Roscon de Reyes

Partly inspired by our recent foray into only eating homemade bread (under normal circumstances) and partly by the fact that we were unable to spend any time in Spain over the Christmas period this year (we typically go for New Year and / or Reyes - the celebrations around Twelth Night and Epiphany), I decided to try my hand at making a Roscon de Reyes.

They're a form of bread/cake (an enriched bread, so somewhere inbetween the two - remniscent of Brioche) traditionally eaten during Epiphany in Spain, so when visiting the in-laws, there is always one of these around on the morning of Reyes.

My attempt was reasonable successful - altough I think next time will be better as I know what to expect at each stage. For the first attempt, I only had a recipe I'd translated from the web and a few photographs, plus my own memory and limited breadmaking experience to draw on.

Ingredients

400g "very" strong white bread flour (look for 'very' strong as it's better for enriched loaves)
100g of softened butter
100g of caster sugar
1 sachet of dried yeast (6g)
250ml milk
3 medium eggs
Zest of one lemon
A pinch of salt
Candied fruits (e.g peel, glace cherries, etc) to decorate


First, warm 100ml of the milk until tepid (or, if you have a thermometer and are a teeny bit obsessive, like me - 37 degrees). Add the yeast, cover with a teatowel and leave for 5 minutes. Stir to mix and add 100g of the flour. Mix gently to form a soft paste (or dough; may vary slightly depending on your flour). Cover with the teatowel and leave for 90 minutes - until doubled in size.

Put the remaining (300g) flour into another bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the 3 eggs, 100g sugar and remaining milk (150ml). Mix to form a smooth dough. Lightly cream the butter and mix into the dough. Add the first mixture, now doubled in size, combine and knead the dough for roughly ten minutes on a lightly floured work top.

The mixture will be extremely sticky at this point, but try not to add too much flour. As you knead, you'll find that the dough will tighten up and take on a shiny, smooth consistency - becoming less sticky. You will almost certainly have to add some flour when scraping it off the work-top, but keep this to a minimum!

Once kneaded, dust the dough with flour and leave to rise for at least 2 hours.

Once risen, preheat the oven to 160 degrees.

Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. Shape the dough into a ring with your hands. If you are going to add any "surprises" into the bread (traditionally a bean is put in - or some small toys - much like with Christmas pudding) - wrap these in greaseproof paper and introduce them to the dough now.

Decorate the ring however you like with the candied fruits/peel and brush with eggwash. Dust with granulated sugar and bake for 15-20 minutes, until nicely golden.browned.


Serve however you like; although in Spain it's typically cut in half and filled with whipped cream!

Happy New Year!

A belated happy new year from the cottage! I hope you all had a great (and fattening) time over the holidays - we certainly did.

Are any of your "New Years Resolutions" (or "Things I will try to do for the first week of January" as they are also known) food related? I think most - if not all - of ours relate to food and/or the kitchen.

So, this year we are going to try to:

1. Blog much more often. Weekly at least.

2. Make most of our own bread - apart from when we want something special. You can see my test wholemeal loaf above!

3. Remove even more "processed" foods from our regular diet.

4. Buy even more of our meat and veg from markets instead of supermarkets.

5. Not drink quite so much wine on school nights.

Mind you, I get a distinct feeling that at least one of these is doomed.. how about you? :)

Chocolate Eclairs: vanquish your fear of choux pastry!

Something I've always wanted to have a go at making is - profiteroles. I really love profiteroles but have always been slightly worried about choux pastry - lots of people have told me how difficult it is to make.

I now thoroughly disagree. I plucked a recipe for chocolate eclairs (after all, they're the same thing, just a different shape, really) from my amazing chocolate book and had a go.

My filling (Creme Patrissiere / Creme Anglais / Custard - take your pick) didn't work out great as I took my eye off the ball and overcooked it; and I suspect the icing in the recipe could be improved, so lets just worry about the pastry here - there are plenty of good recipes for chocolate icing (a good fudge sauce would probably be better mind you) out there!

To make roughly ten eclairs, you'll need:

150ml of water
70g of butter, chopped up (or well softened)
90g of plain flour (the recipe originally called for "strong flour", but we didn't have any and it still worked fine)
2 eggs

Grease a baking tray and pre-heat your oven to about 200 degrees (a bit under if it's a fan oven like ours). Beat the eggs together - so they're ready when you need them. Get your piping bag ready with a big, plain nozzle.

