Luscious Lemonade (with magic ingredients)

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There are many recipes that claim to be the ‘best ever lemonade’ or the ‘perfect  lemonade’. I don’t make those claims for mine. It does, however, contain two magic ingredients that get my oven cleaned...

How?

Well, I take my inspiration from the bit in Tom Sawyer where Tom gets the neighbourhood kids to happily whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence using a little reverse psychology. Ok, it’s more bribery than reverse psychology in this case but hey…

“Sigh,” I say to anyone within earshot...

“What’s up, Hester?”they say

“Well,” I say, “I was thinking of making a jug of my special lemonade... you know ... the one that tastes like summer…  the one with the magic ingredients… sigh”

“Yes! Yes! Great idea!” they say.

“... but unfortunately, I won’t have time... because the oven really needs cleaning.”

“Oh,” they say.  “I’ll clean the oven, Hester; and you make the lemonade!”

“Really, you don’t have to...” I say, handing them the spray, the gauntlets, the sponge, the bucket, the protective goggles ...

Ok, it's time for me to get on with the lemonade to supply the thirsty worker(s). Salt and star anise are the magic ingredients. You won't taste them but they round out the flavour.

*BEFORE STARTING: How many lemons you use will depend on how juicy they are. I used 6 lemons for this batch. To get 25g of lemon zest for the recipe, I chose two with the most blemish-free skin, scrubbed them in hot water to remove any wax, then used a potato peeler to remove the yellow part of the zest, and further trimmed the strips of peel with a sharp knife to carefully remove any bitter white skin clinging to it. It is much easier to remove the zest BEFORE you squeeze out the juice.

It's easier to remove the zest BEFORE you squeeze out the juice

To make about 500ml of lemonade cordial (2-3 litres, diluted), you will need...

25g lemon zest (prepared weight) yellow part only*

250g caster sugar

250mls freshly squeezed lemon juice, strained to remove any pips or pulp

250mls water

¼ teaspoon fine table salt

1 point of a whole star anise



Take a moment to enjoy the gorgeous aromas

 Method

Place the prepared lemon zest and the sugar in a food processor and blitz until the zest is finely chopped.

Place this mixture in a medium saucepan with the rest of the ingredients and heat gently until the sugar has dissolved.

Cover and leave to cool. Strain to remove the piece of star anise and any bits of zest and transfer to a sterilised bottle or jar. Sealed, it stores in the fridge for up to a month.

Serve over ice, diluted with still or sparkling water to taste. Cheers!

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Gremolata Supplì – Surprise !

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Supplì was apparently word-napped from the French surprise because of the morsels – sometimes meat, often cheese - concealed behind the crusty facade, in the depths of the creamy rice filling.

Many recipes tell you that Supplì are made from leftover risotto. No one has that much risotto left over unless they’ve deliberately planned it, or are extremely bad at judging portion size. Making the risotto fresh also means that you can experiment with flavours and ingredients you mightn’t necessarily want to have as a full meal but would happily scoff as a snack.

The bunch of parsley I threw into the shopping basket yesterday was like a green beacon reminding me that the price had inflated by an outrageous 125% in a week. Is there a world shortage of parsley? The bright side of such a price hike is that rather than let it sit there masquerading largely as an edible bouquet until I throw it out, I was determined to put it to good use. I love gremolata – lemon zest, garlic, parsley – sprinkled over Ossobuco. Surprise! Here it is as a star ingredient.

I made the Supplì fairly large – about 100g each – as they were for lunch – 2 per portion. If you are making them as a canapé go smaller.)

For 12 Supplì (of about 100g each) you will need...

...For the risotto

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

3 fat cloves of garlic, crushed

2 teaspoons of finely grated lemon zest (yellow part only)

250g risotto rice such as Arborio or Carnaroli

750mls hot chicken stock

250mls dry white wine

4 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley

50g Parmesan cheese 

Method

First heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan over a medium heat and add the onion. Cook without colouring until translucent—8–10 minutes.

Add the garlic and lemon zest, along with the rice and cook for a further minute, stirring to coat the rice with the oil.

Combine the stock and wine and add 250mls of this liquid to the pan, stirring frequently until the liquid is almost absorbed before adding the next 250mls of the liquid and again stirring frequently until almost absorbed. Repeat twice more until the entire litre of liquid is more or less absorbed and you have a creamy pot of rice. Remove from the heat and stir in the Parmesan cheese. Taste and add seasoning if necessary. Cover and allow to cool a little before placing in the fridge to chill thoroughly. 

