Category Archives: RECIPES

Perfect Barbeque Pudding – Simply Grilled Peaches

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I’m not really a fan of the barbeque, especially the way we do them here in Britain; a little disposable jobbie from the garage forecourt and a few rather burnt sausages.

I’ve got a Weber kettle that gets used less than half a dozen times each year. Last night I gave in to my children. We had homemade burgers, blackened red peppers and some whole sweetcorns, just simply grilled. All was well.

Then, I wanted something for pudding. The grill was still warm, not the fierce heat from half an hour earlier – just a few glowing lumps. I could hold my hand over it, albeit a little uncomfortably. Grilled bananas are an obvious choice, but overrated I think. All that sweet gooey banana pulp reminding me of Elvis – unfortunately, the later version, with sideburns and jumpsuits.

Fortunately, there were some peaches in the fruit bowl. I cut them in half, removed the stone, and sprinkled just a pinch of sugar over the cut surfaces. After a quick but thorough scrape of the grill’s bars, I put them on cut side facing upwards, then after a minute or two turned them over. The result was some fantastic, warm, but not too hot, grilled peaches with just a tinge of char about them. We ate them with a spoonful of crème fraiche.

If I’d had some friends over, or had thought about it for more than twenty seconds before doing it, I’d have made a little sweetened wine sauce; just a reduction of white wine (flat or fizzy) with a scant spoonful of caster sugar and some vanilla seeds. The trick with such a sauce is not to make it too sweet – it’d be easy to over do it, ruining the subtle beauty and charm of the peach.

An excess of strawberries – it must be summer

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Ah, the height of a sunny summer, and it is, obviously, strawberry season. Strawberries are the one thing that my whole family can agree on – nobody complains. That, and so many shops doing their endless too-fa deals (two for the price of one) means we’re looking at strawberries for lunch and dinner, and breakfast and afternoon tea. I was going to do a definitive strawberry recipe, the single best thing you can do with them, something like that….but I think the real joy of them is that they are quick and best served relatively simply.

Wimbledon is synonymous with strawberries – I’ve never been, but I imagined that the price would be horrendous. A quick search on the web of truth and freedom revealed that Wimbledon sell approaching 100,000 strawberries every day. They are sold in punnets of at least ten, and cost in 2011 (last year), a surprisingly reasonable £2.50. I know that I’ve paid a lot more than that for far less agreeable food at very second-rate sporting events in the past. Wimbledon serve their strawberries plain as can be; just topped with cream and a little caster sugar on the side.

I tend to think that topping a strawberry means slicing the stalk, and sometimes the unripe white bit, straight off. Flush. Hulling brings to mind a more complex bit of knife work that involves inserting the point and twisting to remove the stalk. This leaves a little cone shaped indent. Either works just fine and they are interchangeable, depending on the ripeness of the fruit, except where you need the strawberries to stand upright – such as is the case with strawberry shortbread.

One quick cautionary tale on buying strawberries. I was walking past the fruit and veg stalls in Bury St Edmunds yesterday – not my usual shopping ground – and was inevitably excited by the vast quantities of beautiful fresh strawberries, cherries, peaches, and asparagus. All the stall holders were shouting out their prices. They were all doing deals “one-for one-fifty-two-fa-two-pound”, you know the routine. I wandered round and chose some fabulous looking ones from a charming ruddy faced gent dressed in tweed at the top towards the car park (I didn’t get his name). I chose a couple of punnets, handed him a couple of quid, he bagged them for me. The scoundrel must have swapped them for some almost completely rotten ones when he ducked down behind the stall. They were useless by the time I got them home, just forty minutes later. I was furious until tea time – the chickens ate well. The moral of this story is keep an eye on them, if they go out of sight, then check them before you walk off – or buy from your regular supplier.

So, in no particular order here is how my family loves to eat them:
1/ Chantilly Cream. Begin by stirring the seeds of one vanilla pod into a heaped tablespoon of caster sugar, this helps to properly disperse the seeds. Add just a little whipping cream – just to dissolve the sugar. Then pour in the rest of the 300ml pot and beat with a whisk until it is almost stiff. Serve in a bowl with plenty of freshly hulled strawberries. Not just delicious but cleverly avoids the problem of small children completely overdoing it when helping themselves to the sugar.

