With that in mind, Jeni spent an evening making tomato soup which she brought in for her lunches. I did the same but I have to admit, hers was marginally tastier than mine. So here is her recipe.

Ingredients (serves 2)

1 small onion
1 garlic clove
olive oil
I stick of celery (& leaves)
I large Carrot
2 large ripe tomatoes
Half of red pepper
1/2 Chopped red chilli
Sun Dried tomatoes
Roasted red pepper
Tomato puree
Basil
Parsley
pinch of sugar
Salt & Black pepper
Veg Stock

Sweat onions, garlic, red pepper & chilli in a pan for 5 mins. Add carrots & celery (with leaves) and sweat for a further 5 minutes.
Add Veg stock (about 1 and half pints of hot water). Boil for 5 or 10 minutes then add sun dried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, tomato puree, sugar, basil and parsley and simmer untl veg has softened. Add salt & pepper to taste before blending. Add more boiling water if perferable.

Serve (if you want a non healthy version, add single cream).

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Now, given that I have no photos of my most marvellous pheasant meal (for Boxing Day), I’ll just hand over the duck I cooked instead. It was quite tasty. Even if it was overcooked.

You will need:

Duck
Potatoes
Carrots
Porcini mushrooms
Red wine
Beef stock
Onion
Five spice
Ginger
Seasoning for potatoes
Goose fat

Par boil the potatoes and heat the fat.

Put potatoes in to roast and par boil the carrots. Add them to the roasting tray.

Soak the porcini mushrooms for 30 mins. After ten mins begin to cook the duck by searing quickly and then placing in the oven for 20 mins.

Fry onion and add some five spice and ginger and a dash of orange.
Pour red wine and stock in and reduce to sticky consistency.

After the hour is up, plate the roast potatoes, carrots and carved duck. Add the porcini mushrooms on top and spoon over the sauce.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Nothing beats mince pies after a big Christmas dinner!

Christmas without mince pies is like Cannon without Ball, Paul without Debbie – it just doesn’t work. You could always pop down the supermarket and buy in your mincers but where’s the fun in that?! The recipe below, spotted in a Sainsbury’s magazine and tweaked ever so slightly, is supposed to make 24 mince pies – trust me, whilst the pastry is enough for 24 the mince meat will probably make in excess of 36! It’s also worth bearing in mind they calculate the 24 based on cutter sizes of 7.5cm and 6cm. So stick on some cheesey Christmas music, pour yourself some booze and get stuck in…

Brown Sugar Pastry
350g Plain flour
75g Brown sugar
125g Cold butter, diced
1 Large egg yolk
Vanilla extract

Begin by preheating the oven to 200˚, fan 180˚, gas mark 6.

Now, sift the flour into your mixing bowl and add in the brown sugar.

Next rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Making a well in the centre, add the egg yolk, a few drops of vanilla extract and 4-5 tablespoons of cold water.

Now for the messy bit, get your hands in there and start to combine the ingredients until they form a soft dough.

Tip it out onto a lightly floured work top and knead briefly until the dough becomes smooth.

Divide your pastry up into 2 or 3 smaller balls, wrap them in cling-film and place in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

Whilst waiting for the pastry to chill it’s time to make the mincemeat.

All you need for your own mince meat

Your mincemeat should be a nice thick, sticky consistency

Mincemeat
25g Blanched almonds
50g Ready-to-eat Dried figs
50g Ready-to-eat Stoned dates
50g Ready-to-eat Pitted prunes
50g Dried cranberries
50g Cut mixed peel
50g Regular or Vegetarian suet
1/2 tsp Ground mixed spice
1/2 tsp Ground cinnamon
Grated zest & juice of 1 tangerine
75g Dark soft brown sugar
1 Small Bramley cooking apple, unpeeled & grated (and it really does need to be small!)
2 tbsp Dark rum or Brandy (or Whisky or Orange Liqueur or any other alcohol really, not sure why they only suggest those two)
Demerara sugar for sprinkling

For some reason when you say to most people why don’t you make your own mincemeat they give you a look of both mild contemplation and utter despair, usually responding with “Oh it takes far too long” or “It’s too much faffing and arsing about, you might as well buy it”. Now, it may come as a surprise to learn that from weighing out the ingredients to spooning it into your pastry it will take you around 15 minutes. Yes. 15 whole minutes. Ages isn’t it? Admittedly it may work out costing a little more than buying a jar readymade but I can guarantee it will taste a whole lot better!

Firstly if your almonds aren’t already, blanch them by covering with boiling water for no more than 1 minute. Drain off the hot water and immediately rinse with cold water. Drain again and pat dry to remove excess water. Now holding the almonds between your thumb and index finger, squeeze gently and the skins should slip off.

