Showing posts with label Cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cooking. Show all posts

Wednesday, 8 February 2012

THE CURE FOR EVERYTHING

Hello, hello, hello, Dear Readers! Apparently I'm now pathologically incapable of opening a blog post without some reference to the weather, so I'll just get it over with by saying that if there's anything more dismal than a landscape covered in half-melted, half frozen-to-ice slush and churned up mud, with a blanket of freezing fog, I don't know what it is. If you're living somewhere that your weather is doing something - anything! - else? Lucky, lucky you!

And apparently the freezing fog carries a nasty lurgy too - at least, that's my explanation for why everyone in my family is ill right now. Including my mum, who doesn't get ill very often. When she does, it's battle stations for the rest of us, as she tends to get *very* ill, bless her, and is not the best of patients.
 
So when everyone is ill, and fractious and grumpy with it, and the weather is depressing and awful, what do you do? If you're me, you make chicken noodle soup, and this makes everyone feel a little bit better for a little while. So here's my simple recipe for a foolproof Get Better Soon dish.

Ingredients:
  • 1 large carrot, diced
  • 1 large leek, finely sliced
  • 1/2 a butternut squash, diced
  • 6 chestnut mushrooms or two large portobello mushrooms, sliced
  • 1 pint of chicken stock (preferably a jelly stock)
  • 1/2 a teaspoon of chopped rosemary
  • 150gms of cooked chicken
  • 200gms of fresh egg noodles
NOTES: This calls for the chicken to be pre-cooked because if you cook the chicken in the broth you'll get scum rising to the top, which you then have to skim off, and I find this a bit faffy. The recipe is a great way to use up the remaining scrappy bits of meat from a whole bird if you've done a roast, but you can also just buy a packet of cooked chicken if that's easier. Also, it's best to use fresh noodles; dry ones suck up a lot of liquid and you end up with no soup by the time you finish. If you do use dried pasta, add an extra 250-350mls of stock to the recipe. Oh, and remember to add salt and pepper to the whole thing before you serve it!

After you've peeled and chopped all the vegetables and the rosemary, pop them in a large pan over a medium high-heat and add a dash of vegetable or sunflower oil (not olive, as the flavour is too strong) and a knob of butter. Gently fry everything together until the butternut squash starts to break down and the carrots are tender. Don't let the leak brown - if you see it starting to get crispy, take things off the heat and add a spoonful or two of water before putting the pan back on at a lower heat. This stage will probably take about ten minutes.

After the vegetables are cooked, add the stock and turn the heat up a little bit until the pan hits a rolling boil. Leave it for another ten minutes or so. Then add the chicken and the noodles and gently stir everything around for another two to four minutes, occasionally checking the noodles to see how soft they are. Personally I like my noodles quite solid, but my mum (the person I usually make this for) likes them very soft, so bear your intended sick person in mind.

When the noodles are the right consistency and the chicken is hot all the way through, serve this in a bowl with a spoon and a fork (for twizzling the noodles) and lots of fresh, buttered bread. It's guaranteed to make an invalid feel better!

This recipe is for four servings, which is the easiest and most economical way to make it. If you don't have four people to feed you can eat it again for lunch the next day, or pop it into a tupperware container and freeze it to be reheated later. Leftovers will normally need about a cupful of hot water added to them before being reheated, as the noodles tend to suck up the liquid if they're left to sit for any length of time, and water + gentle heat gets them to release that liquid so that you have a soup again, rather than just noodles.


When I make this dish for myself, I do a spicy Oriental version because I find that heat clears my sinuses out. If you like hot food, you can make the spicy version of this by taking the rosemary out of the recipe and adding a few extras:
  • 1 teaspoon of dried red chillies
  • 1 teaspoon of minced garlic or half a teaspoon of garlic paste
  • 1 heaped tablespoon of smooth peanut butter
  • A good glug of balsamic vinegar
  • 5 or 6 baby corn, diced
  • A handful of beansprouts
I fry the vegetables and other ingredients in the same way, but I tend to use sesame or stir-fry oil and I might use a pile of spring onions rather than the leak (holding a few finely sliced bits of onion back to sprinkle on the top when I'm ready to serve).

You cook the dried chillies and garlic with the other vegetables and add the balsamic and the peanut butter when they're cooked, allowing them to emulsify before putting the stock in. Add the beansprouts into the soup at the same time you add the noodles and the chicken.


Studies have actually shown that chicken soup (especially with lots of vegetables) really will make a sick person feel better and help them to recover more quickly. So if you're in a house of sickness at the moment, give it a try! Just be prepared to be asked for it again and again in the future!

