The Ordinary Cook

Boiled fruit cake

45 Comments / cake, dried fruit, spelt flour, The Ordinary Cook, vegetarian /

With it being the summer holidays, the girls and I have done lots of picnics on our days out and this cake is excellent for picnics.  It’s easy to make, is very moist, lasts for ages and is absolutely delicious.  In fact Mr OC loves it so much he moans with joy when eating it!

I have adapted it from Jill Brand’s version in Best-kept Secrets of the Women’s Institute Cakes and Biscuits (ISBN 0 74322 111 7) and reading through her introduction for this cake now she also says it’s ideal for picnics, so I must be right.  Jill uses half and half wholemeal plain flour and self-raising flour.  I use half spelt flour, half plain flour and two teaspoons of baking powder instead.  The spelt flour gives it a lovely nutty flavour and texture.

Because I am lucky enough to have an Aga I make this cake in the evening and then leave it to cook slowly in the simmering oven all night and then check with a skewer when I get up and if I think it needs it I bake it for about 10 mins in the baking oven just to finish it off. It is deliciously moist this way and has the added bonus of filling the house with the scent of fruit cake with a generous dollop of mixed spice all night. But I have also cooked it the normal way and the way I will tell you about in the method below and it is almost as delicious.

For the mixed fruit I use whatever I have in the house, but it normally includes equal measures of raisins, sultanas and cranberries.  I have tried dates but I didn’t chop them finely enough and I found them a bit mealy.

450g (1lb) mixed dried fruit
200g (8oz) caster sugar
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
100g  (4oz) butter
200ml (7 floz) water
2 eggs
100g (4oz) spelt flour
100g (4oz) plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp ground mixed spice
50g (2oz) glace cherries, chopped

Method

Preheat the oven to 160°c (gas mark 3) and line the base and sides of a 18 cm round cake tin.

In a large pan place the mixed fruit, sugar, butter, bicarbonate of soda and the water and bring to the boil.  Simmer for 10 minutes and then take off the heat and cool for 15 minutes.

Beat in the eggs.  Sieve the flours, baking powder and mixed spice into the boiled fruit.  I add the cherries to the flour whilst I am sieving them so that they get a good covering of flour in the process and this helps to stop them sinking to the bottom of the cake when cooking.  Add the cherries and mix well.

Pour the mixture into the tin and either cook in an Aga in the way described in the introduction or in the preheated oven for 1¾ – 2 hours until a skewer comes out clean.  Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.

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Broad bean vinaigrette – and chicks!

18 Comments / broad beans, The Ordinary Cook, vegetarian /

We have broad beans in the garden.  Hooray!

I haven’t always been enamoured by broad beans.  When I was a child I disliked them with zeal.  They seemed too bitter and fibrous and my mum always seemed to serve them with liver! But things change, and my taste buds must have done as I love them now. I can’t say the same for liver though.

We went on holiday with my parents three years ago and had these little beauties as an appetiser at a little place, suspiciously called Cafe Londres. We have eaten them often since.  If I have parsley then I add it.  Our parsley in the garden has now gone to seed, so tonight’s version was un-embellished. It’s delicious either way.

I like my vinaigrette with a bit of zing so I always add more lemon than is traditional, but feel free to adjust to taste.

Shelled broad beans (fava beans, I understand, are the same thing)
1 clove of garlic, crushed
juice of ½ lemon
3-4 tablespoons of good extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

Method

Make a vinaigrette by mixing together the crushed garlic, lemon juice, oil and salt and pepper and adjust to your taste (adding more oil or lemon to suit you).

Boil the broad beans for a few minutes until tender  (timings will  depend on the size of the bean).  Drain well and run briefly under a cool tap until they are cool enough to handle and then pop the skin off the larger beans.

Add the broad beans to the vinaigrette and leave to stand for at least 30 minutes before enjoying at room temperature.