Put the blanched almonds, figs, dates, prunes and depending on their size, cranberries into a food processor and pulse until roughly chopped.

Transfer to a mixing bowl and add in the remaining ingredients stirring until well mixed.

At this point the recipe states to add 2 tablespoons of your alcohol, personally I felt this was woefully inadequate, you could barely taste the brandy in the first batch I made. If you follow my lead you will stir in a good 4 tablespoons (more if you are so inclined) and leave the mix to stand whilst you turn your attention back to the pastry.

Nothing beats mince pies after a big Christmas dinner!

Having chilled for 30 minutes remove your pastry from the fridge.

Lightly flour your work surface and roll the pastry out thinly.

Using the larger cutter, cut out 24 pie bases and push them into your bun trays.

Add a spoonful of your mincemeat, careful not to add too much as it will bubble over.

Roll out the remaining pastry and cut out the 24 tops with the smaller cutter.

Brush the underside of each top with milk and place on each pie, pinching the edges together to seal them.

Brush your pies with milk, sprinkle generously with demerara sugar and make 2 small cuts in the centre with a knife.

Lastly, bake in your preheated oven for 20-25 minutes.

The best thing about making your own mincemeat is that if you make too much simply put it in an airtight jar and store it in a cool dry place until next year. Alternatively, festively label and decorate your jars and give them out as stocking fillers!

Time for a nice warm mince pie, smothered in cream – enjoy.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

It's what's on the inside that counts.

The results of a two month research programme, during which life, limb and tooth were sacrificed for the greater good, are finally in. 25 varieties tasted and tested and a whole lot of debate, argument and violence went into the final decision.

There were rules. Of a sort. We had to test the pie, not drown it in a sea of cream, custard or whisky. It had to be served cold, on its own – not wrapped up in anything fancy or placed in the mouth by a beautiful man or woman. These pies, in other words, had to be good on their own. Everyone had their own criteria (and that’s something we’ll work on for next year) so for some it was a matter of whether they could taste the booze (thanks Jeni) or whether they gave good recourse to the Rennie pills (thanks Dave). Some wanted a specific sensation for the pastry whilst others just wanted a good all-rounder.

Strangely enough, I was the only person to taste 99% of the pies. But my opinion didn’t carry any more weight.

Although in the end, I did.

Enough of pre-snack speech. On with the results. In reverse order:

20. JOINT Cake Collection (Netto) & Cake Collection Iced (Netto)
19. CO-OP
18. Marks and Spencer Luxury All Butter
17. Aldi Specially Selected
16. Marks and Spencer Lattice
15. Sainsburys
14. Mr. Kipling
13. JOINT Walkers Glenfiddich & Tesco Deep Filled
12. Aldi Holly Lane
11. Mayall / Birds Rustic Mince coins
10. Booths All Butter
9. Marks and Spencer Deep Filled
8. JOINT CO-OP Luxury & Sainsburys Taste the Difference
7. Marks and Spencer Connoisseur
6. Booths Minis
5. Costco
4. Asda All Butter
3. Greggs
2. Tesco finest
1. Buckley’s Uppermill (Carl’s local bakery)

And there you have it. Very pleased that a local baker won out. Very sorry to see my own baking attempt slide off the bottom scale.

Until next year

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Steak and Ale pie is one of my favourites. Like all one pot dishes it is simple to prepare and, if you are familiar with the process, almost an unthinking act. You should be spending no more than 20 minutes cooking it and then that’s it, your job is to let the oven melt it into submission over the course of two and a half hours.

So, get preparing:

600g braising steak

2 red onions, diced

2 or 3 cloves of garlic

4 medium carrots, sliced generously

1 punnet of chestnut mushrooms, quartered

1 bottle of Guinness or Superbock

1 beef stock cube

Ready prepared puff pastry

1 egg, beaten

Rosemary

Flour

Heat the oven to 190C.

Dice the onion and get that slowly softening over a medium heat. Then chop then garlic, carrots and mushrooms and, when the onion is soft – add to the pan.

Chop the meat into bite sized chunks and throw that into the pan along with a good two tablespoons of chopped rosemary, crushed beef stock cube (you can go mad here and add chilli, worcestershire sauce – anything that takes your fancy. Then add a tablespoon of flour. This will help thicken the sauce. A pie with a runny sauce is like a child with a runny nose – not a good thing at all.

Give it all a stir and let it fry for a few minutes before adding the Guinness. Add boiling water so the stock just covers the meat and then bring everything up to the simmer point.

