Slow Roast Leg of Lamb

Can you feel it people? It's only subtle currently but it's there. That little change in the air, the increase from single to double digits, the lack of that chill that burrows deep into your core. Yes, It's finally Spring.

After a winter that George R.R Martin would be proud of the signs are definitely there that the worst is over. The flowers will begin to bloom, bees will buzz and lambs will frollick happily in the fields well for a short time at least they will because they are very tasty, lamb not bees.

It's a fine meat is lamb, not my absolute favourite but in the top three after Beef (steeeeeak) and Venison. It can be used as a work of art with a rack of lamb in fine dining, form a hearty meal with slow cooked shanks or as part of Sunday dinner and many meals afterwards with a slow roast leg.

It is this latter I cooked a couple of weekends ago, fancying something different than the usual chicken and beef. I also wanted to have another go at slow cooking meat, Heston style such as the unbelievably amazing beef I cooked for Christmas dinner. Fortunately the bald headed genius didn't let me down with a recipe in Heston at Home for a slow roast leg of lamb with Anchovies, garlic and rosemary.

The recipe is a little bit more complicated than the beef but the extra stages in it are well worth carrying out. Blanching the garlic repeatedly in milk, takes away all the harshness and leaves a mellow little clove to do its job. The anchovies are a revelation, as it states int he book, the fishyness vanishes and leaves little salt explosions which are just superb. The meat...utterly amazing, soft, juicy, cuts like butter and practically melts in the mouth.

Slow Roasted Leg of Lamb
Ingredients
1 leg of lamb about 1.5 -2 kilos
3tbsp oil
6 cloves of garlic
400ml milk
12 anchovies in olive oil, drained and cut in half
3-4 sprigs of rosemary

Method
Get your oven nice and hot to 80C (not a typo).
Heat the oil in a large frying pan until smoking hot. sear and brown the lamb on all sides until golden brown. Remove and place in a roasting tray
Cover the garlic in a small saucepan with 100ml of milk and bring slowly to the boil, once it boils remove from the heat, rinse and drain the garlic with cold water. repeat 3 more times with the remainder of the milk.
Cut the garlic into slivers.
Using a very sharp knife cut slits into the lamb at regular intervals and stuff with an anchovy, rosemary leaves and a garlic sliver. 

Place the lamb into the oven until core temperature reaches 55 degrees Celsius, about 3 hours. We went to the pub during this time and over cooked by 10 degrees but it was still nice and pink so the choice is yours to the final temperature. Don't go much further though.
Wrap in foil for half n hour to rest then slice and serve with trimmings of your choice.

Enjoy

A Bouquet of Cupcakes

For the wedding cake, which you can read about here. I wanted a interesting way of presenting cupcakes that wasn't just the usual stands or just simply spread about on the table. Each of those methods I looked into required a lot of equipment. Cupcake stands are not cheap and are not easy to transport also with the numbers I had to make (150) buying fancy wrappers and cases and making decorations to make each cupcake look the same and look good would be far out of my budget. Therefore when a colleague of mine at the staff bake off made one similar and showed me how she did it, it was the answer to all the problems.

This type of presentation requires no fancy stands, the cupcake cases are not visible and decorations can be kept simple but they also look pretty good when finished.

Plus it's all very simple to do even though it looks quite complicated at first glance.

These recipes use the 'weigh your eggs' method as in whatever weight your eggs are when weighed in their shells then every other main ingredient uses that measurement.

Lemon/Chocolate cupcakes
Ingredients (makes around 50 mini cupcakes, scale up or down as required)
7 eggs (470g)
470g butter
470g SR flour
470g Caster Sugar
Zest of 4 large lemons or remove 50g of flour and replace with cocoa powder

Method
Weigh your eggs to get your measurements. Add all ingredients into a bowl and mix with an electric hand whisk until a smooth batter is formed. Pour gently into the cupcake cases and bake in a preheated oven at 160C for about 20 minutes or until the cupcakes are golden.

Butter Cream Icing
(Makes enough to cover about 70 cupcakes)
300g soft butter
1.050kg Icing sugar
150ml Milk

1 capful peppermint extract and 10g green colour paste or zest of 3 large lemons

Method
Mix the sugar with the butter until well combined then add the milk until the consistancy you want is formed, add a tbsp or two more if required.
Add the peppermint extract and green colour paste for a peppermint icing or add the lemon zest for a lemon icing.

Decoration
Simply roll out white and bottle green royal icing to the thickness of a pound and use a cutter to make as many butterflies and leaves that you like.

Assembly
Equipment
4 floral oasis balls
4 small bowls
toothpicks
cling film
2 piping bags and small star nozzles
Cling film the balls and place in the bowls.
To attach the cupcakes, stick a toothpick into the bottom of the cupcake and press into the foam ball, alternate with chocolate and lemon cupcakes around the ball and make sure there are no large gaps.
Fill an icing bag with the green icing then ice each chocolate cupcake from the inside out in a circle, finishing in the middle. This should give a rose look. Repeat with the lemon icing on each lemon cupcake. Do not try to decorate the cupcakes before attaching to the oasis ball.