Now to the chicks part of the title.  I was a little busy last week and this was the reason:

Our Black Rock, Daisy, went broody four weeks ago, so we let her sit on her eggs in a rabbit hutch.  The first chick hatched on Monday and the eighth hatched on Friday. It was very exciting to go out and find yet another chick hatched under Daisy.  I took each one off her after it was born and kept it warm in a box on the Aga, with a mop head as a temporary mummy and then when we were sure that no more were going to be hatched we reintroduced Daisy to her brood – and very happy about it all she is too.

I just hope they aren’t all cockerels.

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Lemonade

16 Comments / The Ordinary Cook /

I would be hard pushed to find a drink more refreshing than this one on a hot day.

My youngest daughter loves lemons, she will suck on half a lemon and enjoy every minute.  She sucks her two middle fingers on her right hand and if she gets a chance she likes to squeeze a bit of lemon juice on them before putting them in her mouth. So she often asks me to make lemonade for her.  She loves the drink but she also loves to suck on the leftover lemon halves.

The last few weeks we have had really hot weather and this drink has been perfect for quenching thirsts.

It’s very easy to make and if you would like it fizzy, then dilute with a little sparkling water.

3 lemons (preferably unwaxed, if not then scrub under warm water)
80g caster sugar
500ml just boiled water

Method

Using a vegetable peeler peel the lemons, making sure you have only the yellow skin and no white pith.  If you have any white pith then scrape it off, otherwise it will make the lemonade taste bitter.

Put the peel and the juice of the 3 lemons in a large bowl.  Add the sugar and the just boiled water.  Stir well, making sure that all of the sugar has dissolved. Cover with a clean cloth and leave for a few hours to infuse and cool.  Strain and enjoy with ice, or diluted with a little sparkling water.

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Sausage and sage pie

11 Comments / pastry, pie, sausages, The Ordinary Cook /

This is one of my all time favourites.  I can’t remember a party from my childhood, or adulthood, when one of these beauties hasn’t been invited.  The pie in the picture is one of mum’s creations and it is from my mum that I have this recipe.  My mum makes the best sausage pies in the world!

I made one for a party we had over the May bank holiday weekend, but with all the pre party chaos I forgot to take a picture of my creation, so I have waited until my mum made her next sausage pie before posting this recipe.  Luckily for me she makes then quite often.

It is always popular and I rarely get a chance for leftovers.  It is important though that you get very good sausage meat from a very good butcher for this pie to be top notch.

500g ready-made all butter puff pastry
1 egg, lightly beaten, to glaze

1kg top quality sausage meat
6-7 tips of sage (by tip I mean the top 3 or 4 leaves of a sprig)
200g onion
salt and pepper

Method

If you don’t have a food processor then chop the onion and sage finely.  If you have a food processor, throw them both in and whizz until finely chopped.   Add them to the sausagemeat in a bowl, add a little salt and pepper and using your hands mix really well together.

Roll the puff pastry out into a large rectangle.  I forgot to measure mine to help with this but think about the baking tray you are going to use and it will probably be about the same size as that.

Place the sausagemeat in the centre of the pastry in a line, leaving an edge of about 3cm.

Fold the pastry over to meet at the top and crimp the edges well.  Place the pie onto a lightly greased baking tray and brush all over with a lightly beaten egg.  (You may have some spare pastry that you need to trim away.  If you do then brush this with egg and sprinkle with grated cheese and cut into fingers, place onto a greased baking sheet and cook for about 8-10 minutes for lovely cheese straws)

Place in a preheated oven at 220°c for about 30 minutes until golden brown.

You can serve this hot but I like it much better cold as the flavours really develop.

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Elderflower cordial

27 Comments / drinks, elderflower, preserves, The Ordinary Cook, vegetarian /

My oh my, it’s been such a long time since I posted last.  Sorry, sorry.  Choclette has even asked me if I have disappeared into another ash cloud. It is starting to feel that way.  I have a list of jobs as long as my arm ( and someone else’s) and it seems if I dare to turn my back more weeds have grown to monstrous proportions in the garden.  Oh well, mustn’t complain as there are some good things growing there too. I am hoping to harvest a few broad beans tonight for the first time, and we are on our last root of Charlotte potatoes from the polytunnel, just in time for those in the garden to be ready.  The first strawberry is turning a crimson shade today in the old sink, ready for the girls to pick tonight. The girls have been disappearing  for about twenty minutes every night just before bed to emerge smeared with redcurrants.  The onions and garlic are nearly there too and we have been enjoying them the last couple of weeks.

