17 posts tagged “cheese”
I bought a tube of good sausagemeat at the farmers' market on Thursday. Today I spread it in the bottom of a square baking dish (it came out about a quarter inch thick). Then I topped it with some slabs of mature cheddar, and spread those with wholegrain mustard. I had a tin of pear halves hanging about, so I put a half a pear in each corner of the dish. Topped the whole lot with a square of ready rolled puff pastry, and baked at gas mark 7 for 40 minutes.
We ate all of it, with some peas, but with some more forethought and some potatoes and other veg, it would have easily served four.
I've been thinking of variations -
- cheese and branston pickle
- a layer of braised red cabbage, maybe with chestnuts
- apple sauce or chunks of apple instead of the pear
- cranberries
- a chunky tomato sauce
- hard boiled eggs
- apricots / dried fruit and maybe some curry powder
- blue cheese and braised celery or chicory
all of them easy to do, easy to make in advance, cheap, filling and tasty.
My grandfather didn't smoke and didn't drink (until after his militantly temperance wife died), but had his own ideas about what constituted an illicit treat. He and my dad used to let me stay up late with them watching old films on the telly - Bogart, Greenstreet, Lorre - raiding the pantry for snacks of strong cheese and crunchy pickled onions. People now can't understand why that was such a treat, the spread of the Ploughman's Lunch and supermarket Snack Box has created a terrible acceptance of plastic cheese and bland pickles. We put that right yesterday with a crusty brown loaf, a wedge of Collier's cheddar and some Barry Norman Pickled Onions. The cheese has that slightly gritty mouthfeel, strong and salty flavour, and not too crumbly but definitely not plasticine texture. The onions are magnificent, the closest to home-made I think I've bought (in a regular store, anyway). Dark brown, spicy, crunchy, those little green flecks that look like some poisonous metallic deposit. Brilliant. Just the thing to eat with a classic movie. Barry Norman understands.
Champagne Marmite - not sure about this. The Guinness one is yummy, quite sweet. This one is sourer, and sharper, like dry white wine left open for a day or two. Pleasant enough, but not one to search out.
The iron_trash community over on LiveJournal.
Konnyaku noodles, little bundles with appendages, boingy and springy.
I said when I made this regular plain cornbread that it would be good with extra stuff in it, and I was right. I followed the recipe exactly the other night, except ...
When I greased the baking dish, I scattered on the bottom:
- 4 sundried tomatoes snipped into small strips
- 2 oz chorizo / paprika salami, cut into slices and then in half again
- A handful of chopped coriander leaves
- 3 oz strong cheddar cheese, in little cubes
- A handful of dried black pitted olives
Wow. That was amazing served warm with chilli, and has been wonderful cold for breakfast, snacks and lunches since. If I were to do it and again (and believe me, I will, it's an excellent thing to take to a bbq), I would:
- put less salt in the bread, with the olives and cheese you don't need it
- cut up the olives, they were a bit big
- put the cheese on top? or stir the lumps into the mix rather than onto the bottom of the dish? it came out warm like an upside down pizza with minimal topping, which did make it easy to handle, but cold it could have done with a little bit more oomph
- think about other things like bits of fresh chilli or onion or fresh pepper, it was a good side dish but if it were a feature it needs a bit more texture and hidden surprises
- look at the sort of things you top polenta with, after all, it's the same thing really, just made into a cake
- cut down the sugar a little bit but not too much, it balanced the salty stuff nicely - it's too much for the plain bread, though
- think about a sweet version with dried apricots and other fruit that you could serve with cold thick cream and warm honey
I'm trying to focus on more healthy food at the moment, but this was just too weird to pass on. It's a party dish, quantities are for 25 - 30 canape portions. I don't think you'd want to eat a lot of this ... and it would take up a lot of space in the fridge to prepare. From delicious magazine, January 2004, recipe by Valli Little.
- 150 gms grated Parmesan
- 375 ml double cream
- pinch of paprika
- 250 ml balsamic vinegar
- 1 baguette, sliced
- 125 ml red wine
- olive oil
- 1 -2 garlic cloves, peeled
Put the cheese, cream and paprika in a bowl of simmering water, stir until the Parmesan has melted, season. Strain through a fine sieve, pressing through with a spoon. Cool and refrigerate overnight.
Simmer the balsamic vinegar until reduced by half. Cool. (Or you can buy ready-made glaze, I've got some somewhere.)
Using a small ice-cream scoop, place scoops of the cheese gelato on a lined tray and return to the fridge.
Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 4. Drizzle the bread slices with the red wine, brush with oil, lay out on a baking tray and cook 6 - 8 minutes until golden. Rub with the garlic while still warm. Cool.