May have made a mistake at the back. oops

Randomly place the butterflies and leaves around the bouquet and sprinkle with edible glitter if you like.

Enjoy

By some random coincidence. Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Kate at What Kate Baked are doing a cupcake themed Tea time treat challenge this month of which I will be submitting this as my entry.

Wedding Cake

On the 4th of April 2013, my good friends James and Laura finally tied the knot and became Husband and Wife on a freezing cold snowy day... bet that didn't come up when planning an April wedding. I had the great honour of being one of James's Groomsmen and signatory to the marriage. As you have already probably gathered I had the even greater honour of making the wedding cake.

 Laura sent me some guidance and suggestions to the cake she wanted but my general brief was: 2 tier plus 150 cupcakes in the colours of white and dark green, easy enough....

So the problems, 1. I'm untrained and my skill at sugar craft is very low, 2. I don't drive so it had to be transported on a train. 3. equipment, I don't have loads of sugar craft equipment to create intricate designs plus see point 1.

To combat these problems, I kept the actual cake very simple, with ribbons and simple icing. The decoration you see on the cake is bought because something of that intricacy is currently beyond me, maybe one day.

The cupcakes were another problem in how to decorate and present them, I spent several hours looking at fancy cases, wrappers and stands. Fortunately a solution came along from the staff bake off where one competitor made a large teacup with cupcakes made to look like a bunch of flowers.

So the final design of a simple two tier white cake with several small bouquets of cupcakes had been settled, the final cupcake flavours were; chocolate sponge with green mint buttercream icing and lemon sponge with lemon buttercream.

Now just the small matter of making, transporting and assembling to do.

The actual making was the easy part, two fruit cakes are simple enough just time consuming and because I have two 24 mini silicone cupcake trays, making 150 cupcakes took only a few hours from start to finish.

Transporting however is a different matter, two heavy fruit cakes, 150 cupcakes, 4 bowls of butter cream icing and 6 floral oasis balls plus usual stuff for a weekend away are a 'insert swearwords here' to transport, but with the two of us we got it down there.

Assembly was done at the venue, the cake was smoothed down and the floral spray attached, then 150 cupcakes were attached with toothpicks to four floral oasis balls then iced with the two icings, leaves and butterflies were attached and voila my first wedding cake was complete.

To the Bride and Groom. Cheers

Goat Curry - A Random Recipe

This month at Belleau Kitchen HQ, our task was to randomly select a recipe from cuttings, clippings and handwritten recipes that most people have stashed away somewhere. Bit of a problem this one for me as I don't tend to keep clippings and the like but a few weeks ago before this challenge was announced I bought a paper within which was a few recipes to do with goat and mutton which I decided to pull out and keep because I wanted to have a go at cooking with goat, so this is technically a bookmarked recipe....however....bare with me because I'm going to make this Random.

I rarely get a weekend to myself but by some coincidence I was free this certain Saturday so I decided to head into town to stock up with stuff from the market. Having spent a good ten minutes shopping, I randomly decided to go and have a well earned pint, unfortunately, by some random coincidence I had left my Kindle at home so I went to buy a paper to read with my beer which happened to be the very paper that held the recipe I am submitting for the Random Recipe Challenge.

Anyone buy that?

Anyway...Goat! a new ingredient for me so I was very intrigued to see what it was like.

First impressions are it is a tough cut with lots of annoying chunks of bone, I don't know if this is standard but this is how it came when I bought it. It definitely requires long slow cooking in order to release the tasty meat from the bone. I recommend if your goat comes with lots of bones that you cook the curry and leave it to cool completely, then remove the meat from the bones and sift through with your hands or a sieve to pick out the remaining tiny bits.
Being in a curry It was difficult to get a taste of the actual meat but it cooks very tenderly and is a very lean meat, it is very cheap as well with a kilo costing about £5 and there is easily 4 plus portions in this recipe.

Personally I can't see me cooking it again with goat I would probably substitute with beef cheeks for a lot less hassle.

Recipe for the goat curry plus a few mutton ones are available here.

Enjoy

Comic Relief Staff Bake Off

Baking is difficult at the best of times. Baking under a tight time limit, with people watching plus the added pressure of making something to win a competition is just slightly below the level of insane.

So it was with some trepidation that I suggested that for Comic Relief this year that ten staff members take part in a Staff Bake Off. Fortunately I work with some rather cool people, or possibly very stupid, who immediately signed up and began planning their bakes, well 9 out of the 10 did, the last person instead began to plot on how best to sabotage everybody else, her solution was to lick each and every bake afterwards.