My mum, who of course has a garden in which there is not a weed in sight, gave me some wonderful beetroot this week which I roasted and enjoyed very much indeed. Even Mr OC who has for years had a fear of the beetroot (something to do with pickled beets and the way they bleed into everything on your plate) had one and said it was ‘alright’!

One of the best things about this time of year though is the hedgerow and the wonders that can be found in it.  We are very lucky to have some really good elderflower trees nearby, which are well away from the road and which, this year, are brimming with flowers.  So, on Sunday evening, with the sun still shining I went off with my scissors and bowl and cut about 30 heads of elderflower.  The smell of these flowers is so beautifully sweet and delicious and really is the essence of summer. When I poured the just boiled water over, the smell permeated the whole house all evening, making it worthwhile making this cordial simply for that reason.

However, there is another very good reason for making this cordial and that is that it is really delicious and thirst quenching on a hot day, or even a cloudy and showery day like today.  I also intend to have a go at making an ice cream or a sorbet with it.  Should you be planning a summer barbecue, then make some quick as it makes a really good drink for those who wish to forgo the alcohol.

I have taken the recipe from The River Cottage Cookbook (Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, 2001, HarperCollins, ISBN: 0 00220204 2) in which Hugh advises that if you want to keep this for more than a few weeks in the fridge then you should add a heaped teaspoon of tartaric acid for every 500ml of strained juice. It should then last for a year.  I haven’t added any to mine as I don’t expect it to hang around that long.  Don’t forget that the cordial needs to be diluted by at least one part cordial to five parts water before you enjoy it.   I am going on the hunt for a recipe for blackcurrant cordial next.

Make sure you are careful when you pick the elderflowers as you don’t want to lose the precious pollen in each of the tiny flowers.  Give them a very gentle shake to get rid of insects and then start the recipe as quickly as you can once they are picked.

20-30 heads of elderflower
zest of 2 lemons
zest of 1 orange
350g sugar for every 500ml of strained juice
50ml lemon juice for every 500ml of strained juice

Method

Place the heads of elderflower in a large bowl and grate over the zest of the 2 lemons and 1 orange.  Pour enough just-boiled water over the elderflowers to cover them completely. Cover with a cloth and leave overnight.  The next day strain through a muslin or a clean tea towel and measure the amount of strained juice you have.  Then pour into a large pan.  For every 500ml of strained juice add 350g of sugar and 50ml of lemon juice and heat over a gentle heat, stirring occasionally until the sugar has completely dissolved.  Bring up to a gentle simmer and spoon off any scum that rises to the surface.  Leave to go cold, then strain it through a muslin or tea towel again and then decant into clean bottles.  Store in the fridge and then dilute by at least one part cordial to five parts cold water.  Add ice and enjoy.

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Marinated peppers

18 Comments / peppers, salad, The Ordinary Cook, vegetarian /

I am in a celebratory mood.  This is my 100th post.  When I started blogging in September last year to reach the goal of posting 100 recipes seemed very distant indeed.  I have enjoyed every minute, although, I fear my waistline is expanding exponentially. Yesterday I recorded the greatest number of views to my blog since I started. Today I am a very happy blogger indeed.

To add to this happiness we have been eating summery food for a couple of weeks now and enjoying some very lovely sunshine.  Marinated peppers is one of my favourite salads and it formed part of a whole hosts of summery salads I put together for tea the other night. The spread included minted aubergines (recipe coming soon), chorizo in red wine with feta, tomato salad and lettuce from the poly tunnel.  Some would call it a mezze, some tapas, I call it bits and bobs.