To finish the Supplì

150g plain flour

3 eggs, beaten

200g fine breadcrumbs 

approximately 100g mozzarella, cut into 12 cubes of roughly 8g each

vegetable oil for deep frying (I use sunflower oil or olive oil) 

Method

Remove the chilled risotto from the fridge. Rinse your hands in cold water and shake off the excess moisture. Take about 2 tablespoons of the risotto at a time and, using your hands, mould it in your hands into a ball or egg shape. Bury a cube of mozzarella in the centre and close the rice around it to seal it in well. Chill for about 30 minutes before proceeding with the next step.

When the rice balls have chilled, set out three shallow containers with the flour in the first, the beaten egg in the second and the breadcrumbs in the third.

Supplì production line - flour, egg, breadcrumbs

 Coat each ball in flour, egg and breadcrumbs, making sure to cover the entire surface at each stage . (At this stage, you can freeze them on a tray and then wrap them for storage in the freezer, thawing before deep frying.) Chill for at least an hour before deep frying.

When ready to cook, heat the oil for deep frying to 180°C (350°F) and monitor the temperature during cooking. Any hotter than this and the Supplì will brown long before the cheese melts in the centre—not a complete disaster but isn’t melty mozzarella so much nicer... Carefully lower the Supplì into the hot fat being careful not to overcrowd the pan. You’ll need to cook them in batches. Fry until deep golden brown.

Transfer the cooked Supplì  to a warm dish lined with kitchen paper to absorb any excess fat and leave to cook for a couple of minutes before serving - with a homemade tomato sauce, or garlic mayonnaise if you so desire.

This is street food so forget the cutlery and break them in two with your hands, stretching the “telephone wires” of mozzarella between the two halves in time-honoured tradition.

  

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Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge – a delicious mistake !

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We all make mistakes. Hopefully, most of the time we learn from the experience, and we try not to make the same error again. However, sometimes a mistake is worth repeating.

I was aiming for smooth creamy fudge. Instead, I got crumbly Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge. In my book, ‘crumbly’ is not proper fudge. However, one of my taste testers - my lovely sister, Dee - sniffed out the jar of failed fudge I was saving to mix with ice cream and her reaction was: “Ommmfff! Mmmmmffffffff!  Ggggggggggnomnomnom.” – or words to that effect.

I think it must have been positive feedback because she agreed to taste-test the cheaty ice cream I made by mixing morsels of the fudge with softened vanilla ice cream and returning it to the freezer for days when I need a blood-sugar spike

For approximately 800g of slightly crumbly fudge you will need...

... a sugar thermometer  

500g caster sugar

150g condensed milk

150mls cold water

100g butter

½ teaspoon salt

100g smooth peanut butter

90g dark chocolate, broken into squares

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

 

I think I have a temperature...

 

1.      Place the first 5 ingredients in a large saucepan over a medium-low heat (I use a 2.5L pan for this amount). Melt together without stirring until the sugar has completely dissolved. Then turn up the heat to medium. The mixture needs to reach 238°F (soft ball) on the sugar thermometer, stirring occasionally to prevent the mixture ‘catching’ on the bottom of the pan and burning.  (Conventional fudge wisdom warns “DON’T STIR” ... as this can cause crystallisation... which leads to crumbly fudge. However, today I want crumbly fudge! )

2.      Once the soft ball stage has been reached, remove the pan from the heat. Without mixing them in, add the vanilla extract, peanut butter and chocolate. Leave the pan to cool for about 10 minutes and then beat (with a wooden spoon if you have lots of energy and elbow grease, or with electric beaters) until the mixture is very thick and loses its gloss.

4.      Transfer to a 20cm x 20cm tin, lined with cling film or parchment paper. Transfer to the fridge and leave to cool before cutting into squares.

Stored in an airtight container, or in the freezer, it will keep for up to 3 months and is outrageously good chopped into small pieces and stirred into good vanilla ice cream.

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Chicken Wings – Go on! You know you want to!

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Chicken Wings - every time I see them on a menu the naughty imp on my shoulder whispers "Order them... order them... go on... you know you want to!"

And I do want to... but the healthy imp - a paid-up member of the calorie police - on the other shoulder warns “Noooooooooo. They’ll be disguised with a varnish of BBQ paint and be flabby and disgusting underneath - definitely not WTC*."

I have been so abstemious of chicken wings that of course now I have the biggest craving for these savoury little morsels.

In order to sneak a chicken wing past the calorie police, it must:

·        have a tan worthy of Coco Chanel
·        be succulent, juicy and redolent of spice, with a little chilli kick
·        be simple to make
·        be *Worth The Calories

For simple, succulent, tanned chicken wings for 4 – 6 as a canapé or 2 greedy people as a starter you will need...

