Wulf's Web-Den

Thanks to Paul and Rachael for the sea bass they gave us today. We put them on a bed of sliced onions, stuffed with thyme and peppercorns (blended in lemon juice and black beer), rubbed with salt and drizzled with olive oil. That was grilled and baked and served up when the skin was crispy and the aroma was irresistible accompanied by sliced pak choi and the onions it was cooked on.

We enjoyed lots of good food over our busy weekend. Some was very healthy and some, such as the combination of sugar, cream and alcohol known as syllabub, was probably decidedly less so!

I riffed off the Calvados Syllabub recipe that I originally saw in Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess; not having any Calvados, I had to improvise a little. It starts with alcohol: about 8 tbsp dry cider and a couple of brandy. That was spiced with a dash of cinnamon, soured with the juice of a lemon and sweetened with about 4 tbsp of caster sugar. The sugar is whisked in and then, continuing to whisk, double cream is slowly poured in (I used a 250ml tub).

Once the cream is thick enough to start to hold its shape, the mixture is spooned into glasses and left in the fridge, ready for when the main course past and guests are ready for dessert. We had about 85ml of cream per person; I think 50ml would be sufficient with everything else scaled to suit.

Last weekend I visited the Lakeland store near Bicester and picked up a grain grinder they had on sale. This lets me turn grains like rice into flour which can be used for all sorts of purposes.

My first experiment was grinding salt, pepper and a dried chilli along with some dried rosemary from the garden, creating an aromatic rub for Sunday's roast lamb. I also produced a bowl of rice flour. Combined with strong white bread flour, it made an excellent bread with a much more open structure than the bread flour on its own. Superb!

Technorati Tags:

food

Today's breakfast of champions: a rosette of black pudding around a duck egg, garnished with ketchup and fresh basil.

Technorati Tags:

food

breakfast

The dinner I was serving up last night mainly consisted of leftovers so I wanted something a bit special to garnish them. We always get carrots with our Riverford food box which comes on Mondays so I did a quick search and alighted on Heston Blumenthal's carrots glazed with cumin and orange.

The inevitable fly in the ointment was that there were no carrots! There was fennel though and I am pleased to report that my gamble that they would function just as well paid off. Carrots would have been sweeter and given a better colour contrast with the two varieties of steamed greens. However, fennel worked well; the flavour blended well with the spices and sugar and the golden sauce (olive oil — no butter to keep it dairy free for one of the diners) helped it contrast well with the cabbage and spinach.

Technorati Tags:

food

recipe

fennel

We hosted KTF (Keep the Faith), one of the St Clement's young people's groups on Wednesday evening. I got a jelly baby from the pass-the-parcel Bible quiz and also found out that, by leaving it in water overnight, it would swell up in size.

That sounded like a challenge for another edible experiment and you can see my result above, bloated, soft and delicious to slurp down! I wonder if two or more would start to fuse together? Hmmnn...

Technorati Tags:

food

jelly baby

st clements

I discovered that we had a rather large number of tins of beans sitting in the larder so, when it was my turn to cook last week, I tried to come up with some way of using them. My solution was beans on toast but with a twist.

First I fried off some sliced onions in the bottom of a roasting tin while at the same time toasting several slices of bread. The onions got distributed across two roasting tins and then quartered slices got divided between them. On top of this I added baked beans to cover, a thick sprinkle of polenta for the crust and some olive oil and worcester sauce to add further crispness and flavour.

Not the most exciting meal I have ever cooked but perhaps a touch more interesting than just serving plain old beans on toast (and accompanied by potato skins stuffed with a potato and cabbage mixture).

Technorati Tags:

food

baked beans