Shortbread

Sometimes… when I have a  few minutes, I loiter around the web, looking at things I might want to buy. I’d spotted that lovely madeleine tin on Amazon and I could justify buying that because I’d never made madeleines before and I was absolutely sure you’d all want me to make them… and I was right, wasn’t I?

Anyway, on my idle perusal of other things I hadn’t got (yet) and possibly wanted to get, I spotted a shortbread mold.  A beautiful stone mold with thistles and segments.

I love shortbread. I love its buttery, crumbly, sweet but not too sweet, sandy- textured biscuitness.

A good slice of shortbread with a cup of tea can make the whole world seem better.

It was obvious, then, I had to buy the shortbread mold.

What happens if anyone drops in and I don’t have anything nice for them to have with a cup of tea? What happens if there’s a crisis and I have to offer comfort, tea and shortbread to get them through it? I can’t take risks like that with my friends’ happiness.

Well, that’s what I told the Bear when he found me smuggling in another package from Amazon.

So, I set to.  The oven was switched on to 150 degrees C/300 degrees F

250g of unsalted butter and 125g of golden caster sugar were creamed together.

250g of good, fine plain flour and 125g of cornflour were sieved in and stirred lightly together.

If you had fine polenta (cornmeal) or semolina that would be a lovely thing to add, giving it a lovely crumbly texture. I didn’t have any so I stuck with cornflour.

I used the butter wrapper to wipe out the stone mold and get a thin layer of butter into all the crevices. (I’m thinking that one of those sprays of cooking oil might be good here)

Because I love it and because I wanted it, (what better reason do I need?) I added a quarter teaspoon of vanilla bean paste to the butter and sugar.

The flour I had chosen was a good ’00’ (extra fine) so it will be smooth but just to make sure, I sieved in the flour and cornflour mix.

Sometimes, you know, I do like to faff about in the kitchen and sieving isn’t essential it just panders to my inner domestic goddess…

Bring the mix together but don’t go at it too heavily – overworking the flour will make the shortbread tough and that would never do.

See? It looks almost sandy. That’s what you are after.

Now, just pack it into the mold and press it down firmly.

Once it is flat, prick the shortbread with a fork before putting it in the oven for about 50 minutes.

It will cook to a delicate golden colour.

Look! Out of the mold you could see the thistle pattern.

Next time I do it, I shall pack it down harder to make the pattern more defined but, as it was the first time I used that mold, I didn’t mind…. it all tastes the same anyway.

Lovely. And I could eat it happily… there was no crisis (but how comforting that shortbread would have been if there had been one) there was just a cup of tea and the rest of the afternoon to enjoy it all.

It was crumbly, buttery, sweet enough but not too sugary… it was shortbread. Plain and simple shortbread.

Perfect.

….and there was ginger beer, lashings and lashings of ginger beer!

It sounds like an Enid Blyton novel, doesn’t it?

Well that’s what it could have been… the Famous Five go wild in 

Sherwood Forest.

And that’s why there has been no real cooking…..

What happened is that  5 friends decided to hire a villa in

 Center Parcs in Sherwood Forest for a girls weekend.

The villa was fabulous with a flat screen television, a real fireplace,

comfy seating for all of us and free internet access.

The living room windows opened out onto that fantastic view.

And at the edge there was a lovely river.

There were ducks and swans and moorhens

Some of them came to stare through our windows in

the hope of getting something to eat…..

Swans appeared and pecked at the windows as we walked past

And those of you who are friends with Omnivorous Bear on Facebook

will recognise one of the victims being pecked!

It was like a Disney movie with all the animals coming up

to the window to ask for food.

There was even a strange dark grey swan.

The Subtropical Swimming Paradise was just that….. with rock pools and spa pools.

We lazed and chatted in the bubbles, we swam outside in the heated pools in

the moonlight…

 …and careered down water rapids, face first.

 And because it was Sherwood Forest, home of Robin Hood ,

we took archery lessons.

Walking through the woods, we  found  toadstools – the Amanita muscaria 

– the sort of toadstools you might expect to see with gnomes…..

Or even small bears…

We hired bicycles and cycled through the woods….

 

and got something to eat from the pub…..

And raised glasses to ourselves as we made toasts to what was turning out to be

 a brilliant weekend.

And that’s where the ginger beer entered the equation…

Crabbies Alcoholic Ginger Beer to be precise.

