Apologies for being a bit quiet recently! I’ve had so much to do.
Here are some pictures of last night’s cupcakes from The Crimson Whip Burlesque Show to keep you entertained while I do some writing and update this more often!
cool britannia
my new recipe - mellow lemon
mr and mrs
how to eat a mr cupcake
Jamie Oliver seems to have been a bit quiet recently, which surely means there’s a new book due out any day now. I, for one, can’t wait. I love Jamie Oliver’s cooking, I love his recipes and I love his passion for feeding people. This recipe hails from his 30 minute meals collection and is one of those suppers that I have come to rely on for feeding a crowd. Not only is it super quick to cook but it looks impressive and tastes delicious.
The night I first made this, my friend Fiona had joined me for a midweek supper so I started some of it before she arrived and finished it off once we were sat at the kitchen table chatting. It definitely took less than 30 minutes and that included making a non-alcoholic cocktail. I think this would be a delicious supper for supper nights, although this was a wet, windy night in Liverpool, and has a wonderful collection of fresh and zesty ingredients. Also, it’s a good one for a late dash through the supermarket on the way home as it doesn’t require a trolleyful of ingredients.
I think the combination of the paprika and the dried oregano gives it a really smoky flavour. It almost tastes cajun or like a barbeque recipe. I used sweet paprika mostly, and one day used plain paprika, I recommend the sweet personally. It gives it more of a depth of flavour and a stronger contrast with the other ingredients.
The crushed potatoes and the creamed spinach make lovely side dishes and to eke it out further, and because I can’t resist those long sweet red peppers when I see them in the supermarket, I made some roasted red peppers drizzled with olive oil and basil and feta.
I’ve since made this for my housemate, who’s enjoyed it both hot and cold, a scouse builder and my mother and all have enjoyed it enormously. I does seem a great crowd pleaser.
Tray Baked Chicken with Crushed New Potatoes and Creamed Spinach
Enough for about 4
(Jamie breaks his up into complicated sections and this is my version of his recipe so I’m going to try to avoid the confusing sections!)
Sometimes you get a feeling that something you’ve cooked might be an utter disaster. I call it supper hell. This exact thing happened in our house last night. Feeling absolutely full of manflu, caught from my housemate who thinks he may have caught it from a sunbed – classy!, and really tired, I did one of those ‘I have a recipe in mind but I’m not sure what it entailed so I’ll stand around in the kitchen and bang some pans until I have something edible’ specialities.
However, and this is a big however, it wasn’t so bad! The sauces oozed a bit but given that it was a scraps from the fridge and cupboard kind of supper, it was actually alright. David said it tasted nice which I think says a lot for the presentation but let’s face it, presentation isn’t everything which is exactly why there isn’t a photo. However, I can tell you it looked a lot like lasagne, there were also white goat’s cheese bits, green lasagne verde and courgette bits, purple aubergine bits, red tomato bits and some brownish mozzerella and parmesan bits. It could be vegetarian but as I add pancetta to everything, it wasn’t. You could leave this out and perhaps more parmesan for saltiness or even more salt. I think it would be nice with some roasted pine nuts in and even some roasted red onion in the vegetable mix but it’s a nice supper. It actually didn’t take that long using ‘ready to cook’ lasagne sheets from the back of a deep dark cupboard.
Failing to have taken a picture, I give you this picture of some vegetables so you know the theme:
a bounty of vegetables
I am a bad child who, as an unfortunate result of temping, has not a penny to my name. I’m not complaining because payday is on its way but it does mean that my mother and I have had to postpone Mother’s Day to April which suits us because we like Spring flowers, easter eggs and roast lamb. So on this Mother’s Day, my mum is on her way to Herefordshire to visit her mother and I’m catching up on some reading. It’s a bit sad because I miss my mum but she’s always there, so I’m ok.
If, however, you’re lucky enough to see your mum today and spoil her rotten, then something homemade is too delightful for words. There are some beautiful bouquets of flowers out there and our Tesco around the corner has more boxes of chocolates than Belgium but for real, genuine squeals of delight, a homemade Mother’s day present is great.
