Spring Victoria Sponge Cake (and a few other bits n bobs)

Now that the decision has been made to postpone the purchase of new cooker in favour of a holiday I've been experimenting with my knackered old oven, trying to adjust times and temperatures for baking purposes....sometimes it feels like everything just gets chucked in at Gas 4 for an unspecified amount of time, with fingers and toes crossed that it comes out properly cooked...  so I put this to the test with a few bakes.

Victoria sponge layer cake, fresh cream and lemon curd (wee butterfly sponges as well)



Soured cream and cherry sponge cake - recipe below



Raspberry macarons

So far, so good, all were delicious. although these macarons were a second attempt...the first ones fell victim to my over zealous approach to egg white whisking....not pretty.  These are far from perfect but I was pleased with my beginners effort.

Here a few pics from the rest of my foodie efforts:

Brunch!  Scrambled eggs with serrano ham

Tom Yum Soup with Prawns



Pan fried mackerel with homemade horseradish cream

Mozzarella, basil and parma ham tart

Thai chilli beef with spicy spring onion and mushroom noodles

The soured cream and cherry cake was a particular triumph and is the easiest wee cake to make...

 

You will need:

 

225g self raising flour

175g of caster sugar

175g soft butter

1tsp baking powder

3 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

150g soft fruit - blueberries. raspberries etc  I used a Lidls jar of cherries in syrup - what a bargain...

4/5 tbsp soured cream

 

Preheat oven to gas 4 or equivalent.  Line the bottom of a 20cm tin with parchment.

 

Either by hand (if you are strong) or with a mixer beat together the butter and sugar until pale and creamy.  Add half the flour, the baking powder and two of the eggs...beat again.  Add the rest of the flour, the vanilla and the last egg and beat until smooth.  Fold in the soured cream with a large metal spoon until completely incorporated.  Fold in the fruit and spoon into the tin.  Bake for 50 mins or so until the top is golden and springy and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

 

Leave to cool in the tin, it will likely sink a little, thats okay.  I didn't ice mine but I guess you could...I just munched it slightly warm with a dollop of creme fraiche....yum yum yum!

 

 



Foodie February so Far - Pics

Been spending a lot of time in the kitchen this month, it feels good to be cooking again for pure pleasure, unhurried and without Xmas deadlines hanging over me!

Here are some pics of what I've been up to:

Low Fat Blood Orange and Almond Sponges

Roasted Bone Marrow with Parsley on Sourdough Toast

  From this...to this!

Pan fried monkfish cheek on a chorizo and roasted tomato stew, couscous and sourdough bread

Chorizo and butternut squash risotto with parmesan and rosemary scones

                        

Lets see what the last two weeks of February brings!

Braised Ox Cheek

Decided to take a run over to the Wholefoods Market at Giffnock last week and spent a happy hour, and £22! wandering the aisles.  I had thought it very expensive on my first few visits but, whilst I'm unlikely to ever pay £1.79 for a bunch of spring onions, I realised that there are plenty of great foody bargains to be had, in fact by paying just a fraction more you are getting a far superior quality and selection that will never be found at supermarkets. 

None more so than at the fish and butcher counters.  Fish is expensive, right?  We all know that. But lovely silvery glistening mackerel fillets, not too bad,  thank you.  Big fat hand made sausages, a little more expensive but three bangers between two people would be more than enough.  Ox cheek.  Ox. Cheek.  The butcher seemed genuinely pleased at my excitement, each one cost less than £3.50 and would easily serve two/three in a casserole. The cheeks were vacum packed so I bought two, one for the freezer. I never buy chicken wings even though I love them, as the only ones you find in supermarkets are from their value, this chicken had a miserable life, range.  But here I found free range chicken wings, still cheap (or cheep, sorry).  All in all I was impressed.

Braised Ox Cheek. (would serve three but we are greedy, so serves two)

Set the oven to Gas 3. The meat was trimmed of excess fat and quartered, making four little rumps.  These were then browned in a heavy casserole pot until well coloured.

I used the usual selection of casserole veggies, onion, leek, swede, carrots, around 5 cloves of garlic and sweated these off in the pot.  I returned the meat to the pot, seasoned well and added a generous amount of thyme and a half bottle of decent red wine.

I then added around 300 mls of beef stock, and around 4 tomatoes, quartered.  The casserole was then placed in the oven for approx 3.5 hours.  I checked it after a couple of hours just to check the lovely liquor was still covering the meat.  When done the meat was amazingly tender and the liquor reduced to make a lovely gravy.

We kinda didnt do it justice by sticking a few boiled potatoes on the side but the overall taste was fantastic, melt in the mouth, strong almost gamey tasting meat.  And what a bargain!

I also made a pretty decent stab at Hestons chocolate tart with popping candy inside;

Ooooft was that good!  Recipe on the Channel 4 food website so I wont repeat it here.
All in all it was a Sunday feast to remember!

Big Bread!

Peking-y Style Duck

Quick trip to supermarket a few days ago and I couldn't help but notice a special offer for whole Gressingham duck....hmmm...what to do.....

I browsed a few recipe books, settling on a variation of a recipe for peking duck from Asian Flavours (Mr Jean Georges Vongerichten I salute you).  Didnt exactly have all the ingredients so improvised a bit.  The duck was cleaned and patted dry.  A marinade of 2 tbsp each of soy sauce, cider vinegar, honey and hoisin sauce was heated in a pan with 100 ml of water, brought to the boil then cooled, before slathering all over the duck.  Into the fridge for 24 hours, recoating the duck a few times with the marinade during the first 6 hours, then leaving it to dry out the skin as much as possible.  JGV suggests hanging the duck on a hook in the fridge and if possible blowing it with a small fan to assist the drying process...eh, right then....tiny fridge and no battery operated fan to hand so it just sat on a tray like a good wee duck.

Next day, 4pm, out of the fridge it came.  The skin was not as crispy as it might have been (if only I had that fan! Or a hairdryer with a cool setting!) but still it looked good.  It went into a hot oven (gas 8) for the first 20 mins - I put it on a rack over a roasting tray with a little water in it to stop it spitting - then turned heat down to gas 4 and cooked it for another 55 mins - this was correct timings as per weight of the duck.  The duck was then rested for around 10 mins.

As it was cooking I made a little dressing of soy sauce, few drops of sesame oil, few drops fish sauce, some chopped chilli and a little raspberry vinegar.  Chopped some spring onions and dressed a plate with no frills iceberg lettuce.  Didnt have time to even contemplate making my own pancakes for the duck so made do with wraps, warmed in the oven.

This is how it ended up;

We quartered it to make the carnivorous munching a bit easier.  Not too bad for around a total cost of £8!!!