Oh it was delicious…and oh, how it made us laugh!

That would be the 4% alcohol, I bet.

And I’m assuming that none of the real Famous Five had THAT kind of kick

from their ginger beer!

And that is why there was no real cooking….

we were too busy laughing and eating and drinking!

Cheers girls! It was a fabulous weekend and you were all fabulous company.

                                                                                                                             Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Angela’s Apples … another T.O.B Cook

Everybody, welcome Angela, the newest T.O.B. Cook. Angela is my dear friend from the North.

We were both Northern girls and adored our birthplace… but I married and moved to the Midlands to be with the Bear and she married and then moved away even further. She’s ended up in Georgia, USA.

Angela’s the one I think of when I try and do gluten-free food as she is coeliac (or celiac as they spell it in the USA) We keep in touch, most days, through email and Facebook and she follows what happens on here. She’d read the posts on Apple Butter and Apple Butter Cake and, after a jaunt out with her neighbours where she picked apples, decided to see what she could do….this is what she wrote to me this morning:

“I needed to make some bread so, I thought, as I was putting the oven on, I might as well make the apple cake. And as I was chopping apples, I thought, I might as well make the apple butter. OK, I’m not a novice in the kitchen, but I’m not an accomplished chef either…. maybe it was all a bit over-enthusiastic…

Oh, I started off by sterilising the jars and the lids – in the dishwasher!!! Only the Americans could come up with such an easy way? That gave me a couple of hours to get everything done….

So I mixed the gluten-free bread mix, put it in the laundry room to rise. That gave me 45 minutes….

I chopped all the apples, putting 4 ½ lbs in a pan with apple cider vinegar, which then got left whilst I…

… made the cake mix. I used “Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Baking Flour” to which I added Xanthan Gum. I had no yoghurt so used low fat sour cream. I, for some reason, bought brown sugar instead of caster sugar.

I, for some reason, bought canola oil and can’t find out why.

(I’d already been shopping on Thursday, but then went back up again on Friday! But – I did see a good yard sale……)

Vanilla pods were replaced by ‘fake’  vanilla and I had no bicarb!!! Instead of “3 smallish apples and a box of stewed apple” I used 3 large apples – too many apples to be honest!

45 minutes was up, so the bread and the cake went in the oven.

Apples by this time had been left for over an hour… but were nicely mushy. I don’t have a Mouli and, to be honest, I do as little transferring and dirtying of dishes as possible.

(Hey, I’d already used two bowls for the bread, two bowls for the cake, chopping boards, pans, cake tins, bread tins…. the kitchen looked like a massacre… and by this point last night’s empty wine glass kept catching my eye….)

So, I used ‘Billy Blender’… I have to say I thought it would be really sharp – apples plus cider vinegar, but it tasted good – so no sugar was added.

It was 6.30, what about tea? So on top of all that I started making a salmon and prawn risotto.

Stir the apples, stir the risotto. Wine was required for the risotto……

Bread was taking an age, so turned the oven down for the bread and the cake. I think they were both in for an hour, maybe the cake was in for a bit longer.

Risotto was nice, if a little too much wine had been added!!!

Bread was normal – takes longer than it says on the packet, but gets there in the end.

Cake was absolutely gorgeous. Very moist – quite heavy. As I don’t eat cake or biscuits very often it was absolute bliss. I had been cooking since 4.30. By now it was 8 – 8.30 pm.

The spoon was leaving a trail. So…. jar filling….

What the hell happened?!?!?

3 jars? 3 jars is all I got.

Four bloody hours of cooking and I got 3 measly 8 oz jars!!!

I’d bought 12 Mason jars! Cost me 10 bucks!

4½ lb of apples and I got 3 measly jars. What went wrong?

I used 4½ lb  and I got 3  jars.  Lorraine got 10 jars – dunno what 14 cups translates as? You used 3lbs – how many jars did you get?

Maybe I cooked it for too long? Maybe I didn’t cook it for long enough – it’s more like jam/spread than ‘butter’.

It tastes OK – very, very rich taste though. But with vinegar – no need for sugar, which is good?

I won’t be making apple butter again, but will, most definitely, make the cake! And bread. And risotto…..”

I read all of this when I got to work in the morning and yes, I laughed.