Heat the butter and water together in a small saucepan, on a low heat, until the butter has completely melted. Then raise the temperature and bring it to a rolling boil.

Once you're there, take it off the heat and beat in the flour until the mixture comes away from the sides of the pan and starts to ball together (you'll see what I mean when you do it). At this point, start tipping in your eggs - a bit at a time - beating them in as you go. It should quickly form a smooth, glossy substance which reminded me a bit of runny plasticine!

Transfer to your piping bag. Pipe into the desired shapes. Bake for 30-35 minutes until crisp (and golden brown). Transfer to a wire rack and make a small hole or slit in the top of each so that some of the steam can escape - otherwise they'll go soggy while they cool.

Easy peasy. I'd recommend you get a half decent piping bag, though - and practice a bit, otherwise they'll come out looking like mine, which were much nicer than they look!

Thai Red Curry - my quick and easy version

As you must have noticed by now, we're really into Asian food, particularly Thai. And I love a good thai curry, however, they can be a bit complicated to prepare at times - especially if you do it "properly", making your own paste, etc - which is well worth it, but not always practical.

This recipe takes about 30 minutes start to finishing, including the prep (assuming you're fairly quick with your chopping and are organised). I'm not going to make any "thirty minute meals" claims, but it's easily do-able on a school night.

You will need (serves 3-4, depending how much you eat!):

1 red onion, half sliced, half finely diced

2-3 kaffir lime leaves, thinly sliced (or 2-3 bay leaves, left whole)
2-3 tbsp of finely sliced lemongrass
A thumb sized piece of ginger, finely chopped or grated
2-3 crushed garlic cloves
Fresh red chilli to taste - I used about 4 birds eye chillis - very finely sliced
A small handful of fresh basil (sweet or thai basil if possible), chopped
A small handful of fresh coriander, roughly chopped

Approx 300-400g of meat (pork, chicken, duck, beef - your choice), cut into slices - about the size of a 50p coin, but twice as thick

2 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp chilli powder (to taste)
1 tsp Palm Sugar (or light soft brown sugar)

1-2 tbsp fish sauce
1-2 tbsp soy sauce
1 lime, cut in half, read to squeeze

1 red pepper, sliced
1 small aubergine, cut into chunks

1 tin good quality coconut milk (NOT light)

Method

The ingredients above are grouped together, deliberately. Before I start cooking, I prep them all and put each group into a little bowl - bit of extra washing up, but it makes the actual cooking a lot simpler!

Heat a large sauce pan (or casserole dish) on a medium heat and add a good splash of olive oil. Soften the onions with the lid on, until they go translucent. Add your mix of ginger/garlic/chill/etc and give it a good stir, until fragrant (you'll suddenly notice the lovely smell - thats when you're ready to continue).

Add the meat and brown it off for a couple of minutes. Then add your tomato puree, cumin and chilli powder (if using), stir well, return the lid and leave for a few minutes.

Once the meat is more or less cooked through, add the 'wet' ingredients - fish sauce, soy sauce, squeezed lime juice (drop the limes in afterwards if you like, just remember to fish them out at the end), and add the vegetables. Stir well, replace lid, leave for approx 5 minutes to cook in.

Finally, add your coconut milk. If there isn't enough sauce, or it's too thick, add a little water - but not too much or it'll end up very runny. Stir well, leave for a few minutes to simmer and then taste and adjust.

If it's not hot enough, add chilli powder. If it needs salt, add a little fish sauce and soy. If it's too hot or salty, add a little more palm sugar and maybe a touch more tomato puree - you get the idea. Once you're happy, simmer for a couple of minutes and serve - you should be able to prepare this in about the time it takes a serving of nice brown rice to cook!

Homemade Tomato Ketchup - The Cottage Way!

A recent facebook poll about where ketchup should be kept (and a friend's comment that she hadn't had too much success with recipes) has prompted me to post mine. We love it - and it really doesn't take long to make (besides, it keeps for ages so you can do a large batch now and then). It's also the base for most barbeque sauces - although thats another topic altogether!

As with many of my favourite recipes, this one originally came from a book, but has been "tweaked" to our tastes - we found the original a bit too sweet, so we are in the process of refining it a batch at a time. The book is called 'The Preserving Book', by Lynda Brown (see Amazon link) and is brilliant - everything from ketchups, to pickles, to homemade cider, preserving fruit and veg and drying mushrooms or chillis. Well worth a go.