I’ve made macarons before but always been a little disappointed by them. They were ok but they didn’t quite work and that was maddening. Then I found this recipe from the Great British Bake Off cookbook, they were made by Jason during the biscuits and tea time treats round and I remember thinking they looked wonderful at the time. Jason was one of my favourites, I hoped he might win. He seemed to be really quite innovative and technically able. But then I liked them all really! The recipe is really simple and straightforward, which is what appealed when I flicked through the book. It was also the first time I’ve made macarons and they’ve done the little puffy bottom thing!! Which is a real success in the macaron world. I think they look like something you could buy in Paris wrapped in tissue paper and beautiful ribbons, which is exactly what I would do if I were going to give them as a present. Sadly, they didn’t last that long!
Obviously, you can choose your own food colouring and filling so below is a guide. Jason makes them as mocktails which sounds delicious and might be nice for a baby shower recipe or perhaps ideas for hen nights.
Marvellous Macarons
Mother’s Day Macarons
the recipe makes 2o pairs
this is to make the pink ones, but you could replace the raspberries with lemon curd to make the yellow ones
for the macaron:
for the filling:
Love you Mum x x x
Spaghetti Carbonara is a funny old thing. People get into such a twist about whether you should add cream or mushrooms or even peas but I suppose you should make it the way that you enjoy it. Saying that, I do prefer the traditional recipe and I actually got this version of the recipe from Laurence Dallaglio, the English ruby player, who is Italian or definitely a bit Italian.
My father will be fuming that it’s not the recipe of a member of the Welsh rugby team, who are playing extremely well at the moment and I have extremely high hopes for the Grand Slam, but if the Welsh ruby team have a recipe for me, I’d be delighted to type it. Perhaps Welsh Rarebit or Cawl. Also if any fancy proposing, I’d be welcome to any offers…
I digress.
The name is derived from carbonaro (the Italian word for charcoal burner), some believe the dish was first made as a hearty meal for Italian charcoal workers. This gave rise to the term “coal miner’s spaghetti”, which is used to refer to spaghetti alla carbonara in parts of the United States. It has even been suggested that it was created by, or as a tribute to, the Carbonari (“charcoalmen”), a secret society prominent in the unification of Italy.
It was one of those suppers I tend to make on nights my housemate is going out and I want to curl up on the sofa with a bowl of something and a fork. It’s such a useful recipe as I always have eggs, pasta, parmesan, garlic, olive oil, some kind of bacon or pancetta and salt and pepper to hand and it’s so quick to make.
The original recipe uses guanciale which is very similar to pancetta but made from cured pig’s cheek, if you can find that and I imagine Waitrose may well stock it, that would be delicious but I use either smoked bacon or pancetta most often.
The real secret to carbonara is not to overcook the egg, the residual heat of the pasta should be sufficient to cook it and as soon as it gets too warm, it makes that eggy-omelettey texture. It should be creamy and silky instead. To stop the egg from overcooking, I like to whisk the egg in a bowl and add the hot pasta to the egg, stirring wildly for about a minute, rather than the egg to the hot pasta pan.
fusili as I was out of spaghetti
Spaghetti Carbonara
enough for a very hungry one
My best friend in the whole world is called Jackie and she is a bit fiendish. She can be rather scary if you don’t understand the intricacies of her personality and she can bloody terrifying even when you do. Saying that, she is the most loyal, most kind, most supportive and most brave person I know and she’s also a bloody hoot!
Why am I telling you all of this?
Well, Jackie doesn’t drink alcohol. She has drunk alcohol in the past, there are some fond memories of embracing various public bins in Oxford when we were teenagers but she soon realised that drinking wasn’t for her and since then it’s been tea and squash all the way which must mean she has the healthiest liver in the entire of Oxfordshire but also none of those horrendous embarrassing memories that crop up after a night out. She’s a lucky girl. Despite my many postings on fruit flavoured boozes, I also drink far less these days. Partly because I stopped drinking completely for a while and it’s rather dropped off my radar but also a year without alcohol left me as rather a lightweight and I’m prone to wobbling over after a small sherry. (Oh I do love a small sherry!)