To assemble - put a scoop of gelato onto each toast, drizzle with glaze.
This is a work in progress ... I found recipes for a savoury stilton and bacon cheesecake, and also for something like an upside-down cake with toffee apples in the base, cheesecake on top, then up-end it to serve, no biscuit or cake base. I'm doing a mix and match with a cheesecake recipe I know works, and we'll see what happens.
What I'm doing is:
- 4 rashers Waitrose maple cured bacon
- 3 tart apples, Granny Smiths, peeled and cored
- 2 oz butter
- 2 tblsps brown sugar
- 2 tblsps maple syrup
- 250 gms digestives
- 4 oz butter, melted
- 12 oz cream cheese - the real stuff if you can get it, otherwise use Philly
- 6 oz caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tblsp calvados
Finely snip the bacon and dry fry the bits until really really crisp. Drain on kitchen paper and leave to cool.
In a big heavy pan, chop the apples in about half inch cubes and cook in the butter, sugar and syrup until dark golden and slightly soft, and the sauce has pretty much evaporated. Cool a bit, but not too long, I suspect it would set solid.
Preheat oven to Gas Mark 4.
Make a digestive biscuit base for a 9 - 10" springform pan, by crushing the digestive biscuits and mixing with the melted butter. Press firmly into the pan.
Top with the toffee apple mixture, and sprinkle on the bacon.
Process the cream cheese, add caster sugar, eggs, and calvados and process till smooth. It's very wet.
Pour over the apples, and bake for about half an hour until set and not wobbling too much in the middle. It'll set more as it cools.
Out of the oven and looking good. I'm still debating a topping ...
Breakfast:
Beetroot-cured salmon, blinis, hardboiled quail eggs, creme fraiche, Ovruga fake caviar, chives and dill. Champagne or clementine juice, coffee.
Dinner:
Glass of Taylor's Chip Dry White Port, chilled.
Roast goose, goosefat roast potatoes, butter roast parsnips, sausages in bacon, sage and onion stuffing balls, plain boiled sprouts, petits pois, ginger cream sauce, port and redcurrant gravy. Choice of spiced pickled pears, sweet spiced prunes, cherry compote, cranberry and horseradish relish. Chateau Neuf du Pape.
Christmas pudding with cream or white sauce or rum butter. Orange Muscat Flora.
Coffee and Bendicks mints.
Late supper:
Winter apple, Comte cheese, clementine.
Phew.
From the ASDA freebie Christmas magazine, December 2006. Says 66 cals per biscuit, this amount makes 44 biscuits, should cost 6p each.
- 225 gms plain flour
- 0.25 tsp cayenne pepper
- 0.25 tsp dry mustard powder
- 125 gms butter, chilled and cut into small cubes
- 50 gms stilton, crumbled
- 75 gms mature cheddar, grated
- 75 gms pecans (or 44 whole or pieces of broken nuts)
- 2 medium eggs, lightly beaten - ed: - separately, you need them at different stages
- coarse salt
- Preheat oven to Gas Mark 4. Line 2 baking trays with paper.
- Sift flour, cayenne and mustard together.
- Add butter and rub in until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Add cheeses, and 1 egg. Mix until it forms a dough. Knead lightly. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes.
- Roll out between 2 sheets of clingfilm to a thickness of 5 mm. Cut into rounds. Put on baking trays.
- Brush with egg and put a pecan on each. Sprinkle with the coarse salt. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Cool on a wire tray.
What a pants recipe. It probably works, but they could have told you to keep the eggs separate, if I see "2 medium eggs, lightly beaten", I beat together 2 eggs. Idiots. And I'm thinking that rolling out a cheese dough between 2 sheets of clingfilm, as thin as 5 mm, would not be as straightforward as they make it sound. It tells you 44 biscuits @ 5 mm thick, but not how big the rounds should be. They'd have to be pretty small to get 44 on to 2 baking trays, but then, do they tell you what size baking trays? No. If you're supposed to put a whole pecan on each of 44 biscuits, I think you might need more than 75 gms.
Another pickup from a menu title: Somerset Brie and Spiced Plum Tart with a watercress salad. I would imagine either crisp shortcrust or flaky pastry, a spiced plum compote base, maybe peeled halved plums stewed and laid in it. Topped with slices of brie, rubbed with garlic, maybe? and just heated through to melting. You could get stupidly rich and make a small tart case the size to take a whole camembert or mini-brie, bake it, scoop off the lid peel and top with a warm compote just before serving - but that would be way too much for a starter, which is what this nominally is.
