Apple, Date and Heather Honey cake

The call to cake is one that calls us all, well tonight it called me. Actually I just wanted something sweet and I couldn't be bothered to walk to the shop so I raided my cupboards to see what I could make a cake out of.

1 apple, a small amount of dates and some honey later I made a basic cake mix and added the recent discoveries.

I mixed the apples with the flour first because I'm sure I've read somewhere that it stops them sinking straight to the bottom of the cake, it seemed to work.

The resulting cake is a slightly dense, in a good way, with slight chewiness and the odd crunch from the apple. the honey provides lots of flavour considering it was only a tbsp. Make sure you get a skewer right in the middle to check the cake, i didn't and it was slightly undercooked. Apologies for the iffy pictures, I need a cake stand. 

Apple, Date and Heather Honey Cake
Ingredients
150g SR flour
150g butter
150g Light brown soft sugar
3 eggs
80g dates, pitted and roughly chopped
1 small apple
1 tbsp good quality honey

Cream the butter with the sugar until fluffy
Beat in the eggs, one at a time
Add the honey to the mix
Mix the apples with the flour then add then fold into the mixture
Fold into the dates
Pour into a greased/lined cake tin, I used a 18cm tin.
Bake for 40 -50 minutes until golden brown and a skewer can be inserted and removed clean.

Serve and Enjoy

A Duo of Tarts - A Random Recipe

Back to basics, this month over at Belleau Kitchen. Always unnerving when a Back to Basics challenge turns up from Dom, usually means he has something rather hellish lined up in the coming months.

Bit of a problem this month when it came to choosing a recipe book mainly because I'm chilling in Leeds, a good 80 miles away from my collection, so I'm stuck with the OH's tiny collection which consists of a few baking books and 2 savoury books. Fortunately, because I hate baking in other people's kitchens, River Cottage Veg was chosen, wahey.

I, as tradition dictates, flicked through and randomly stopped on page 216, a very tasty sounding tomato, thyme and goats cheese tart. The page also gave alternatives to the herbs and cheese so I made two, the one above plus a rosemary and parmasan tart.

Ingredients (per tart)
500g puff pastry
about 3- 4 big tomatoes
1 clove of garlic, finley diced
olive oil
100g of cheese, Parmasan/goats cheese
good handful of fresh herbs, Thyme/Rosemary
1 egg, beaten
Salt and black pepper.

Method
Roll out your puff pastry to slightly bigger of the length of your tray.
Trim the edges and keep to make a border.
Brush the edge of the pastry with the egg an lay the edges on top, brush again with egg.
Sprinkle the garlic over the pastry.
Layer the tomatoes over the pastry, overlap slightly.
Season with s+p and drizzle with a little oil
Bake in a preheated oven for about 15 minutes.
Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the herbs and cheese.
Place back in the oven for a further 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven.
Serve with a green salad and enjoy.

Verdict
Well you can't really go wrong with a recipe like that, easy to do and as long as you buy decent ingredients you can't really go wrong. My personal favourite was the goats cheese tart mainly because I found a rather stunning goats cheese, which is high praise because I'm not usually fussed about cheese, unfortunatly I forgot to get the name of it.

Jamie's 12 hour Rabbit Bolognese

There are hundreds of food programmes available to watch, chances are if I picked up the remote now it wouldn't take me long to find a food programme. The shows I watch I usually pay some attention to, maybe to pick up a new skill or technique, chances are I'll see a recipe that I will think to give a go but then promptly forget about it after it's finished.

However after watching Mr Oliver's excellent Great Britain series, one recipe lodged itself in the back of my head and didn't leave, his 12 hour rabbit bolognese.

The recipe is available here or I do recommend getting the book, it's only a fiver on the Book People website currently.

So then the recipe, well they don't get more easy or more fun than this one. Frying the bacon at the beginning is about all the cooking required. Everything is just shoved in a pot, veg are unprepped apart from a quick wash and chopped into half or thirds. The rabbit is dropped in, offal and all. Onion and garlic are dropped in whole and unpeeled. Then a lid is put on, it's put in the oven and left for 12 hours to slowly bubble away.

All the veg and rabbit

Just before the oven, 12 hours to go.

After 12 hours

After 12 hours then the fun begins, a pair of clean marigold are donned and everything is smooshed together and the little bones are picked out and removed. If you pick up the onion and squash it and the result doesn't raise the slightest smile then you need help.

The result is a vast pot of a rich meaty sauce, full of flavour and more than capable of feeding at least 10. It stated 14 people which I had doubts but the amount of meat that came off one rabbit is quite incredible.

Kedjenou, Ivory Coast. Olympic Food Challenge

So then, the final recipe in the allotted challenge time. I have managed 15 out of the 19 dishes (this was cooked yesterday) that I  planned to make. The remaining 4 will be blogged soon so I can complete the set and help contribute towards the 204 countries.
Technically I failed the challenge but life gets in the way unfortunately. The challenge itself was a stroke of madness/genius and over the course of it I have found some little beauties of dishes that I will be making again and I still have four yet to make and discover.

This dish is the one that started it all and it is one of the little beauties that make it all worth it, Our fearless leader Ewan Mitchell made this dish during the World Cup of 2010 and is credited with being the inspiration for this epic Olympic Challenge.

Read his blog about this dish here: Tonights Menu - Kedjenou

This dish is Kedjenou and it originates from the Ivory Coast, a member of the IOC since 1964 and have only two silvers in 1984 to celebrate, they achieved none in London but this is worth of Gold any day.

This is a one pot dish and excels in it simplicity. Chop every thing up, stick in a pot, put in an oven for 3 hours, eat.