2/ Strawberry milkshake. My son’s favourite, and ideal for those slightly past their best strawberries – a too soft bruise can be simply removed. Combine a generous handful of vigorously trimmed strawberries, a generous scoop of vanilla ice-cream and half a glass of whole milk. Blitz with a whiz stick or in a food processor. It should be thick but pourable, if it’s too thick add more milk, if too thin then you’ll know for next time.

3/ Strawberry shortcake. Thin, crisp, shortbread biscuits with cream and strawberries on top – what’s not to like. Make some biscuits with your favourite shortbread recipe. The biscuits should be cut out to be at least 2½ or even 3 inches round – bigger than most biscuits. They should also be quite thin. I like to get a little arty with this. I put a biscuit on a plate, spread the biscuit with a little strawberry jam, then a generous blob of stiffly whipped cream in the middle of the biscuit, smooth it out so it’s flat. Now top the strawberries and halve or quarter them vertically, then arrange them standing upright (pointy tips to the sky) on the cream topped biscuit – they should be as tightly packed as possible. Finally, at the last minute, dust with a little icing sugar shaken through a small sieve.

4/ Strawberry sauce. If you are facing a glut of strawberries, and can’t stomach a full jam making session, then a quick cook up with some sugar will solve your problems. Add strawberries, an equal quantity of caster sugar and a splash of water to a large pan. Heat until bubbling and the strawberries have dissolved into a mush, then ladle into spotlessly clean jars. Keep it in the fridge and use in a week or two. I discovered the versatility of this when a vast batch of strawberry jam didn’t set. I used it all as strawberry sauce; simply poured over cheesecakes and almond tarts, to enrich Eton Mess (see below), or simply spooned over a bowl of plain vanilla ice-cream (essentially home-made strawberry-ripple).

5/ Eton Mess. Legendarily invented when a batch of meringues were accidentally broken in the kitchen at the eponymous school. I don’t know about the authenticity of the origins, but I did ask a friend went there if they ever ate it? “Yes, I suppose we did, but only very occasionally,” he replied. Make or buy some meringues, and break them into chunks. Mix together with whipped cream and trimmed strawberries. If you have some home made strawberry sauce (see above) then mix this through to enrich the mess. It should look like a car crashed into an iceberg, everything clearly identifiable but not yet homogenised. It also should not be made in advance, the meringue will go soft and soft meringue is utterly pointless.

6/ Stawberry Pavlova. Not a recipe, just a reminder, really. It’s the tidy, accomplished version of Eton Mess.

7/ Strawberry and Feta Salad. There was a time not so long ago when you couldn’t walk past a restaurant that wasn’t serving Watermelon and Feta Salad. This has a similar pleasant fruity-salty contrast. Nothing more than trimmed strawberries on a plate, artfully combined with some crumbled feta cheese. It’s a starter with a few herbs (mint and basil and dried oregano) throw in with it, and a little oil and balsamic dressing. Or, it’s a pudding and cheese course combined (hold back on the herbs – use just enough to make a tasty garnish) and just a little plain oil to make it glisten.

8/ Strawberry Jam. Surprisingly complicated to get it just right. I’ve found the one trick that really helps is to leave the strawberries trimmed and chopped overnight in the sugar – let them macerate. This seems to help them retain their shape when cooked. Beyond that, I can do no better than point you in the direction of Marguerite Patten’s The Basic Basics Jams, Preserves and Chutneys (published by Grub Street). The book is both encyclopaedic and authoritative.

9/ Breakfast. I’ll put them onto American pancakes with maple syrup, serve them atop yogurt and muesli, or my personal favourite is to make a little fruit salad, strawberries forming the mainstay. Add cubed or balled melons, grapes and maybe a little grapefruit or peeled apple. Orange juice makes a sauce.

10/ If you like to drink your strawberries, then put aside all those flavoured vodkas and strawberries soaked in Amaretto ideas. Just blitz some up and chill them. Then spoon into a glass and pour over some prosecco, stirring to fully dissolve. Every bit as good as the Bellinis in Harry’s Bar

11/ Chocolate Dipped Strawberries. As simple as it sounds. Melt your favourite dark chocolate in a double boiler (one with plenty of cocoa solids and a good crisp snap when you bite it). Then take strawberries at the very pinnacle of ripeness and holding onto the green stalky bit with pinched fingers dip it quickly into the chocolate. Place them carefully, so they don’t touch each other, onto tray covered with tin foil. When they’re all done put them into the fridge or a cool place to get the chocolate to reset. Serve after dinner at room temperature.