If I had waited a couple of nights we could have had our first Charlotte potatoes from the polytunnel too, as we had those this week too and very delicious they were too.  Life is very good indeed.

These marinated peppers are lovely and will happily sit in the fridge for a day developing their flavour, so are handy for parties as they can be made well ahead.  They look even better if you use a mixture of red, yellow and orange peppers.  I don’t particularly like green peppers but if you do, go for it.

This is the recipe if you are just using 1 pepper to serve 2 people, but it is easy to double, triple or quadruple.

1 red pepper
1 clove garlic
½ tbsp white wine vinegar
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
lots of parsley

Method

Leaving the pepper whole, place onto a baking tray and roast in a hot oven until blackened.  Because I have an Aga I just place the pepper directly onto the floor of the roasting oven and turn every five minutes and it takes about twenty minutes for the pepper to blacken all over.  You can grill a pepper to the same effect or indeed hold it using large kitchen tongs over a gas flame.  Once it is blackened all over, place the pepper into a plastic food bag and tie to seal and leave for five minutes.  This steaming in the bag makes it easy to peel.  Peel the skin from the pepper, holding it over a bowl to catch any precious juices.  Remove the stalk and seeds and slice the roasted pepper into thin slices. Place in a shallow dish and pour over any juices.

Crush the garlic either with a garlic crusher or in a pestle and mortar with a pinch of sea salt.  Add the vinegar and mix well and then add the olive oil, mixing well again.  The measurements given above are for a classic vinaigrette, but I tend to splosh and taste, adjusting to my taste and I do like it a little on the acidic side so feel free to adjust to your own taste.  Season with more salt if necessary and pepper. Pour this dressing over the pepper and mix well.  When the pepper is totally cool, add plenty of parsley.  Place in the fridge but bring it out to get to room temperature before you want to serve it.

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Chocolate and strawberry ice creams

17 Comments / chocolate, ice cream, strawberry, The Ordinary Cook /

The weather forecasters tell us this week it’s going to be ice cream weather in England, and who am I to question them? I, therefore, expect that tonight’s edition of the local paper will have at least one photo of a girl wearing a sun hat and eating an ice cream in a park somewhere in Shropshire.  It may make the front page, if it gets above 20°c today. I scoff, but in this house all weather is apparently ice cream weather.   My two girls will ask for ice cream when there is snow outside.  Come wind or gale, ice cream is their number one choice.

My mum very kindly left her ice cream maker at our house, which makes meeting the demands of my children very easy indeed.

Mum also has a large strawberry patch in her garden, which, when the strawberries are ready, is visited daily by two little girls who emerge with strawberry juice grins quite a bit later.  Any surplus strawberries are pulped and mixed with sugar and the resulting purée is bagged up and frozen for use during the winter and spring until next year’s harvest.  Hence, the making of strawberry ice cream this week, when we still have a few weeks to wait before we can visit the strawberry patch.

When strawberry ice cream is made it is inevitable that there will be cries for chocolate ice cream shortly afterwards and so that too is made.  Both are absolutely delicious and really don’t taste like anything you can buy from the shops.  It is definitely worth the time spent making both.  The strawberry ice cream takes mere minutes, there is a little more stirring involved with the chocolate ice cream but it is definitely worth it.

The ice cream in the pictures were the just before school portions and yes, I know it is probably wrong to give your children ice cream before school, but when it is made out of such delicious things I can’t really see any harm in it.  Especially when it means I get to sneak a spoonful or two as well.

The recipes for both ice creams come from Jacki Passmore’s The Book of Ice Creams and Sorbets (Salamander Books, 1992).

Chocolate ice cream

50g (2oz) good quality dark chocolate
4 egg yolks
50g (2oz) sugar
375 ml (12 fl oz) single cream
a tiny pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water.   In a stainless steel or heatproof glass bowl, whisk the egg yolks, sugar, salt and vanilla extract together until pale, thick and creamy.  Scald the cream in a pan and then, whilst still  whisking pour the hot cream slowly over the eggy mixture.  Place the bowl over a pan of barely simmering water and stir continuously until the mixture thickens and just coats the back of the spoon. Stir in the chocolate and mix well.  It takes a while for it to combine properly so keep on stirring until it is a glorious dark brown. Allow to cool.