Not in a mean way, you understand, but as I often laugh when I read her emails. I could just picture her glaring at the pans and staring at the wine bottle. I laughed at the thought of her looking at the canola oil and wondering why she bought it. I could just imagine her outrage at only ending up with 3 jars… “THREE measly jars”.

I suppose I should have told her than when I did my second batch of Apple Butter I did, in fact, use at least ten or twelve pounds of apples….

Still, she has cake that she can eat while she plans going out to get more apples!

Let her eat cake, I say…..

Roasted pumpkin seeds

Sometimes we all need a little treat.

I don’t tend to buy crisps, crackers or olives  to nibble at with a glass of wine unless we have guests. I don’t know why… maybe I think we don’t deserve it or maybe it is that we are fat enough and having extras isn’t a necessity. Perhaps I think it is a needless extravagance?

But you know what? We do deserve to have something every now and again. After all, the person I like best in the world would be sharing them with me and I’m happy enough to put stuff out for people I don’t love half as much.

So, what follows is the ideal compromise. It’s healthy, it’s tasty and it doesn’t cost very much at all.

I’d bought a small pumpkin to make some Puy Lentil and Pumpkin Soup and I’d had to scoop out all of those plump seeds. What better than to use something that others might just throw out?

They are all embedded in the fibrous middle but they are easy enough to remove if you gouge at it all with a spoon.

If you put them in a colander and run water over them it’s quite easy to pull the orange fibres off, leaving just the seeds behind. They will feel very slippery so give them a good rub in fresh water.

Once they are clean, spread them, out on a board and leave them to dry off.

This time I wanted plain and simple butter and salt roasted pumpkin seeds (I often make them and flavour them with things like chilli powder or spices ) but there’s something rather delicious about the plainness of the roasted seeds… plain, certainly but tasting deliciously of butter and salt!

Get a flat baking tray and put a knob of butter and some salt on it (I always use a silicone sheet because it is so easy to clean and doesn’t tear if you scrape at it. If you haven’t got any, it doesn’t matter – use tin foil or be prepared to clean the baking tray)

Put the tray in a pre heated oven at 200 degrees C/390 degrees F and get the butter melted and hot.

Toss the pumpkin seeds in the melted and salted butter and put them back in the oven for ten minutes or so.

After ten minutes, give them a shake… they should be browning nicely.

Put them back in if they need a few minutes more – this will depend on how much moisture was left in the seeds.

Once they have cooled… put them in a bowl and share with your best friend.

A glass or two of wine makes this the perfect pre-dinner snack – healthy, tasty and all it took was a knob of butter, ten minutes and some otherwise thrown away seeds!

Meatfree Monday – Puy Lentil and Pumpkin Soup

At this time of year, the shops start to fill with pumpkins. Halloween is not far off and millions of pumpkins will be bought to make into Jack O’Lanterns.

You can’t just buy a pumpkin and carve it… you have to DO something with it. Last year I made Pumpkin Soup, flavoured with smoked sweet paprika and drizzled with Chilli Oil . 

I separated the seeds from the fibrous middle and roasted them with jerk seasoning to make a tasty roasted pumpkin seed snack

This time, though, I wanted to make a soup that would be a meal in itself.

I had a small pumpkin that would be ideal for soup. I also had a craving for something with a bit of spice because I had a cold that was dragging on. I needed a burst of heat in that soup to burn through the fogginess that an autumn cold makes you feel.

I remembered a soup I had seen in the Australian Gourmet Traveller for Green Lentil Soup with Pumpkin and Harissa that would be perfect. My little sister lives in Australia and sends me (if I’m not there to buy a copy) the Gourmet Traveller Annual Cookbook as my Christmas present… the fact it costs way more in postage to send than it costs to buy is neither here nor there – it truly is the magazine I most look forward to getting.

It looked a fabulous recipe. I knew that adding my favourite Puy lentils would add heft to the soup and jazzing it up with Moroccan spices would enliven the whole bowlful.

I chopped two sweet white onions, then put them in a pan to soften with a teaspoon of Maldon Sea Salt.

While they were cooking I halved the small pumpkin I had and scooped out the seeds.

Don’t throw the seeds away, because you can roast them later for a lovely, healthy snack.

I roughly measured half a mug of Puy lentils – now, this is one of my Starbucks City Mugs that roughly hold 20 fl.oz, so the equivalent measurement will be 10 fl oz if you use a Pyrex jug… or, about a full normal coffee mug size. Me? I like coffee so I have a very big mug!