Approximately 850g chicken wings

400mls water

6 tablespoons dry white wine (or dry sherry)

4 tablespoons dark soy sauce

4 tablespoons dark brown sugar, or runny honey

4 fat cloves of garlic, crushed

4 teaspoons of grated fresh ginger

1 medium onion, roughly chopped

1 red chilli, roughly chopped (the ‘heat’ is up to you – I prefer medium-hot for this dish)

1 ½ teaspoons fine table salt

¼  teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼  teaspoon Chinese five spice

Sunflower oil for frying

1 thinly-sliced scallion (spring onion) to garnish
a little sea salt to taste

If you have never examined a chicken wing before, you might like to know that it is made up of three bits: the wing tip, the wing, and the drumette. The wing tip has hardly any meat, so, using a heavy knife or a poultry scissors, remove at the joint and discard (or freeze for stock-making later). Divide the rest of the wing into two pieces at the joint. Place in a medium saucepan, along with the remaining ingredients (except the oil, scallion and sea salt).

Bring to the boil, then simmer gently, uncovered, for 45 minutes. Immediately, remove the chicken pieces from the cooking liquid. Drain on kitchen paper to remove any moisture. When completely dry, transfer to the fridge until ready to finish cooking.

To finish, heat the sunflower oil in a wok or deep fat fryer to 180°C. If you don’t have a thermometer, this is when a 1cm cube of bread dropped in the oil takes about 10 seconds to turn golden brown. I use my wok, filling it to about 1/4 of its capacity, as I use the least amount of oil this way. (Obviously, a wok of boiling oil should not be left unattended for one moment). You could use your deep-fat fryer if you prefer.

Carefully place the cooked wing pieces in the hot oil and fry until dark golden brown, turning once during cooking – this should take between 1½ -  2 minutes. Transfer to a dish lined with kitchen paper to remove any excess oil. Remove the paper and serve immediately, scattered with the sliced spring onion, and sprinkled with a little sea salt if necessary. 

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Gnocchi with Mushrooms and Gorgonzola – and flaming cheeks !

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Upon a time, I had a favourite little restaurant. It did decent coffee and good homely Italian food at a reasonable price. It was the sort of place where you could eavesdrop on the most interesting of conversations, or chat to a complete stranger on the table next to you.

Its main attraction was its star waiter, a crazy, red-haired Roman with a big heart and an eagle eye who kept the place more or less shipshape. He was deeply and irrevocably a fan of The Blues Brothers. From time to time, he would get a little carried away, douse the lights and subject his alarmed (and captive) audience to a rather startling mime of I Can’t Turn You Loose.

I once spent 8 hours there – breakfast with one friend, a chance meeting that turned into lunch with another, and then finally dinner with my beloved – although I did go for a walk in between times to make room for my favourite of their dishes - Gnocchi with Mushrooms and Gorgonzola.

Unfortunately I’m too embarrassed to go there anymore. The eagle-eyed Roman was off duty that evening. And I know I shouldn’t have... but rather stupidly... I left my beloved unattended for a whole five minutes. (The Roman would have kept an eye on him...) When I returned, the restaurant was filled with smoke, and feathery ashes were settling on the clientele. He had managed to accidentally set his napkin on fire. He had quickly extinguished the flames, but while he was busy checking if anyone had actually noticed, he failed to notice the napkin had reignited and set the tablecloth ablaze.

This is my attempt to recreate the gnocchi dish - Blues Brothers soundtrack and inferno optional.

For lunch for 2, you will need...

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

300g ready-prepared potato gnocchi (a lazy dish, this)

150g fresh mushrooms, sliced

a fat clove of garlic, crushed

5 tablespoons cream

40g Gorgonzola cheese

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley
freshly ground black pepper

In a frying pan large enough to take the gnocchi in one layer, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil over a medium heat. Add the gnocchi and fry gently until a golden crust forms, turning occasionally.

Meanwhile, place the remaining olive oil in another pan over a medium heat and add the mushrooms. Cook for about 5 minutes, then add the crushed garlic. Cook for a further minute or so before adding the cream and the Gorgonzola, stirring as the cheese melts. When the Gorgonzola has completely melted, add the parsley and the now-golden gnocchi.

Serve immediately with a little freshly ground black pepper over the top. I find it doesn’t really need any salt - but maybe keep a fire extinguisher handy :)

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Broccoli, Blue Cheese and Walnut Pesto – You don’t know what you’re missing George!