Over the last month or so the 'friendly' competition escalated into all out warfare with psychological warfare being the preferred method. One baker, printed off a spectacular wedding cake off google images and spent the day convincing people she just whipped it up over the weekend.
Others brought in stuff they made and fed it to other contestants to psyche them out, whilst others had conversations with the sole intention to convince the other person they were doing it wrong, one quote I overheard was that you have to take the green off pistachios before you use them.

Worse than the actual kids some of them.

Anyhoo, competition day came round and bar some last minute sparring, all ten bakers got on with the job admirably and produced some outstanding bakes.

Me in my self elected role of Chief Judge and 3 other brave greedy volunteers sampled all ten bakes, it was a tough job, but hey someone had to do it and we came to a conclusion based on Style, Control, Damage and Aggression.

Before I present the top three bakes, here are the remaining 7 in no particular order;

Victoria Sponge

Lemon Surprise Cupcakes

Chocolate Birthday Cake

Smiley Cupcakes

Profiteroles with pistachio cream

Coca Cola Cake

Black Forest Cake

 While all spectacular bakes, they didn't come close to the following, I give you bake number three:

Lego Cake

Bake number two:

Rennie Mackintosh Chocolate Cake

 and finally, The Bake Off Champion 2013:

A Cup of Cupcakes

All in all, It was a great couple of hours and a very difficult judging session, all that cake is tiring to eat. We raised with donations and selling them to the kids over £130 for Comic Relief.

Purple Sprouting Broccoli with a Tahini Dressing

I like trying new food, who doesn't. Not just the actual food but new techniques or recipes, perhaps a new culture but usually it's just a case of what's that, what does it taste like and what do I do with it.

Currently in my fridge there is a kilo of goat meat waiting to be cooked due to that exact reason but more about that in a future post.
On my recent trips to my local market, which admittedly is not as good as some of the large city markets such as Leeds, Doncaster or at the top end of the scale Borough Market in London, it's produce is limited, like any market, to what its customer wants so it's a fairly standard affair,  I occasionally spot something I haven't tried, in this case it was a box of Purple Sprouting Broccoli (PSB).

I was even more intrigued to try it after reading the recipe suggestions in last weeks Guardian thanks to the ever reliable Hugh encouraging us to treat it with the same reverence as asparagus, well that sold me because I love asparagus and I'm currently counting down the days until that's in season.

I opted for the middle recipe in the above article because of the jar of tahini that's been sitting all alone in my cupboard. The recipe was delicious, the PSB still had a slight earthy sweetness which complemented well with the sour nuttiness of the dressing. It was very easy to cook, I don't have a griddle pan so had to make do with a frying pan but even without the char marks it was still very good. Will definitely be making this again alongside the recipe for PSB Rarebit I have just found in River Cottage Veg.

 

 

Clafoutis - A French Tea Time Treat

Bonjour, Mesdames et Messieurs.Tout est allé un peu français autour de ces pièces. 

The reason for this is twofold. Number one; I recently purchased a new French Brassiere cookbook by Michelin starred Daniel Galmiche and wanted to use it and two; Kate and Karen of What Kate Baked and Lavender and Lovage are doing a French themed tea time treat for their monthly challenge, a coincidence I'm more than happy to get behind.

Now say what you like about the French and most people generally do, usually in relation to a small squishy amphibian, but you cannot deny they do some good grub. Inventing fine dining or haute cuisine in the 18th century under La Varenne and Antonin Careme before being fine tuned by the Grand Master of fine dining, Georges Auguste Escoffier.
But, as well as all that fancy schmancy stuff, there is Brassiere cooking which is a lot simpler with local recipes, simple ingredients and techniques and most important of all, bags of flavour.

One of the classic French brassiere desserts is the Clafoutis. A simple dish of fruit, usually cherries surrounded and baked in a flan batter mixture before being served on its own or with fresh cream, C'est Magnifique.

This version uses raspberries and blueberries to symbolise the flags of both our fine countries and our mutual love of good food.....

Ok fine, there were blueberries and raspberries available at the market so I bought them, the other reason sounds better though.

Ingredients
125g Raspberries
125g Blueberries
zest of one lime/lemon
125g caster sugar
50g butter, half soft/half melted
85g plain flour
a pinch of salt
1 egg
1egg yolk
300ml full fat milk

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C (fan)
Put the berries into a bowl with the zest and 2 tbsp of the sugar and leave for 15 minutes.
Grease a large oven proof dish with the butter and sprinkle 3tbsp of the sugar around the dish, coating all sides.
Sift the flour and salt into a bowl. in another bowl whisk the egg, egg yolk and sugar together then slowly add to the flour and salt.
Incorporate into a smooth batter.
Slowly add the milk, stir until the batter resembles crepe batter then add the melted butter and mix until combined.
Spread the fruit on the base of the dish and pour over the batter.
Bake for around 25 minutes until the tip of a sharp knife can be removed clean.

Jouir