With this in mind, and with a friend coming over for a midweek supper, I took to my development kitchen, that’s the small corner by the sink, where the herbs and the cheese grater lives, and I decided to flippantly create an exciting drink to go with our supper. I originally toyed with adding food colouring to water, whacking in a cocktail umbrella and calling it something fancy like ‘Moonlight Flit Over Fazakerley’ but then I saw that I had a brimming bag of blood oranges – which I would like to tell you are my new favourite fruit, like ever – and I thought ‘hang on a cotton picking second’ and so the mocktail was born.
Blood oranges are also in season which is good because we like things that are in season..
blood oranges
And I have named it ‘Jackie The Fiend’ after my dearest friend who no longer, and the world cries with relief, drinks and who deserves a mocktail named after her because she’s fabulous. Fiend because the colour of the blood oranges is slightly reminiscent of a vampire film. It’s not complex but I like it.
You could, of course, add vodka or gin to it but then it wouldn’t be a mocktail and that would defeat the point. It’s a bit like a tequila sunrise but 100 times nicer because tequila is the liquid equivalent of Satan and also because it tastes a million times fresher.
Jackie The Fiend
makes about 2 litres but you can keep topping up the lemonade for several more jugs without much dilution
It was also a great excuse to use my gorgeous bottle from Prince Charles’ Highgrove shop that my gorgeous mother bought me for my birthday last year.
fiendish
I like to think that I’m capable of making cupcakes in my sleep, certainly after the burlesque show last year, I found myself wandering into the kitchen and reaching for Daisy the KitchenmAid without knowing what I was doing. I’ve spoken about the trials and tribulations and resulting controversy caused by cupcakes before but I, for one, am a big fan.
Another result of the burlesque show last year is that I gathered a tribe of extremely loyal burlesque-dancing fans. I adore my extremely loyal burlesque dancing fans and last week, I was asked to bake a cake for a photoshoot for Daria D’Beauvoix in which she wanted to poison someone in a 1940′s housewife style. This something I thought I could identify with and reminded me a little of Julianne Moore in The Hours and I idolise Julianne Moore and on very rare and deluded occasions, think I look like her in a pinny.
The requirements were an enormous cupcake with red and silver and so I set to work, without realising that I would probably end up investing more time in it than I have anything else this year! Hannah very kindly gave me her spare giant cupcake mould, available from Lakeland amongst other places, the one I used is from Tesco and is silicon which worked quite well as I could peel it from the finished cake but I’m getting ahead of myself because the finished cake was a long way away. The silicon Tesco one was £10 when I was in there yesterday which seems quite bargainous!
I started with my usual cupcake recipe but realised that it just wasn’t suited to the length of time needed to ensure it was cooked the entire way through so I moved over to this recipe which is specifically designed for making giant cupcakes. It’s a labour of love and not something to make if you’ve only got a quick half hour. The Tesco mould comes with a nifty little contraption so that you can put a layer of buttercream in the middle but this didn’t work at all for me, it sort of exploded in the oven with cake appearing through the little holes in the contraption which probably means I over filled the mould but I think you’d be forgiven for leaving it off and just slicing the top of your cake and buttercreaming the two layers together. I used my usual buttercream icing recipe which failed to work on the first three attempts but it was during the freezing weather last week and I just couldn’t get the butter to soften properly. In the end, I whacked it in the oven for a minute which did the job.
Another reason I would recommend the Tesco mould is the red silicon base actually make a rather attractive cupcake case and I recommended that this be left on for this reason. The metal cases just don’t have the same effect and as far as I can make out, there aren’t cupcake cases available in a big enough size yet. I ended up wielding the icing with a palette knife as a piping bag proved just too unwieldy with such a large surface area (it was at this point that I broke down in cupcake induced weeping and self doubt) which is a shame because I wanted to use the blended white and red icing which creates an amazing effect. I added red polka dots of icing to the white buttercream and silver edible glitter at intervals between the polka dots, although this doesn’t show extremely well in the photos. My housemate wandered past and declared it beautiful so I stopped tweaking it and packaged it up in a bespoke dog collar to keep it from getting damaged, jumped in a taxi and delivered it to their house.
Below is a picture taken by TwistedPix photgraphy from the shoot, it’s a bit small but beautifully taken:
taken by TwistedPix photography
The Giant Cupcake
for the icing:
the cupcake in it's protective dog collar wrapping
On Sunday night, David, my housemate, and I went to the ‘farewell’ party for 3345, the bar that sits atop the extraordinarily famous Parr Street Studios in Liverpool.