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This dish was inspired by former President of the United States, George W Bush, who had this to say about a much maligned vegetable: “I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.” So there!

Well, George, I didn’t like broccoli either. I didn’t like it when I was a little kid and my mother grew it and made me eat it. While we could coax the cat to eat most things our finicky palates rejected, it could not be persuaded to hoover up our unwanted broccoli and so we had to suffer it. Now I’m a grown up, I actually love broccoli.

It takes mere minutes to turn what could be a so-so side dish into the main attraction. George, you don’t know what you are missing!

A delicious meal in minutes - hey pesto!

For 4 – 6 servings of pesto you will need...

125g broccoli, broken into florets

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

50g walnuts, toasted in a dry frying pan over a low heat

50g mild blue cheese such as Cashel Blue, or Bleu d'Auvergne

5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh chives

¼ tablespoon freshly ground black pepper 

1                    Cook the broccoli in boiling salted water for about 6 minutes until just tender. A knife should easily pierce the stems when cooked. Remove from the heat, drain and stir in the crushed garlic. Leave to cool.

2                    When the broccoli has cooled, place it in a food processor along with all the other ingredients. Process until you have a smooth, slightly grainy paste. And that’s it – hey pesto! (I haven't specified salt in the ingredient list as the cheese can be quite salty so taste the mixture and only add salt if necessary.) This will keep, covered, in the fridge for 3 or 4 days.

To serve, simply prepare tagliatelle or other pasta according to the instructions on the packet. When cooked, drain and return to the cooking pot along with 2 – 3 tablespoons of the pesto per person. Toss the pasta so that it is coated with the pesto. Serve immediately.

The End!

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Boeuf en Daube - that's French for 'Boozy Beef Stew'!

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Daube ... French for 'boozy stew'

In a restaurant one lazy Sunday lunchtime, I witnessed a completely unguarded moment. At another table, a man speared a piece of meat and brought it absently to his mouth – a mouth that was more interested in the conversation it was having, than the food it was about to taste. As the forkful disappeared into that disinterested mouth, there was an instant of stunned stillness on the guy’s face, a tentative chewing, a look of disbelief. There followed in quick succession: a roll of the eyes, a deep sigh of satisfaction, and an ecstatic flinging back of his head. I could almost hear the man’s taste buds shout “Yes! Yes! Oh, Yes!”

Who could resist? So, of course I said to the waiter “I’ll have what he’s having.”  It turned out to be beef cheeks in red wine.  Errrr… yum… Actually, while it was good, it wasn’t (in my view) worthy of a food orgasm. Stew rarely is. It’s more of a platonic sort of dish that hits you with a big warm friendly hug - even more so, if it has been simmered in red wine.

While hugs should always be served up fresh the moment they are ready, stew is often even better the next day - the flavours melding in a delicious alchemy.

 

I'll have what he's having...

For 4 – 6 people, you will need…

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1.25kg braising/stewing beef cut into thick chunks (I had 10 pieces in total, serving one or two per person depending on appetite)

5 fat cloves of garlic, peeled but left whole

2 onions, peeled and cut into wedges – leave the root intact so that the pieces hold together

4 carrots, peeled and cut into sizeable chunks

2 sticks of celery, peeled to removed stringy bits, then finely chopped

250g smoked bacon lardons

750ml red wine

1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes

3 bay leaves

a small bundle of thyme

the zest of half a lemon (yellow layer only) cut into thick ribbons using a potato peeler (tie the bay leaves, thyme and lemon zest into a little bundle with food grade cotton string to make retrieval easier)

2 handfuls of black olives, stones removed (from Provence if you can get them)

a pinch of sugar

a little finely chopped parsley to scatter over the top of the finished dish

Method

Heat the olive oil in a large flame proof casserole dish or a large saucepan and brown the chunks of beef all over, being careful to give them enough space otherwise they will steam rather than fry and you’ll lose out on quite a bit of flavour. Do this in batches if necessary. When the beef is browned, remove from the pan and set aside. Reduce the heat and add the garlic, onions, carrots, celery and lardons. Fry gently for about 5 minutes.

Now, add the rest of the ingredients (except the parsley). Turn up the heat until the liquid begins to bubble. Immediately lower the heat, cover and cook at a very gentle simmer for 3-and-a-half hours (remove the lid for the last half hour so that the sauce reduces a little). The meat, when finished, should be almost tender enough to cut with a spoon.

Taste and add salt and black pepper only if necessary.

Serve piping hot with the parsley scattered over.

For me, this stew is hearty enough to serve on its own with nothing more than decent bread to mop up the sauce. It is also really good with celeriac mash.

Dig in!

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