Cover and slam into the oven for 1½ hours. Check the mix after that and give it a good stir and then continue cooking for another hour. Keep checking though because you don’t want the sauce to dry up.

When you are happy that everything is tender, spoon out the mix into individual pie dishes and then cover with some rolled out flaky pastry. Bung it all back in the oven for about 30 minutes or until the pastry is golden and then eat with some green vegetables.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

I’ll avoid the usual advertising temples and wander instead to sites that can take my mind away from the blank page before me. These sites could be great little bookshops or they could be this one, The British Larder.

I fully expect TBL to add ‘great’ into its title at some point because for me it is a haven of inspirational writing. Great recipes too, of course, but really, like a great menu, it is the writing which inspires.

On Saturday I cooked Maddy’s Horneado. And it wasn’t decided on the spur of the moment but rather considered over the course of the previous week. I’d read the diary entry which accompanied it and it had inspired me to give it a try.

The results were wonderful. I’ll be able to do it my sleep after a few more goes and I’ll refine the process so mine looks more like the one photographed by Maddy. The real warmth, however, is in the writing.

Recipe sites can be fairly dull. As extensive a resource as it is, the BBC Food site reads more or less like a Haynes manual. There is no inspiration. There is nothing to give the reader an insight into another mind. Occasionally we might learn that a dish used to be favourite amongst prostitutes but generally we don’t.

In the advertising world we aim to inspire, to excite. Hopefully we can do this by finding an element within the product that speaks to us and use that to inspire and excite others. I’ll often find myself sitting somewhere playing a little thought experiment, imagining how I could advertise whatever shop or product is in front of me. Usually this involves wanting the shop to do something human, to understand why it is I’m there in the first place and make my visit more personal.

With The British Larder I don’t have to. I can just wallow in a beautiful product: that of a personal, relevant and deeply inspiring cooking diary.

If only her taste in films could follow suit

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

For me, hotpot is the meal of childhood. It was the meal mum would bring out to satisfy all seven of us, ladled out at times to suit the comings and goings of a family growing up. Roughly cut potatoes bulked out the meal and the prized joy of dumplings were fought over far more than more meat. Hotpot was the meal that seemed to just appear when needed and even today I’m surprised at how quickly it seems to appear on the table. As though mum was some sort of Northern Soup Dragon, ready for winter siege or surprise visitors.

Hotpot is a slow-cooked dish. Its meat needs to be coaxed into submission, tenderised by time rather than the threat of the flame. It took me years to pluck up the courage to try this one, as simple as I knew it would be to cook it seemed to represent a line to step over. Once cooked I’d be judging the dish I measured my childhood by against the one I would put in front of my own family.

Mine is different to the one cooked by mum. Mine is perhaps meatier, richer; cooked without the pressure of a large family it should be better. But of course it isn’t. It could never be. But it is mine. And that’s the trick with any sort of cooking: make it your own way. Purists will scream about my inclusion of mushrooms, throwing in the potatoes rather than having a sliced potato lid (which is nice) and all the other bits that make this mine. I don’t use chicken livers either but that’s down to who I cook it for rather than my own personal tastes.

Ingredients:

• 500g beef steak
• 2-3 large potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 2 carrots
• Handful of mushrooms roughly but thickly chopped
• Pearl Barley
• Thyme
• Worcestershire sauce
• 1 pint beef stock
• 1 large onion
• Flour (seasoned with thyme added)

Prepare the meat by cutting into bite-sized chunks and mixing into the seasoned flour to coat thoroughly.

Quarter the onion (don’t dice it, beauty is in tasting slices of onion softened by the cooking process).

Slice the carrots and mushrooms into chunks.

Chop your potato into chunks as well.

Get the oven on to about 170C.

In a measuring jug, add some worcestershire sauce and a beef stock cube. Add about a pint of boiling water.

Add some oil to a heavy based saucepan and brown the meat before keeping it to one side.

Add the onion to the pan to get some colour and then add the mushroom, again to brown.

Add the carrots and the potatoes and mix thoroughly before adding the meat back in (along with any juices that would be on your plate by now). Top up with the stock until the dry ingredients are just covered.

Add plenty of thyme and sprinkle in some pearl barley. Bring to a simmer.

Cover your pan and place in the oven for around 2 hours or longer if the heat is reduced. Check after an hour to make sure you still have liquid. You don’t want this being dry.

If you are adding dumplings (which I rarely do now – preferring to save that pleasure for meal time at my mum’s) then add them about twenty minutes before you are bringing it all out of the oven.

Serve with beetroot and a couple of slices of thick, white bread to mop up that delicious, meaty gravy.