3345 is/was owned by Tom and Carl who I am lucky to count amongst my friends and we also live on the same street which means the occasional blissful late night supper round their kitchen table with Tom on the music selection and Carl whipping up something wonderful. They’re very generous and kind people and they have decided after 10 years to move on to exciting new adventures. 3345 has that wonderful charm of feeling like your curled up in someone’s sitting room, someone very cool and creative, but cosy and full of friendly faces. Whatever it is that they move on to do, I’m certain it will be a great success and will be motivated by the things that formed the ethos of 3345, bonhomie, good hosting and spending time with fun and friendly people.
I had promised David meatballs for a couple of nights so we snuck off early for him to watch Being Human and for me to set about being a domestic goddess in the kitchen. I started by teaching David how to make this, in an effort to prove how easy it is to cook from scratch and how quick it can be, but he soon grew bored of my overuse of the word ’juncture’ and my impression of Delia, skipping about the kitchen and showing him how things should be done so he disappeared to watch television and I was left chained to the stove!
These meatballs, like many things I cook, are different every time. They could contain a multitude of different herbs and often contain sage and different flavourings. It’s one of those joyful recipes that mean you can use up a load of things that have been lurking about in the fridge. I made my own tomato sauce to serve them with but I cheated with the 3 minute fresh pasta, if you were to cook this on a week night, jarred sauce would be absolutely fine, in fact, I would applaud you.
Meatballs
Meatballs, Tomato Sauce and Linguine
meatballs:
tomato sauce
and some pasta
The other evening, we (Ant and I) were lucky enough to attend the first Brindisa Iberico Ham carving school at Salt House Tapas, which is probably my absolute favourite restaurant in Liverpool, well that and Puschka) hosted by the great staff at Salt House and by Mario Hiraldo Regalado, the Master Carver from Brindisa in London. Mario has been working for Brindisa for a couple of years but has been training for over 10 years in Iberico ham, he hails from the South West of Spain and there is nothing this man doesn’t know about spanish hams.
I love Serrano and Iberico ham but I didn’t know a huge amount about it. My uncle, Elias, who lives in Galicia cures his own and on our last trip to Spain, he emerged into the kitchen carrying a whole leg of ham from which he carved fine slices of perfect ham. I was hooked.
We sat down to a lovely table full of people keen to learn lots and try lots of ham! There were glasses of Cava and plates of those wonderful green bitter chillies, sugared beans, manchego and membrillo and olives. Ant and I were sitting next to a great couple who had actually married in Spain and spoke beautiful Spanish and we were very excited about our evening of learning more. We then had to sign a form in case we suffered extreme injury!
Mario began the evening by explaining the differences between Serrano and Iberico. Serrano is made from a white pig, the breed includes the Middle White which we use a lot of in this country, and Mario explained that this was why as a nation we prefer Serrano ham as it tastes closer to the pork that we’re used to. It’s cured for a minimum of 18 months and fed cereal. This is the main difference with Iberico ham which is cured for a minimum of 3 years and fed on a diet of acorns, worms and the delicious things found by them rooting around the woods in Dehesa and Extramadura.
There is quite clear difference in flavour, the Serrano is milder and sweeter, while the Iberico is gutsy, almost chestnutty which makes sense when you see, and taste, the acorns they eat. They’re nothing like our small and bitter acorns but nutty and rather sweet. The Iberico ham was the clear winner for me, which makes sense as it’s also the most expensive and I have cruelly expensive tastes. We tasted the ham with a chilled sherry which Mario explained would create the perfect heat in our mouths to melt the ham fat and create an even more wonderful flavour. He wasn’t wrong.
At this point, we split into two groups, one to taste wines and one to try carving our own ham. Mario explained that we should open our ham by the carving the babilla and to remove the fat which can taste acrid and has been sitting open to the elements for at least 3 years. Mario advised us to hold the ham by the clip holding the hoof and to carve in thin slices from the punta (by the hip) to the hoof. The skill being ensuring the ham is carved flat with no waves or ruts. Mario also taught us to carve around the hip bone to ensure we got the most from the ham and how to carve the sweet meat from by the ankle. It was then our turn to carve. Ant volunteered first and he did an excellent job of carving, which he should as he’s a chef! He did however sustain a slight injury which meant it was my turn!