Once the onion has softened and looks translucent, add the lentils and then pour in a mug and a half of water (that’s roughly a pint and a half) and let the onion and lentil mix slowly cook.

Add in a vegetable stock cube for flavour.

While that is gently cooking, start preparing the pumpkin.

The rind of the pumpkin in very hard and I have found that the best way to peel it is to cut the pumpkin into segments and then slice off the rind.

By the time you have it all segmented, the lentils will have started to soften and the colour will have leached out into the water and stock.

Now add in the segmented pumpkin

And then add a tin of chopped plum tomatoes.

Stir it all round and let it simmer gently.

I wanted a bit of heat in the soup and a Moroccan feel so Rose Harissa paste was the obvious choice. You can buy Harissa paste in most supermarkets now – this one has rose petals in it and a deep and complex flavour. It is essentially a chilli paste so add it according to your preference. A teaspoon full will not make it too hot – if you want more heat (and I do) add another.

Stir it in so it blends with the lentils, pumpkin and tomatoes.

I also have some Belazu Pickled Lemons which will add a marvellously sharp-sour element to the rich and earthy soup.

A quick scoop out of the middle of the lemon and the rind is ready for slicing then adding to the soup. I used two small lemons.

And then stir it all round… the pumpkin should have softened, the lentils will be tender and the flavours will have come together to make a deep, rich, spicy soup with sharp overtones

Serve it in a bowl with a spoonful of natural thick yoghurt and a sprinkling of coriander.

And there it was. Steaming perfection in a bowl.

Meatfree and delicious.

Hot Toddy for a cold

There’s a reason for me being so quiet over the past few days… I have had a cold that has made me feel dreadful.

A rattling cough, a pounding head and aches all over made me feel so bad that I actually came home from work.

I knew what I had to do, of course.

The best cure for a cold is to go to bed, clutching a hot toddy and try and sleep.

So, first of all, a spoonful of lovely honey in a mug

The juice of half a lemon and a slice of lemon go in next, topped up with hot (but not boiling) water

Then stir it round to make a hot, sweetly-sharp mix

Then, to help those poor, tired muscles relax and the pounding head to ease…. find a bottle of whiskey.

This is Redbreast, a gorgeous Irish pot still whiskey (there’s a difference, you know – Scotch whisky is classed by some as the only true whisky and it is spelled without the ‘e’. Irish whiskey has the extra ‘e’ and gets an extra distillation. Three as opposed to Scotch’s two) It doesn’t matter what you use – that was just at the front of the drinks cupboard.

Just a drop or so adds a deep, soothing, rounded flavour to the hot honey and lemon… and with a couple of cold cure capsules is the ideal medicine for a rotten cold.

The next step is the most important – get off to bed and curl up while you sip your hot toddy. Cocooned in a duvet and propped up on pillows, the delicious hot toddy soothes and relaxes….

Sleep really is the best medicine, you know.

After a couple of hours of sleep I felt so much better.

Just remember that, next time you have a dreadful cold!

Lolly, updated.

Lolly has been at it again…

October 2010

Autumn is here as is the apple crop. We have all been trying to do as much as we can with the huge haul of apples and the lovely Lolly is no exception.

We both love cake baking and Laura and I have been working on delicious cakes using apples. One thing we found on our searches was that apple butter or stewed apples can reduce the need for fat in a cake and anything that can make cake almost a health food is good for us!

  Lolly had emailed me one morning and we were talking about the potential for cake ” I was having a look at your blog and came across the recipe for the Apple Cake that you made with Apple Butter, and some chopped up apple pieces. I have 3 smallish apples left from my bounty, as well as a small Tupperware box of stewed apple and I wondered if you thought it would work if I made it like this….

Peel and core my 3 remaining apples, mix with juice of ½ lemon.

Put 250ml greek yogurt in a bowl and add 200g golden caster sugar, 60 ml veg oil, 2 eggs and the seeds from one of your wonderful vanilla pods and gently mix

In another bowl put 300g plain flour, 1 ½ tsp baking powder, ½ tsp bicarb, and then instead of the apple butter, two heaped dessert spoonfuls of stewed apple and a tsp of cinnamon.

Mix through and add dry ingredients and chopped apple.

 Do you think that this would work, or do you think I should also add a little bit of butter for a bit of fat?”