Serve this to your children and tell them they won’t be eating again until summer.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Ingredients

• Diced beef
• Chopped onion or halved shallotts
• sliced carrots or halved/whole chantery carrots
• halved or whole mushrooms (depending on size)
• beef stock cube
• salt
• Generous amount of black pepper
• generous pinch of mixed herbs
• 2 or 3 bay leaves
• 1 tbs tomato puree
• boiling water
• generous slug of red wine
• soy sauce (optional)

Method
Put beef, onion/shallots, mushrooms & carrots into casserole dish.
Add stock cube, salt, pepper & mixed herbs & mix together.
Add the red wine & hot water (enough so liquid is just short of level with ingredients) tomato puree & dash of soy sauce.
Mix all ingredients together & place bay leaves on the top.
Place lid on dish and put onto middle shelf of oven and cook slowly (about 4 hours) at about 160.
Stir every now and then if/when needed.
Serve with choice of vegetables or fresh crusty bread.
As an alternative, this recipie is also great served up with a puff pastry lid .

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Right, so if I remember this correctly….

Ingredients:

• Pork mince
• Potato flour
• Salt
• Spring onion
• Fresh ginger
• Soy sauce
• Japanese Mirin (sweet cooking Rice Wine)
• Hondashi (Japanese Fish stock)
• Udon noodles
• Seaweed leaves (pages?)
• Eggs
• Chinese cabbage
• Carrots / green beans / any other veg you want really
• Miso

Technique:
Put the mince into a bowl, and knead in some grated ginger, a little spring onion, some salt and some soy sauce.
Add about two tablespoons of the Potato flour to bind the mixture.

Add about a level teaspoon of the Hondashi (fish stock) and about a tablespoon of the rice wine to a nice big pan of boiling water.

Using a couple of spoons, sculpt the mince mixture into balls and drop into the stock. This is a good point to imagine you are an alchemist.

Bring another pan of water to the boil for the Udon noodles.

Oh, and another one to hard-boil a couple of eggs.

Cut a few pieces of the seaweed off the main sheet and put them into a bowl of water to expand and soften.

Chop up a decent amount of the Chinese cabbage and add other veg as you see fit. Add these to the stock.
Once the noodles are nearing completion, take a hefty tablespoon of Miso and lower it into the stock, using chopsticks to break it up into the liquid.

Important: The stock should be just simmering at this point. Under no circumstances allow the mixture to boil when the Miso is added. I am assured this will change the flavour a great amount.

Empty the Udon into a colander, and rinse through with cold water to stop the cooking process.

Then rinse through with boiling water to bring back to temperature.

Serve them into a couple of bowls.

Add the vegetables and pork from the stock, then pour the stock over the dish.

Add your seaweed, your peeled, hard-boiled egg, and a generous sprinkling of chopped spring onion.

Season to taste.

Eat with a spoon and chopsticks, allowing 30 minutes resting time after the meal for a contended snooze.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

For the meal on Monday I decided to buy in some venison. Yes, you know this is going to be good.

So, on to the shopping list. You will need:

• Venison – cut into chunks
• Shallots – about 8
• Turnip
• Carrots
• Potato – I bought some called apple fir
• Chicken or beef stock
• Red wine
• Balsamic vinegar

Add the venison to a mix of flour, thyme and black pepper. Stir it around.

Peel the shallots, cut the vegetables into one inch chunks and heat up some oil.

Brown the meat quickly and then reserve. Add the veg and shallots and cook for about ten minutes. Put the meat back in and then add the liquids. Balsamic, red wine (half a bottle) and stock. Scrape the bottom of you pan when you stir it all in. That gets all the lovely browned meat into the stew. Use around a pint of stock.

To this I then added some red hot, firecracker sausages. Made in Lancashire they are our answer to chorizo. I’m counting on the strong venison flavour to be able to withstand the heat.

And that’s it. In true stew style you just throw it all in and leave for about two and a half hours.

Warning: I am cooking and writing on a Sunday evening. The meal won’t be eaten until Monday. This post will be updated with photos and a postscript which will reveal whether or not it tasted good. Fingers and forks crossed.

And I’ll be serving the stew with some locally brewed raspberry wine from www.wilsonswinery.co.uk.

POSTSCRIPT

OK, so opinion was divided on this one. My wife loved it and I hated it. We both enjoyed the vegetables but I felt the meat was too strong, it needed another flavour to tone it down somehow. The veg was nice. The chorizo didn’t add anything at all to the dish but I’m going to have to read around if I’m to ever make a similar dish again. Next week I may stick to a simpler Lancashire Hotpot. Or I may fish around and find something just as belly-warming.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.