Barnsley Mess
Forget your southern Eton confections! True Northern desserts need true Northern berries, by which I mean gooseberries. Yorkshire Gooseberry growers are a competitive bunch, and have been outdoing each other, and their Cheshire neighbours since the 1700s. I wouldn’t cook with one of the massive show gooseberries but the yearly harvest from my green gooseberry bushes makes the most wonderful sour/sweet fruit puree that just begs to be blended with foamy cream and crushed meringue. I don’t know if anyone from Barnsley ever made this particular combination but I have christened it the Barnsley Mess in honour of those competitive Yorkshire gooseberry enthusiasts. Long live the eccentric hobbies of England! We all know that a gooseberry fool is wondrous and easy dessert; but twist it up a bit with some home made meringue for that sweet/sour, cream/crunch combination that lights up your dinnertime. Serves 6 (with some meringues left over) Timings: About an hour to cook the gooseberries and assemble if using ready made meringues but you can do most of it in advance and just whip the cream and assemble at the last minute.
Make your meringues: whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form, stir in half the sugar, whip a little more and stir in the rest of the sugar. You should have a glossy quite stiff mixture. Place spoonfuls on a lined metal baking sheet and cook at low heat in the oven at 130°C until dry and crumbly – about 90 minutes to 2 hours depending on the size of the spoonful you used. You do want these meringues to be quite dry and not chewy inside so you can crumble them up. Cool on a wire rack and keep in an airtight tin. If you want to make little decorative meringues, fit a piping bag with a wide star nozzle. Use a toothpick to draw a line of food colouring down the inside of the piping bag in 3 lines. Fill some meringue mixture into the bag and dot stars of the mixture onto your lined baking sheet. This amount of meringue mixture will make about 15 little star meringues and about 8 larger ones, so you have plenty. Take about 10 of the largest berries and poach them gently in a little water with a dash of elderflower cordial until soft but still retaining their shape – only about 3 minutes if the berries are just picked. Scoop them out of the liquid and keep cool. Cook the rest of the berries in a dash of elderflower cordial for about 5 minutes until they have cooked down and released their juices. Add the sugar, stir to dissolve and continue to cook until you have a concentrated gooseberry syrup, almost a jam but not quite as thick. Allow to cool. Whip the double cream until soft peaks form. Crumble your large meringues into chunks and smaller bits. Mix the meringue and the gooseberry “jam” into the cream and turn with a spoon a couple of times to give a rough combination. Spoon into individual dishes or a large dish and drizzle the poached gooseberries over the top. Crown with your little stripy meringues. Enjoy your Northern treat and breathe in the clean fresh air from the hills.
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Chipotle Shredded Chicken Tacos
A spicy saucy meat wrapped in soft warm taco, sprinkled with cheese and dolloped with avocado cream. Really, something to make you feel optimistic and friendly to the world. It’s worth getting a can of chipotles in adobo sauce from the specialist section of your supermarket or on line. I promise that once you’ve used them, you will keep on. The chipotles are a preserved chilli which is slow cooked in a tomato and spice sauce and then canned and matured. They have a sweet depth of flavour and are spicy but not burning. They mellow down into a sauce and give it a genuine flavour which your family will certainly appreciate. It’s one way to keep them from demanding an expensive and unhealthy takeaway on a regular basis! A lot of people think they have to buy one of those all-in-one packs to make Mexican food. They’re fine but because the spice blend is made up for you, you don’t get the chance to personalise the recipe or use the fresh ingredients such as lime juice or a spoonful of chipotle in adobo that make all the difference. Try it from scratch and see. You don’t really need vegetables with this as you have lots in the recipe but you could serve a salad or grilled corn if you like. Serves 4 Timings: 30 minutes, overnight marinade then 1 hour on the day of cooking
Marinade:
A little chopped fresh coriander to serve Blend all the marinade ingredients together with a stick blender to a paste. Add a splash of vegetable oil. Massage into the chicken thighs and leave in a covered bowl in the fridge overnight. Take the chicken out of the marinade and in a large heavy casserole pan such as Le Creuset, fry each thigh in a little vegetable oil. The marinade will crisp and brown a bit but that’s fine. When you’ve fried each of them on both sides for a few minutes to brown and set the outer surface, put them all back into the casserole with the remaining marinade and 1 teacup of water. Simmer for about an hour until the juices are much reduced but a few tablespoons still remain in the bottom of the pan. Let the pan cool a bit and then using two forks, pull the chicken pieces apart into shreds. They will be tender and easy to pull apart. Add the lime juice, stir everything through the sauce, taste, and adjust the seasoning. Keep warm. Warm your tacos in a frying pan or griddle, giving each a minute or so on each side and then wrapping the stack in a teatowel to keep warm. Blend the flesh of the avocado with sour cream, add salt and lime juice. Stir in some chopped fresh coriander if liked. This is avocado cream and not a true guacamole which would also contain chopped red onion, chopped chilli, chopped tomato and be much chunkier. Make your tomato/onion salsa by mixing chopped fresh tomatoes and onions together with a little salt. Warm your refried beans if using. I’m giving a recipe for home made refried beans later in August which are so delicious you could eat them by themselves. Everyone can assemble their own taco wraps, spread with smoky beans, filled with spicy chicken, topped with cheese and drizzled with avocado cream or tomato salsa. Mushroom Croquetas (vegetarian)
In February I gave a recipe for ham and smoked cod croquetas, as you might find in Spain if you are tapas-cruising in Malaga or Bilbao. Now I tried a similar recipe for mushroom croquetas, which have a very intense flavour and a lovely interesting black colouring. They are a perfect dish for a vegetarian lunch along with a side salad, or as part of a Spanish themed spread. They are a bit of a faff to make as the bechamel is soft and tends to stick to your hands, but you can do most of the work ahead of time and they are so satisfying to eat I can forgive them the slight hassle. Makes 25 croquetas - which is enough for a party, as they are quite filling. Timings – 60 minutes on Day 1, 90 minutes on Day 2.
Fry the fresh mushrooms in a pan with some vegetable oil and butter – the liquid will start to come out. Keep cooking on a low heat. Put your dried mushrooms in a bowl and cover with boiling water. After 5 minutes take out the rehydrated mushrooms, cut up finely and add to the pan with the other mushrooms. Keep the soaking water. When the liquid has evaporated from the pan, chop or blend up the mushrooms to give quite a solid paste. Use 100ml of the soaking liquid (which will be dark brown and smell strongly of fungi) the bechamel but make sure there isn’t any grit in it. Make the bechamel in a fairly heavy bottomed saucepan. Melt the butter and the oil together, add the flour and stir over a gentle heat, cooking the flour without letting it burn. Add the liquid and keep stirring. It will thicken as you stir. Keep adding the liquid to make a very thick bechamel sauce. You need to keep stirring and cooking for a while to make sure any flouriness is cooked out, and the sauce is creamy. Add the pureed mushrooms and taste for seasoning. A sprinkling of salt and a generous grinding of pepper lifts the flavour. It will be an interesting sooty black colour. Line a container with cling film – I try to avoid using cling film these days but I have tried other things and the sauce sticks and you waste a lot, so I do use cling film for this. Pour the cooled flavoured bechamel into your container and wrap the cling film over the top to stop a hard skin forming. Place in the fridge for 24 hours to chill thoroughly and set firm. Next day, prepare a flat bowl with beaten egg and another one with breadcrumbs. Working on a floured baking tray, take a dessert spoonful of the set bechamel mixture and roll it in the flour, using flour to stop your hands sticking too. Form it into a cylinder about as long as your thumb and a bit thicker. Then drop two at a time into the egg mixture, then into the breadcrumbs, firmly pressing the breadcrumbs onto the eggy surface. They should stick and make a firm dry coating. Put the completed croquetas on a plate to set again. It is fiddly, and it takes a while – it might be easier if you have a production line of helpers assisting you with this. When the croquetas have had a few minutes to set, heat 2cm of oil in a heavy pan, or fire up your deep fat fryer or your air fryer. Fry the croquetas quite briefly in medium hot oil – the filling is already cooked, so you just want to warm it up and brown the breadcrumbs. Remove from the hot oil or from the air fryer and serve as soon as you can – they do keep warm in the oven quite nicely but are best straight from the pan. Serve with a little pot of mayonnaise mixed with crushed garlic and a simple green salad. |
Some Changes - April 2022
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