If you have an ice cream maker, then pour the mixture into the ice cream bowl and follow the manufacturer’s instructions.  If not, pour the mixture into a large tupperware box and place in the freezer for an hour, take out of the freezer and using a fork beat until smooth.  Repeat this process another 3 times.

After a full day in the freezer this ice cream will need to be removed from the freezer for about ten minutes before you can even begin to think about spooning it out.

Strawberry ice cream

500g (1lb) fresh strawberries
100g (4oz) caster sugar
350ml (12 fl oz) double or whipping cream

Method

Mash the strawberries with a fork or whiz in a food processor until pureed.  Add the sugar and mix well.  At this point you can place the mixture in a freezer bag and it will happily freeze until you want to use it.  If it is frozen, allow to defrost fully before adding the cream. Lightly whip the cream.  Add the cream and mix well.

If you have an ice cream maker follow the manufacturer’s instructions. If not place the mixture into a large tupperware and place in the freezer, after an hour of freezing use a fork to beat the mixture well and freeze again. Repeat this 2 or 3 times.

Store the ice creams in covered containers.

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Pea and cos salad

13 Comments / pea, salad, The Ordinary Cook, vegetarian, yoghurt /

When Mr OC and I wed, we had a wonderful caterer who really put on a very fine spread.  Everything was delicious, but one of the things that really stood out from the rest was the wonderful pea and cos salad.  I have since tried to recreate this on many occasions and I admit that I don’t think I am quite there yet.  I think crème fraîche and parmesan were involved somewhere along the line.

However, the other day I saw a cos lettuce for sale and so bought it, but then promptly forgot to purchase either crème fraîche or parmesan ( I blame shopping with two small children for my terrible ability to go out for a pint of milk and return with a pot of basil and a piece of steak, but no milk, but I don’t really think they are to blame).  So I had a go with what I had in the fridge and the garden and although it doesn’t reach the sublime level of the salad of our wedding day it is really nice, especially with a good roast chicken or a slab of rare steak.

I will keep trying with my recreation of the original recipe, so you may well see another recipe for this appearing at some point in the future.  However, for now, here is a version.  If you do have some parmesan in the fridge then shave some over just before serving, and feel free to replace the yoghurt with crème fraîche.  I promise to try harder next time I go shopping.

1 head of cos lettuce, washed and dried
3 or 4 handfuls of frozen or fresh peas, boiled until tender (2 or 3 minutes in boiling water)

150g Total greek yoghurt
handful of fresh mint, chopped
juice of ½ lemon
salt and pepper

Method

Arrange the washed salad leaves on a platter and artfully pour over the peas.  Mix together the yoghurt, chopped mint and lemon juice and season to taste and dollop over the peas and lettuce.

Dig in and enjoy!

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Chocolate and orange tart

16 Comments / chocolate, pudding, The Ordinary Cook /

My goodness this is good!

My sister-in-law is a keen cook and has a huge folder full of ripped out pages from recipe magazines with some of her favourite recipes.  I was spending a lovely half hour looking through this file when I came across a recipe for Chocolate and Orange Mascarpone Tart which just looked as if it needed to be made. I borrowed the cutting, and if Janice is reading this, it will be coming back to you soon, I promise.  I meant to make the tart over a month ago, but didn’t quite manage to find the time before we went away.  The tub of mascarpone that I had bought though had a surprisingly long shelf life so when we returned from our hols I was very pleased to see that if I was quick I could still try my hand at this little gem of a tart.

Now, I am afraid that there is no evidence of which magazine this cutting was originally taken from, but as I seem unable to take a recipe at its word I have made my own adaptations to it anyway.