Look at that! I think you could say that it worked!

Lolly says “  Well I made it! I think that I put too much of something in, perhaps flour as the cake is a little dense. However, that hasn’t stopped it from being devoured by everyone at work so it must taste alright!!! I also made a small heart shaped one for Giles…!”

I think that is how it should be for a cake that is best eaten with tea or coffee – somehow, light and fluffycakes belong more with afternoon dainty teas. This is the sort of cake that is perfect for a mid morning break, say. Nothing too sticky… nothing too airy, just a perfect slice to have with a hot drink.

Well done, Lolly… and I bet Giles loved his heart shaped cake!

(You can see the rest of Lolly’s cooking adventures here)

Remembrance of Things Past… madeleines for an anniversary tea.

One year ago today I started this blog. I can’t believe how many things I have cooked since then. One good thing about writing about what I cook is that I have been forced to cook new things. I know how easy it is to rely on the same old favourites all the time. I have been inspired by reading all the blogs my new friends have written or have pointed me to. I have made things I had just previously read about and discovered that things are never as tricky as they might seem. All it ever takes is a bit of time to read things through so you understand the process and love and determination in your heart. My main inspiration is the Bear – I just want to make good things for him… and after all, this blog is named after him.

When I look back at all the posts I’m amazed that anyone read them or that they continue to read them.

I had to celebrate a full year of blogging and all the friends I have made because of it. I’d love to be able to celebrate with you all here.. maybe laughing and talking about the past year over cups of tea and cakes….

And that made me think of Marcel Proust. And madeleines. Proust talks of eating a madeleine with a cup of tea and being transported back to earlier times….

“She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called petites madeleines, which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place…at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory…”

— Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 1: Swann’s Way.

What better cakes to bake for a wet Sunday afternoon when I want to look back on the last year?

The rain was lashing against the windows and all over Britain people were staring at the dismal weather and deciding to stay inside. We were going to do the same but I was going to make tea time special to celebrate this special day.

To make madeleines you need a madeleine tin. These have a wonderful scalloped base that are essential for the perfect madeleine. You won’t regret buying one (if you need any encouragement, that is) If you are looking at kinds to buy, avoid the silicone ones – the metal heats better and is  much easier to handle than a wobbly, rubbery tray.

You also need good instructions and the best I have found (after intensive searches) is from David Leibovitz  on “Living the sweet life in Paris”

First of all melt, then let cool, 120g unsalted butter.

You will use most of it in the cake batter but just lightly brush the madeleine tins with a quick wipe of melted butter.

Sprinkle the buttered tins with flour

Then upend the tin over the sink and shake off the excess.

Put the tin in the freezer to chill down properly.

In the bowl of a mixer, put a pinch of salt, 130g of golden granulated sugar and three large eggs (that have been allowed to come to room temperature)

Whisk them together for five minutes until the mix becomes pale and thickens slightly.

Weigh out 175g of fine plain flour – I always use ’00’ (it’s available in most supermarkets now, in the baking aisle) and add 1 level teaspoon of baking powder. The baking powder makes them rise well, giving the traditional (and desired) “humpy” effect on the back of the finished madeleines.

Sieve the flour mix into the egg and sugar bow and fold it in carefully.

Zest a lemon and add it to the melted butter. Remember to scrub the lemon if it is a waxed one.

Once the flour is in, add a little of the melted butter and fold it in gently.

 

Gradually, add it all slowly and carefully. Don’t overwork it because all that will do is toughen the gluten. Just fold it in as lightly and smoothly as possible.

Pour your beautifully smooth and silky batter into a jug and put it in the fridge for at least an hour. You can make the madeleine batter up to 12 hours ahead, if that will suit you?  What a great thing that would be if you had people coming round!

When you are ready, heat the the oven to 220 degrees C/425 degrees F

Get your beautifully frozen tin from the freezer

… and spoon in a dollop of the madeleine mix

The madeleines will only take between 8 or 9 minutes, so while they are baking, make some  tea.

We love beautifully fragrant green tea and I think the pure, delicate taste would be perfect with the light, sweet cakes.

As the tea infuses the leaves unfurl.

At the same time,  the madeleines are ready.

Beautifully humped and golden.

They are tipped out onto a wire rack to cool slightly. The underside has the gorgeous scalloped markings of the perfect madeleine.