Ant carving prior to the injury!
The Serrano ham was easier to carve, the meat was softer and smoother which makes sense as it’s more of a domestic pig. The Iberico wasn’t so easy to carve, the slices came out thicker. Mario said I was an excellent carver and offered me a job, alas I think he was being complimentary! I have to say I was impressed with my own carving, I’d have given myself a job!
After carving our ham and Mario wrapping it up for us to take home, we swapped with the other group to try a selection of wine with the chaps who supply the wines to Salt House. They had selected two white wines and two red wines and I made notes so I could remember what we had tasted.
A cooler climate means less alcohol, fewer legs on the inside of the glass and less sugar.
We also learned the differences between Crianza, 6 months in oak and a year in bottle, Reserva, 1 year oak and 1 year in bottle, and Gran Reserva, 1 year oak and 2 years in bottle.
It was such an interesting night and we felt that we learned lots about both ham and wines. Ant who is a reluctant red wine drinker found a wine he liked and Mario was such an excellent raconteur and speaker. We left with a goody bag containing our ham, some delicious almonds and olives, the recipe for our favourite croquettes and a voucher for our next trip to Salt House.
I would absolutely recommend the evening as a present or just for fun. They’re held in London but the next one in Liverpool is in May and I must admit, I’d go again. A wonderful night.
There is something in the world that means that cupcakes are looked down upon. For a while, they were fun and flirtatious and people would have swapped their grandmothers for some twirly and whirly confection or fought each other on the streets over the best buttercream. And now, they are as unfashionable as Juicy Couture tracksuits, although I do know some parts of Britain where those tracksuits reign supreme, and it makes me wonder what did the cupcake do wrong and why was it’s ascendence so brief.
I think this is in part due to the badness of cupcakes out their on cake shop shelves, all but very few cupcakes I’ve ever eaten, and that includes the most expensive out there, have been pretty bland, dry or miserable tasting. Then there’s the topping, the overexcitable swirl atop a cake is great if you like whipped icing or buttercream and if it’s brilliantly made but when it tastes like fluff and the butterflies made from sugar also taste of nothing, it’s not so fun. And this, I think, is the root cause of the public’s sudden shunning of cupcakes.
I, unlike the nation, am always slow on the uptake of what is ‘in’, for one reason, whatever is ‘in’ in London has yet to be invented in Liverpool, which isn’t at all saying Liverpool is backward, just London seems to streak ahead of us all in wild new trends like tea with bubbles in it (which actually looks quite cool). And so rather than liking cupcakes and now having no time for them, I used to dislike them intensely and having cracked what makes a great cupcake, I now like them very much. Not all of them, still not the dry ones or the ones with bad icing but good ones, bring them on!
And on this note, I also think some of the best cupcakes are the ones with the most simple looks but a good punchy flavour from the icing and so this is how this cupcake was born. Think of it as a kind of ‘Beach Barbie’ cupcake, one that wouldn’t look out of place sat next to a Playboy bunny or a real bunny or better yet, a Malteaster bunny (if you haven’t tried one, do!) This is a pretty simple recipe and isn’t my usual cupcake recipe but is a good quick one and so I’ve provided it for that reason. Also a freestanding mixer makes this the most horrendously simple thing in the world, if you don’t have one, an electric whisk will work brilliantly but you’ll just have to do more mixing. I’ve named my mixer after Daisy the Kitchen Maid in Downton Abbey, because I’m cool.
I would drink this with some kind of wicked and wild cocktail but a lemonade punch or a cup of lovely Earl Grey would work well too. I have an idea that these would be lovely for a hen party with gin and tonic macaroons and champagne cream scones.
cupcakes
Malibu and Coconut Cupcakes
for the cupcakes:
for the icing:
First, my golden rules of cupcakes, the butter must be soft, leave out of the fridge well in advance, the bowl should be large so you’re not struggling to stir your mix, the butter and sugar must be creamed and I’ve never heard of a cupcake that has gone wrong because it’s been creamed for too long, the whiter and fluffier, the better.
Blog at WordPress.com.
Theme: Esquire by Matthew Buchanan.