It’s really delicious and really rich, so a 20cm tart will easily serve 12 people if not a few more and it still tastes good a few days after being made – I know because I have been doing plenty of experimenting!

For the base:
200g dark chocolate digestives
50g unsalted butter, melted
zest of 1 orange

For the filling:
250g mascarpone, at room temperature
100g cream cheese, at room temperature
3 eggs, at room temperature
grated zest and juice of 2 oranges
150g light brown soft sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp fine sea salt
50g good quality dark chocolate
50g good quality orange flavoured dark chocolate ( I used Lindt Excellence Orange Intense Chocolate, which has delicious orange crispy bits)

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°c (gas mark 6, 400°f).

Whizz the biscuits in a food processor, or place in a food bag and bash with a rolling-pin until they make fine crumbs.  Add the biscuit crumbs to the melted butter with the orange zest and mix to combine well.

Press the biscuit crumb mixture into a 20cm springform cake tin, making sure it is well pressed down. Place in the fridge to chill  whilst you make the filling.

Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water.

Place all the ingredients for the filling, except for the chocolate, into a food processor and whizz until smooth. Add the chocolate and whizz again until combined.  Pour this filling over the biscuit base. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes until just set and risen slightly at the edges.  Slide a knife around the edge of the tart to loosen it and then leave in the tin to cool.  Chill in the fridge for several hours or overnight before serving. Serve with plenty of cream.

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Rhubarb crumble

7 Comments / crumble, pudding, rhubarb, The Ordinary Cook, vegetarian /

It’s lovely to go on holiday and relax with the family, but it is also lovely to come home.  It is especially lovely if when you go on holiday winter seems to still be hanging around and then you come home three weeks later  (a longer holiday than planned thanks to that dastardly volcano!) to find that spring has certainly sprung. So much has changed, the trees are in full leaf, the apple blossom is heavy, the wild garlic is everywhere (and past its best for that salad I was planning) and the weeds seem to have taken over the veg patch. We have been back for over a week now and much of that time has been taken up with sorting out all that post that has piled up, cleaning the (volcanic?) dust that has accumulated and doing some heavy-duty gardening.  Never before have those knee pad thingys that you can buy from the garden centre seemed so appealing.

What was so lovely to come home to (apart from family and pets) was that first trek around the garden to see what was coming up (ignoring the weeds).  The mint, of which there was no sign when we left, is now a foot high.  I reprimanded myself for not getting round to cutting last year’s dead sticks back before I left, but that has now been rectified. The rhubarb, which was just a couple of nobbles peering out of brown earth when we left is now positively taking over its corner of the garden.  I was very pleased to see both of these things as mint is something which I add to my cooking as often as possible and I love and adore rhubarb.

So, one of the first meals we had on our return was minted aubergines followed by rhubarb crumble.  Both of these were demolished before I managed to get the camera out so you may have to wait a while for the recipe for the minted aubergines, but I have made the crumble again and so here it is in all its lovely spring is here glory.

6 sticks of rhubarb, prepared by peeling, if not forced rhubarb, and slicing into chunks
grated zest of 1 orange
juice of ½ orange
4-6 tbsp vanilla sugar

For the topping:
25g (1oz) pecan nuts
175g (7oz) plain flour
100g (4oz) butter
50g (2oz) sugar

Method

Spread the rhubarb into a deep pie dish and grate the zest of an orange over.  Pour over the orange juice and sprinkle with the vanilla sugar.

I always prepare my crumble in a food processor by whizzing the flour and nuts together until the nuts are finely ground. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.  Add the sugar and pulse until the crumble is crumbly. If you don’t have a food processor, then place the pecans into a food bag and bash with a rolling-pin until fine and then add to the flour.  Dice the butter and then rub into the flour using your fingertips and then mix in the sugar.  Sprinkle this crumble topping all over the rhubarb.  I like to have little bits of rhubarb peeking out so that the juices caramelise on the top.

Here is the crumble how is should be eaten, with cream poured generously over, and it’s just as lovely cold as it is hot.

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