Golden, sweet, warm cakes. Light and delicious.

We ate them with our steaming cups of tea as we looked back over the past year. We used the random post picker button on the main website page (which you can also get to by clicking on the Bear in the top corner) and read about meals and treats and smiled as we did so.

The weather may have been awful but the madeleines were fabulous.

Happy Anniversary to the blog!

Red cooked shin of beef

The weather has definitely changed. The winds are getting stronger and I have started to wear a coat to travel to work.

It been raining a lot as well and when I look out of the window of my office at work I can see waves being whipped up on the lake.

Even the ducks, swans, geese and the heron are all in hiding.

You can see the trees are being bent over in the strong winds. The rain is splattering against the window and the skies are getting more grey.

What we need is something warm and sustaining. I want meat… I want tasty meat. I want something to fill me and make me smile.

So I decided upon shin of beef which is a British, inexpensive cut of meat from the front legs of cattle. Just over 500g costs  just over £3. That’s enough to easily feed four people. Shin needs long and slow cooking which transforms it from incredibly tough to  the most melt in the mouth meat ever, with a real depth of flavour.   If this cut isn’t familiar to you, look at the link  which shows you the difference between American and British cuts of beef.

When you look at shin of beef you can see the tendons and the fat running through it. This has to be cooked slowly and the meat becomes transformed into the most tender morsels imagineable. The gravy served with it reduces and becomes intensely rich and flavoursome. It is perfect in a beef stew with dumplings  and that, I have to say, is how I normally cook it.

Except this time I wanted something different. I wanted something with a bit of a zing to it…and I had a fancy for some kind of Chinese flavouring. I have always adored the taste of star anise flavoured sauces and I remembered that when I was a poor student and wanted a treat I would order fried rice with a drizzle of Chinese barbecue rib sauce on it. That would be it. Just rice with some sauce… I think the takeaway was used to poverty stricken students asking for the bare minimum. (Mind you, there was an Italian restaurant in town that once served a group of us a side dish of peas between us because that was all we could afford and one of our friends fancied someone working there…)

Anyway. Here I was, years later, with enough money to actually buy some meat and I was going to make the most of it. I didn’t have a classic Red Cooked Beef recipe but I could make a fair attempt at it. No doubt the purists will think this isn’t the way to do it but this works for us. The flavour at the end is amazing and that’s good all we are concerned with.

Slow cooked meat is the easiest thing in the world. All it needs is time. You really do very little to it.

First of all, sear the outside of the beef as this gives it a good colour and a better taste.

Chop an onion into pieces. There’s no need to worry about making it neat – after a few hours in the slow cooker this will jsut disappear into a lovely rich sauce.

Put the onion in the bottom of the slow cooker (or casserole dish if you are using that) and lay the browned meat on top of it.

Add some oil to the pan juices (yes, I know that using sesame oil might seem extravagant, but once oil is opened you must use it as it will go off. You might as well use it in an appropriate dish rather than waste it. The delicious smell will disappear, I know, but you know the mantra, waste not, want not!) Use vegetable oil if you have it. What you are doing is getting the rich caramelised bits of meat from the pan.

Stir in a good teaspoon of minced ginger, the smae of garlic and half a teaspoon of  chilli – here I am using the tubes of freshly minced herbs and spices a) because I have them and b) my chillies have failed this year and my ginger is dried up and horrid. They are great to keep in the fridge, ready for an emergency. Add a good splash of soy sauce to add a salty, savoury element.

And star anise. Aren’t they beautiful?

Pour the oil and meat juice mix over the meat and onions and add the star anise.

Normally I’d add Chinese rice wine but we had none left… we did have sherry though and that is a good compromise. Half a cup of sherry adds an extra layer of aromatics to the dish.

A cup of water is added to bring the liquid content up to almost the top of the onion and meat. Don’t cover it, though as that will boil it and toughen the meat. You are aiming for a lovely gravy that will cosset the meat until it relaxes into tender submission.

And that’s it. Five minutes to prepare.

All you have to do now is to start the slow cooker, or put your casserole in the oven on a low heat and then just walk away for a few hours. Relax and enjoy the sense of anticipation.

Four hours later, the apartment smells of delicious, fragrant, spicy meat.

The meat is so tender it just falls apart when I lift it out with a spoon. The long, slow cooking has turned the tough meat into soft and delicious morsels.