Quicker and Easier – Classic Coronation Chicken

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So Queenie’s been in the job for sixty years. Roll out the bunting, and have a picnic on the village green. Well that’s what we’ll be doing around here.
All those years ago for her coronation lunch in 1953, Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume of Le Cordon Bleu Cookery School in London came up with this original dish. It subtly reflected the fading Empire that the Queen had just inherited, our historical links with India (her mother had been the last Empress of India), but also looked forward to a brighter modern future. Then ten years ago at her golden anniversary celebratory lunch, she was, apparently, served a “Thai-scented” chicken curry – kind of inevitable, given that everyone was obsessed with lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves at the time. But what a vacuous gesture, what a pitifully ill-conceived, and ignorant nod to the past.

If you look at the original recipe (The Constance Spry Cookery Book, Grub Street) it has tomato puree, sautéed onions, tinned apricot halves, and red wine in the list of ingredients. All unusually and exotically complicated. You may be more familiar with Coronation Chicken from Marks & Spencer’s sandwiches. That’s a shame, you’re missing one of the 20th Century’s great British dishes.

Recipes evolve, but Queenie would still easily recognise this. I was astounded how, with a little care and attention, Coronation Chicken is a truly superb cold buffet-style centrepiece. It is deep and complex, quite far removed from the sickly slick of orange mayo-ed chicken that you find inside even a very good sandwich.

Use Mango Chutney instead of the Apricot Jam, if you prefer. The curry powder should be plain, bog-standard, common-or-garden, nothing-special-whatsoever-about-it curry powder. It will probably come in a little jar that just says “Curry Powder” on the label, and can be found hiding in amongst the herbs and spices. If you can’t find that, use a “Madras” curry powder.

It’s nice to buy fresh chickens and poach them, but if you have a butcher who cooks them fresh on the premises, then that can be a pretty useful alternative.
This recipe is an abridged, updated version of the one published in Five Fat Hens.

Ingredients
Enough to make the centrepiece for a buffet of eight

1 small onion, finely chopped – or a similar quantity of shallots
1 dessertspoon of “general purpose”/Madras-style curry powder
1 dessertspoon of passata, or thinned down tomato paste
2 glasses of good white wine
1 bay leaf
2 cooked chickens, each about 1.4-1.5kg
300g full fat mayonnaise
200ml whipping cream
3 big tablespoons of apricot conserve (best quality you can find), or sweet mango chutney
Roast flaked almonds and coriander, or plain watercress to garnish

Heat a little butter or oil in the frying pan, and add the very finely chopped onions or shallots – they must be finely chopped because they should almost disappear into the sauce. Sweat them down until completely translucent. Add the curry powder and fry that for a minute or two, add the passata, or thinned tomato paste, and let it catch a little on the bottom of the pan. It will turn from red to brown, this is important for both colour and flavour. Add the wine, bay leaf, a little salt and pepper and, if the wine is very dry, a pinch or two of ordinary white sugar. Bring it to the boil and keep it there for a minute, then turn it down to a simmer and reduce it to a thin syrup consistency – five or ten minutes should do. Let it cool completely.

In a roomy bowl, beat the whipping cream to soft peaks. In another bowl mix the mayonnaise, apricot jam and cold reduced curry sauce together. Fold this syrupy jammy, curried mayo into the stiffened whipping cream to create the finished sauce.
Pull the cooked chickens apart. You can discard the skin, keeping the bones for stock. Cut the pieces of meat into bites size chunks. Put a little of the sauce, which should have the consistency of fairly thick cream, to one side. Toss the chicken in the remaining sauce and taste it. Add a little seasoning if it needs it.

Put all the saucy chicken onto a serving plate, or into a bowl. Spoon the remaining sauce over the top, and cover with cling film until ready to eat. At the last minute, I like to fling plenty of roasted flaked almonds over the top (leave this until the last minute, or they’ll go soggy) and sprinkle, a little less generously, with roughly chopped coriander. Staunch traditionalists would garnish with a bunch or two of watercress.