary steak and burgers at Hawksmoor restaurant in London lead to a flurry of tweets from fellow carnivore friends suggesting we go together. Result and happiness on my part! The suggestion of a girls steak club quickly took off and many excited wimmins eager to share the beef chimed in.

Sadly, in the ensuing rush to make this into a reality, a date was picked that I could not attend. Learning of this on a day when I was already very close to tears (thanks to paypal and ebay, who I hate with a true and fierce passion) lead to the embarassment of my crying actual tears, just because I couldn't go! Behaviour quite unbecoming of a 38 year old, even one who loves her steak!

Cue gallant behaviour from (no doubt slightly bewildered) husband who suggested he'd take me instead and we'd have our very own steak club!

Having just started a glorious three month sabbatical from work we took advantage of our freedom to make a weekday lunch time visit, driving into the city and finding a pay and display parking space virtually opposite the restaurant. Great start!

Our lovely waitress took our drinks orders, responding well to my nondescript request for a non-alcoholic cocktail, "something sweet". Quick, targetted questions helped elicit my eventual request for raspberry and mint and she had the barman make me a virgin raspberry mojito which absolutely hit the spot! Pete went for a Meantime Pale Ale, which he enjoyed though felt was served too cold.

Reluctantly, but sensibly given the meatfeast to come, we eschewed starters and went straight to the main event.

Pete opted for the famous Hawksmoor burger. A real burger lover, he confirmed that the (very generous) pattie was incredibly moist and tender, wonderfully beefy and perfectly balanced by the lettuce, tomato, gherkins and red onions. He was pleased with his choice of ogleshield cheese too. The accompanying chips were nice, though nothing to write home about.

I was permitted a bite of the burger and was duly impressed, even after all the hype! Yes, it really is a very tasty burger!

I chose a 400 gram (gulp) rib-eye steak, medium rare. And some grilled marrow bone, because I love it. And a side of buttered spinach. To my delight, a little bowl of bearnaise was also provided - tasty but would have been nicer warm. Far too much meat for me, but I gave it a good effort and enjoyed what I managed to eat immensely. A nice texture and great flavour, and deftly cooked. All one wants from a piece of beef!

Full beyond belief we nevertheless could not resist the allure of the Victorian apple and blackberry trifle. Spiked with brandy and topped off with scrumpy cider ice, it was refreshingly light and the perfect thing with which to round off our meal!

I was also delighted to be able to catch up with owner Will Beckett, who I'd been wanting to meet for ages, having met fellow owner Huw Gott at the Blaggers Banquet! Will's dry humour on twitter often has me smiling and he made us very welcome at Hawksmoor.

I'm looking forward to confirmation of their second restaurant in the West End. Apparently, they've found the premises but won't say a word until the paperwork is all signed!

In other news, why not join the ranks demanding weekend burger goodness at their original branch?!

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Kavey’s Chicken Liver & Port Paté

Chicken liver paté is one of my favourite things... and yet, a couple of years ago, I'd never made it myself.

A friend was kind enough to share his recipe for chicken liver and brandy paté which I duly made and enjoyed. It was very straightforward and inexpensive too! Having gained the confidence to experiment I adjusted the recipe and adjusted it again and with a final tweak or two, came up with my own.

Mine has rather a lot more alcohol than my friend's original recipe, so you may wish to add it gradually, the first time you make it, incase you prefer less! Likewise with the garlic.

This is a great make-ahead starter or light lunch and works well served with toasted, home-made bread or brioche and some sweet chutney.

Kavey’s Chicken Liver & Port Paté
Ingredients
• 400 grams chicken livers
• 150 grams butter
• 1 medium to large onion; diced or finely sliced
• Thyme; fresh or dried, to taste.
• 5-6 cloves garlic; roughly chopped or crushed
• Salt & pepper
• 100 ml port
Optional
• Clarified butter; to cover
• Replace 50 gm butter with 50 gm double cream

Method
1. Chop the onion and garlic finely and soften in about 1/4 of the butter until just starting to colour.
2. Add the livers, thyme and seasoning and fry together over reasonably high heat for about 3 minute until the livers have stiffened and browned. They should be pale pink inside but no dark (raw) pink should remain.
3. Leave to cool.
4. Tip the contents of the pan (including any melted butter/ juices) into a food processor and blend.
5. Once you have achieved a smooth paste add the rest of the butter (and the cream, if using) and blend again.
6. Add the port, check the seasoning and blend once more to combine.
7. Then pour into a large, shallow dish or individual ramekins.
8. Tap the pots gently to free bubbles and leave to cool.
9. Optional: Clarify some butter (melt and remove impurities) before pouring or spooning very gently over the surface of the paté, to a depth of about 3 mm.
10. Refrigerate overnight.
11. Serve, from the fridge, with toasted bread or brioche and a sweet jam or chutney.

Notes
• This paté needs to overnight in the fridge before serving. It's too runny on the day it's made.
• Even after a night in the fridge, this is a soft, spreadable paté; not the terrine kind you can cut into slices and lift out of the dish. For that reason, I make it in a large, shallow dish for an informal dinner, where everyone dives in and spoons a dollop into their own plates or in individual ramekins for a more formal presentation.
• If the surface is covered in butter, it will last a few days in the fridge.
• It freezes very well, just allow it to defrost for several hours in the fridge.

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