Served in a bowl on top of some noodles with a few snipped chives over the top of it and we had the perfect supper. Delicious, tasty, spicily aromatic beef piled on top of soft and filling noodles… heaven in a bowl.

It made the grey day go away and we felt warm and happy.

What more could you ask for? A meal that tasted delicious and cost £1 per serving. That’s pretty good going.

Cheese and Sweetcorn Scones

When I made the delicious Roasted Garlic and Marrow Soup, I wanted something to go alongside the soup to make it a substantial lunch as I knew we weren’t going to be eating until late that night. What better, I thought than a savoury scone? One still warm from the oven? Maybe a good cheese scone would be just the thing.

Those of us who are British will know what I mean by a  scone – it’s what American’s call biscuits. What they call cookies, we call biscuits. Confusing, eh?

(A scone is an essential part of a British tea and  as Wikipedia points out ” According to one academic study, two-thirds of the British population pronounce it /?sk?n/, rhyming with “con” and “John”, with the preference rising to 99% in the Scottish population. The rest pronounce it /?sko?n/, rhyming with “cone” and “Joan”. British dictionaries usually show the “con” form as the preferred pronunciation, while recognizing that the “cone” form also exists”. I say “skon”  and as my husband will tell you, I am invariably right……..)

When I walked to the local shops I saw that the greengrocer was selling corn on the cobs, locally grown.

I knew from experience that these were sweet and delicious so I bought a couple. I’d seen a recipe in Good Food for cheddar and sweetcorn scones  so I thought this was the ideal opportunity and recipe to try out. I got some really good Cheddar from the Farm Shop and came home, knowing that it wouldn’t take more than half an hour to get them made.

The first thing to do was to cut the sweetcorn kernels off the cob. The easiest way to do this is to stand the cob in a Pyrex jug or bowl and run the knife down so the kernels fall into the jug. If you don’t do this then the kernels scatter everywhere. I know this because I have done it. What that means is that you then waste time looking for the sweeping brush and clearing up the mess. Do it in a bowl or a jug, eh?

It’s quick and its easy.

The next thing is to cook the kernels quickly. I  put a knob of butter in the bowl and microwave them for a couple of minutes if I am serving the corn as a side dish, but as these were to go into scones I decided that a small amount of water would do just as well. Adding extra butter to the recipe would skew things. It will only take a couple of minutes and then you can drain them, ready for the next step.

Start by heating the oven to 220 degrees C/430 F.

Mix, in a large bowl, 350g self raising flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, ½ teaspoon sweet smoked paprika, 1 teaspoon of salt  and some thyme leaves.

The original recipe called for mustard powder too, but mustard is one of the Bear’s Big Hates so I tend to avoid it whenever possible.

50g of unsalted butter must then be rubbed through until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.

Grate 175g of good strong Cheddar cheese and add most of that to the flour mix.

Add all of the cooked and drained sweetcorn and mix it all well, so there’s an even distribution of ingredients.

Add the juice of half a lemon to 175ml of semi skimmed milk.

My mother always used to save soured milk for scones when we were little… which makes me wonder, did milk go off more quickly years ago? I hardly ever have soured milk nowadays. maybe it is that fridges are better?

So, with no soured milk available, lemon juice does the job.

You can see that the milk looks almost lumpy… the lemon has acted on the milk, souring it and that’s the way to get perfect scones.

Mix it all together.

The dough will be sticky, but don’t despair and DON’T faff about with it. You need minimal interference for scones, otherwise the gluten in the flour toughens then and you end up with hefty, solid lumps, when you were wanting light and delicious morsels.

Sprinkle some flour on the board and knead the dough briefly so it comes together.

Make into 10 or 12 little balls by roughly rolling them.

Flour a baking tray or a silicone sheet on a baking tray and put the scones on.

Brush them with some milk, then scatter them with the rest of the cheese, some paprika nd any remaining thyme leaves.

Into the oven for 10 to 15 minutes until they are risen, golden and sound ready… that is, when you tap the bottom, they should sound hollow.

And just look at them!

Of course, we had to try one with some butter to see how they were……..

Before I served them with soup for lunch.

A perfectly light and deliciously tasty scone makes a great accompaniment to soup and now that the weather is changing I’m going to be making a lot more. Whyever wouldn’t I when in half an hour I can have beauties like these emerging from the oven?