Ingredients
4 whole chicken legs (leg and thigh)
1 Aubergine, peeled and diced

2 Tomatoes, seeded and chopped

2 Onions, thinly sliced

2 Hot chili peppers, chopped 

2 cloves of Garlic, minced

thumb sized piece of fresh Ginger, grated.

1 teaspoon of fresh thyme

1 Bay Leaf

Salt and pepper

Method

Preheat oven to 190C/325°F. 

Add all the ingredients to a large oven-proof pot with a tight-fitting lid. 

Cover the pot with one or two layers of tinfoil and place the lid on top of the foil.

Place the pot in the oven and bake for 2 to 3 hours. Remove the pot from the oven occasionally and shake it to keep the chicken from sticking.

Remove the pot from the oven. Let it rest for about 10 minutes
Serve with rice


Verdict
It really is that simple and holy mackerel does it pay for itself over and over. The vegetables break down and form a beautiful sauce. The chicken....well the chicken.....it melts. I picked up a leg and the meat fell off leaving the bone clean. Soft, juicy, tender, epic. Word of warning though pick your chillis carefully, I picked up some random red chillis which I suspect were Scotch Bonnets judging from the heat.....ouch.

Cocodas, Boliva, Olympic Food Challenge

Cocodas are basically coconut macaroons, no not those little fancy french meringue things, they are Macarons.

Cocodas also p*** me off.

According to my research there are hundreds of different recipes and some of them are shocking, such as the one for my first attempt. I spent a good half an hour hacking into and grating a coconut, (never doing this again since I discovered creamed coconut) before commencing with the recipe. The quantities were off by miles, the instructions were vague and it failed before it even got started.

Anyway, Attempt the Second. This recipe was infinitely more simple. Can I also just say at this point that whoever created the 'cup' measuring system is a moron. Anyway this recipe was a case of mix everything together and bake, well I did and they all melted together to form two large biscuits *sighs* but they did taste nice, sweet and coconutty.

Recipe here: Cocodas Recipe

Bolivia have been a member of the IOC since 1936 and have yet to win a medal, probably too busy making stupid recipes, yes I am still bitter.

Baklava, Turkey. Olympic Food Challenge.

 Back to Europe for this leg of the Olympic Food Challenge and we are visiting Turkey.

Turkey are faily consistant in the Game, usually winning a few of each colour, they have 5 to take home from London, 2 Gold.

I went an holiday to Turkey ages ago and what I vaguely remember of the food it was very good, lots of fish and grilled meats. However the recipe I first thought of for Turkey was Baklava, something I've never had and wanted to have a go making.

It is fairly simple to make, it's basically lots of layers of Filo pastry and liberal amounts of melted butter. somewhere in between those layers lies a layer of crushed walnut and pistachios, the whole thing is then drenched in a sugar syrup once cooked.

Ingredients

18 sheets ready-made filo pastry (unwrap and keep under a damp tea-towel until you are ready to use)

225g/8oz unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing

225g/8oz mixed pistachios and walnuts, roughly chopped

2 tbsp  sugar

1 tsp ground cardamom

350g caster sugar

300ml water

1 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp orange blossom water

Method
Layer 10 sheets of filo pastry onto a baking tray, butter each layer before adding the next.
Mix the nuts, sugar and cardamom together and place in a thin layer across the pastry.
Layer another 8 sheets on top of the nut layer, again buttering between each piece of filo.
Slash a criss cross shape into the top of the baklava before baking in a preheated oven at 180C for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes lower the temperature to 150C for another half until the Baklava is slightly puffed up and golden.
Leave to cool slightly.
Add the sugar, water, lemon juice and orange water into a ban and heat over a medium heat until the sugar melts and forms a syrup, takes about 20 minutes.
Pour the syrup into the slashes and leave to cool.
Cut into diamonds and serve.

Verdict
Very tasty, crisp sweet pastry compliment by the slightly chewy nut layer. very messy to eat as you can imagine with filo pastry, crumbles everywhere.

Gulai Daun Singkong Tumbuk, Brunei. Olympic Food Challenge

That's enough messing around in Africa and Europe for a bit, Time for the second Asian recipe of the Olympic Food Challenge.

Brunei, a sovereign state on the Island of Borneo in southeast Asia. A member of the IOC since 1984, they have no medals to their name and that doesn't look likely to change with only 3 athletes being sent to London.

This recipe is similar to one I had recently at a Thai restaurant and so was expecting much of the same.

Gulai Daun Singkong Tumbuk

Ingredients

Thumb sized piece fresh ginger, sliced

1 Onion, sliced

1 or 2 fresh, hot red -chilies, seeded, sliced

1/2 tsp Salt

1/4 tsp Sugar

1/4 tsp Turmeric

1 tin of Coconut milk

1 Whole red snapper or-similar fish, about 1 pound, gutted and cleaned.

small piece of galangal

2 Stalks lemon grass or two slices of lemon

1/4 lb Spinach or Swiss chard,-coarsely chopped

Method

Blend the ginger, onion, chili, salt, sugar, turmeric and 1/4 cup of the coconut milk into a smooth paste. Set aside

Grill fish over charcoal or in a gas or electric broiler for 2 minutes on each side.

Put the remaining coconut milk and the spice paste in a large skillet and bring to a boil over moderate heat. Add the galangal and lemon grass and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add the fish and greens, cook for 15 minutes basting occasionally. 

Verdict

Lovely creamy sauce with soft flaky fish. The sauce needed more heat, some more potent chillis would do the trick nicely. My only problem with this dish is cooking the fish whole, it's slightly irritating picking through bones to get to the fish. Next time I will probably fillet and cook that way.