Wednesday, 10 November 2010

CRUMBLE MAKES EVERYTHING RIGHT

Hello, faithful readers! I'm not quite over my cold yet, but I'm at the stage where I've got my appetite back and I'm yearning for real comfort food. And what could be more comforting than crumble?

I decided to post a step-by-step recipe here because I realised that despite calling myself a Baking Goddess in my biog, I've never really talked about cooking much on this blog. It's a writing blog after all. But since I feel too ill to get any work done at the moment, baking seems like the next best thing. By the way, if my pictures here are a little shaky, please forgive me - I was actually standing on one leg throughout making this crumble (due to the unfortunate accident mentioned in Monday and Friday's posts) and so I was taking pictures with one hand while leaning on the countertop for balance with the other.

One legged baking y'all. That's how I roll.

For those of you who have never really done much baking, let me tell you, it's one of the most soothing occupations in the world. You follow the recipe and food comes out. What could be better? I've even found that if I get a stress headache, whipping up a cake or some brownies will get rid of it and make me feel much happier and more relaxed, even before the tin comes out of the oven. For those of you who are bakers, this recipe will be really simple, but why not give it a go anyway? I promise it's delicious.

Although I was raised, like most people, on apple or rhubarb crumble, once I discovered plum I was an instant convert. Sometimes apple can be a bit sweet and bland, and sometimes rhubarb can be a bit sharp and bitter - but plums have both the sharpness and acidity of rhubarb and the sweetness of apple without any of the downsides. Plus, it's much less hassle to stone and chop a dozen plums than to peel core and slice up apples or deal with fresh rhubarb.

So firstly, you need your ingredients as follows:

Filling
  • About 12 plums, with the stones removed and chopped into quarters
  • ½ a lime, juice only (juice from a bottle is fine)
  • 160g/5½oz caster or granulated white sugar
Crumble 
  • 175g/6oz flour (doesn't matter if it's plain or self-raising, and don't bother sifting it)
  • 50g/2oz caster or granulated sugar
  • 50g/2oz muscovado sugar (this is a sticky, dark sugar - don't skip this, it's really yummy)
  • 100g/3½oz butter cut into cubes (use it straight from the fridge, it needs to be hard)
  • 100g/3½oz rolled porridge oats
Sometimes I also put some ground ginger, cinnamon or nutmeg (just half a teaspoon) into the crumble, but you can leave that out if you don't have it, or don't like it. You'll also want some single cream, custard or icecream to serve with the crumble, since it's incredibly rich and sticky.
First of all, chop up the plums and take out the stones. Be careful not to accidentally put any stones in the crumble - these little babies could do for someone's tooth. The easiest way to do it is to get the plum, slide a sharp knife into it until you feel the stone, and then slide the blade all the way around the stone, cutting the plum in half. One half will come off with the stone in it: then you can easily cut that part in half again and get rid of the stone.
Put all the plums into a baking dish (you can grease it first with butter if you like, but I never bother), then cover them with the caster sugar and a good glug (that's technical speak for about three tablespoons) of lime juice. I use lime because I think it has a less bitter flavour, but you can use lemon if that's what you have. The citrus acid helps the plums break down and go nice and soft when they bake.


When you've done that, make the crumble topping. Put all the dry ingredients except the oats into a bowl and then rub the flour and sugar into the butter until you have a mixture with the approximate texture of breadcrumbs. But don't be too careful about it.


I think the number one reason that some crumbles are a bit dry is that people put a lot of effort into making the crumple topping really fine, almost like sand - but what you really want isn't a fine topping but a nice crunchy one. So leave it a bit lumpy. It'll be better that way.


When you've got the crumble right, add the oats and mix them in, then put the topping onto the plums. Depending on how big your dish is, you might have a bit leftover. Resist the urge to just plonk ALL the topping on, if this is the case. Too much topping will make the whole thing soggy. Put any extra crumble in another dish and bake it separately, then you can use later it as a topping for yoghurt, icecream or fruit salad (God, I can't believe what a domestic goddess I am).


Finally, put the crumple into the oven at about 180C (I've just checked and this would be 360F or Gas 4). If you have a fan oven you won't need to preheat it, but otherwise it's a good idea to put the oven on to warm up about ten minutes before the crumble is ready to go in. Leave it for about forty minutes, or until you can see that the topping has noticeably changed colour and become golden, and that the plum juice (which will be a deep purple colour) has started bubbling up around the edges.


Personally I like my crumble served nice and hot, with some cream like so...


Om nom nom. Finn wants some too:


But he can't have any - crumble is bad for dogs. Sorry Pooch!
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