Ingredients (to make approx a pint)

1kg tomatoes, roughly chopped (get the best tomatoes you can - throw in a box of 'heritage' style tomatoes, a mixture of varieties, if you can.
1 carrot, 1 onion, 1 celery stick - all diced
A pinch of ground cloves
A bay leaf
2 blades of mace
1 tsp salt (sea salt for preference)
150-200ml red wine vinegar
20-30g (light) soft brown sugar

Method

Put everything except the sugar into a big saucepan - I use my largest stock pot as it has the biggest surface area, so it's easier to reduce sauces in. Boil it up, then reduce to a very low heat and simmer for 30 mins (lid on). Take the lid off and simmer for another 15 mins, stirring regularly. Use 150ml of vinegar initially, hold back 50ml for later.

Take out the mace and bay leaf (don't want any surprises later on!) and put the mixture through a blender to get a puree, then work it through a seive, back into a clean pan.

Add the sugar - 20g to start with - and bring the mixture to the boil. Give it 5 mins, or until it reaches a thick consistency (like double cream).

At this point I like to adjust - although it's hot, you get a very good idea of the flavour you've created. If it's not sweet enough, add more sugar - 5g at a time. If it's too sweet, add vinegar, a splash at a time - you may need to reduce for a minute or so if you add quite a bit. Add more salt if desired and you can even spice things up with black pepper (or sezchuan pepper), tabasco, worcestershire or any other favourite flavours.

Once you're happy with the taste, pour it out into jars or containers to cool and put it away - if you want to keep it in the cupboard, then decant into sterilized preserving jars and keep them sealed until ready to use. We just put ours straight into squeezy bottles (or old "shop bought" ketchup bottles), because it doesn't last long.

Will post about BBQ sauce soon - I normally make it straight after, as I can increase the ketchup quantity accordingly and avoid using bought-in sauces altogether.

Spicy Potato Rosti with Poached Egg

So. I'm not a big breakfast cook, really. I'm normally too hungry/tired/still asleep to do anything more than simple things (poaching an egg can be a challenge at times), however, I do like to have a proper meal in the mornings - a dilemma? Well, the answer is simple: Brunch.

A few days ago, we didn't have an awful lot of food in the house, but didn't want to go out shopping because we were just too hungry. A quick rummage around threw up a few (slightly old) "new" potatoes, a handful of spring onions, some chillis and garlic and eggs.

So! A few minutes with the cheese grater (could have used the food processor, but that would have made more washing up) and squeeze out the juice - and you've got shredded potato. Wrap it in some kitchen paper and then twirl it up in a kitchen towel to squeeze - the paper will soak up the juice so theres no mess.

Chop spring onions, chillis and garlic, mix with the potato and season with salt & pepper. Mix in a whole egg to bind, pack into lightly oiled rosti rings and fry in a pan - I normally use a mix of oil and butter in on a medium heat in order to get good colour without burning them (but still cooking all the way through).

Poach eggs when Rostis are almost done, and serve!

(If you've got some homemade ketchup or barbeque sauce to hand - recipes coming soon - it's a great addition).

Cajun Chicken - the verdict!

Success! Last night's Cajun Chicken dinner (which was quick-blogged from my phone prior to cooking), arose from the fact that I recently bought a new cookbook - composed entirely of barbeque style rubs, marinades and sauces (to be the subject of a separate post in a few days).

We were going to have Roast Chicken & Veg for dinner anyway, so we figured we'd find a spice rub to test out - and we settled on the Cajun one. I made about a cup of spice rub from various ingredients (including salt, pepper - white & black, paprika, thyme and bay leaves) and massaged it into the chicken - then let it stand for about 45 minutes.

After that, we popped it in our Remoska - an electric "oven" from the Czech Republic - and let it cook away for roughly an hour and a half. Remoskas cook from the top down, like a halogen oven - at a relatively low temperature, which if memory serves is around 170C. But because they're enclosed with only a little hole for steam to escape through, the meat doesn't dry out - making them fabulous for chicken, amongst other things.

Lovely - all in all a good result. And the juice that did escape was scooped up and poured back over the top, giving us lovely, juicy, spicy cajun chicken. And plenty of left-overs for a salad today!