I didn't think I was quite so tired or suffering but I slept pretty much until 1500h today - was dozing with Radio 4 on for most of that time. I unfortunately can't get BBC Devon & Cornwall signal in my bedroom so I'm trying Radio 4 for a bit - I don't think it's going to wake me up though - I need something more lively really. I've since been to Sainsbury's and procured the latest of the Hobbit trilogy on Blu-Ray as it was on offer today at a mere £12.99 which is pretty good and I got Nectar points on it and I had a coupon for bonus points too aaaaaand I got some free Lego with it and was very proud of my efforts putting together Legolas (one of my many nicknames) and some target-practice shit - I did it all by myself and did not need adult supervision not even once!
More cooking for the freezer today but at least I get to eat some if it for tonight's meal too! I've been messing with my chilli recipe for the last 15 years and this is by no means perfect but I like it. It's got some really strange ingredients in it but everyone who's tried it agrees that it somehow just works. It's evolved over time, of course, and if I'm making it properly, I would use 50:50 beef mince and pork mince or at the very least I would add a packet of hardons (lardons to anyone else) to the beef mince, but I didn't have any and can't justify spending more money on food this week. The spice-mix used is pretty much how I've always done it but my ex (and now good friend - as all ex's should really become) P told me about adding star anise a few years ago and that just somehow works too, hence it's in here. The can of coke and chocolate thing deserves a note of explanation - it really needs to be Coca-Cola of the original variety, none of that slimline muck. It can't be an own-brand kind either, as whatever Coca-Cola use in their "secret recipe", it's needed. I always use half of a normal sized can in this quantity of chilli - I don't think it would work as well out of a bottle as I'm convinced coke from a can tastes different (as does tonic water, as does everything else) - something to do with the pressure during storage, perhaps? The chocolate really does need to be cheap and nasty - something like Cadbury's Dairy Milk (half of a 45g bar) or (a quarter of a 51g bar) - not dark chocolate and certainly not that 100% cocoa-solids stuff - the sweetness of the cheaper stuff is what is needed. You can add a slosh of molasses, black treacle or maple syrup too - especially if you've overshot the runway re: the chilli content!
Dessert today is the first of my Finnish recipes for this week - part of my challenge to myself was to cook 2 meals from a given country in alternate weeks. This week the country is Finland and I'm actually going to cook three things as one of them uses egg yolks and the other uses egg whites and it seems silly to waste half of the eggs, so tomorrow I shall be using them both up. I'm using The Food and Cooking of Finland
by Anja Hill as my source book, with some modifications based on taste and things I found online.The almost unpronounceable Ahvenanmaan pannukakku translates fairly boringly to Åland Island pancake. The Åland Islands are an archipelago in the Gulf of Bothnia, between Sweden and Finland and, whilst Finnish, their population of over 28,000 people are all monolingual Swedish speakers. Apparently, the name means "The water-land islands" or similar, which is quite cute, I think. The Åland Islands have a very rich and complex history, but to be honest, I wasn't entirely aware of them until I found this recipe. Even though it's called a pancake, it's more like a hybrid of a rice-pudding and a Yorkshire pudding. This is really and truly, traditionally, made with semolina rather than rice, but I'm assured some Islanders do indeed use rice. Ideally, one should serve this with cloudberry jam, but as I'm not near to an IKEA and I've run out of the stuff, I'm using strawberry and wild-strawberry conserve. For those who don't know, a wild strawberry is to strawberry as the domestic dog is to the Iberian wolf - same genus, different species. Fragaria × ananassa Duchesne being the (hybrid) garden strawberry (aka "strawberry" - the bog standard one you would grow at home or buy in most supermarkets) and Fragaria vesca L. being the wild strawberry aka woodland strawberry. I never knew they were different species until a few years ago but they do work very well if cooked together - I tried to grow F. vesca L. a few years ago when I had a big garden in Coventry but it wasn't much of a success - so I've resorted to letting someone else do the work and buying them in conserve. I need to get back into jam-making really - T and I discussed this in depth yesterday as we're both avid jam-makers and picklers though I've lapsed recently, and he's a good excuse to get back into it - I love cooking but cooking on your own or for one person is bloody boring - having someone to share it with makes it more fun. My Maslin pan will need a dust-down!
Back to the pancake - Anya Hill's recipe
doesn't include vanilla or cardamon but every single recipe I found online did, so I've approximated the amounts and it tastes really nice and fragrant so I think I got it right! Considering I abhor English rice pudding, I really enjoyed this pannukakku - it's not like a rice pudding at all - it really does taste like a rice pancake! It reminds me a bit of tarte au riz, which I first experienced 15 years ago in Belgium and have never been able to make myself in spite of trying several times and failing miserably - but I think if this recipe were made with lemon zest and nutmeg in place of cardamon and vanilla, it would probably be almost there and could easily be baked inside of a blind-baked pastry case. Rosewater would be a good flavouring too - as would lavender.Chilli Con Carne
(Serves 6 but can be made to go further by adding more beans and vegetables)
1 tbsp olive oil
400g extra lean beef mince (ideally a 50:50 mix of beef and pork mince).
400g soffritto (or 100g diced onion, 50g diced celery and 50g diced carrot).
1 medium onion, diced (this is as well as the onion in the soffritto).
2 echalion shallots, cut into rings.
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and slammed under blade of a knife but not chopped or crushed.
1 yellow pepper, cut into chunks (I used a pointy one).
1 red pepper, cut into chunks (I used a pointy one).
2 medium courgettes, coined.
2 birdseye chillies, cut into small pieces, one de-seeded and de-pithed, one left as-is.
195g can of sweetcorn, drained and rinsed.
380g carton of red kidney beans, drained and rinsed.
400g can of cherry tomatoes.
8 whole cherry tomatoes (not important but I had some spare).
1 whole dried bayleaf.
Half a 45g bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk, shaved on the edge of a knife.
Half of a 330mL can of Coca-Cola.
1 Knorr "Rich Beef" Stock Pot (I hate these things - very high in salt - but I'm using them up).
1 vegetable stock cube (I used Kallo Very Low Salt).
2 tbsp tomato purée (I used cherry tomato and vegetable purée).
1/2 tsp cumin seeds.
1 tsp coriander seeds.
2 spokes of star anise.
1 cm cinnamon stick.
1 tsp peppercorns (I only ever use Bristol Blend myself but black will do).
Heat the olive oil in a deep saucepan over a medium heat and add the shallots, onions, soffritto and garlic. Cook for about 5 minutes until the onions are starting to soften, then add the mince, breaking it up into pieces.
Cook for another 5 minutes, ensuring the mince is really well mixed in (but don't attempt to 'brown' the mince) then add the peppers, courgette, chilli, beans, corn, whole tomatoes, both stocks and tomato purée then mix really well and finally add the can of tomatoes. Mix really well and heat until it starts to bubble. Meanwhile, grind the cumin, coriander, cinnamon and peppercorns into a rough powder and add to the pan with the star anise.
Pour in the Coca Cola and mix thoroughly and heat until any fizzing subsides. Put a lid on and simmer on a medium heat for 30 minutes then turn the heat down, add the bay leaf and simmer for another 30 minutes.
Finally add the chocolate and simmer for another 5 minutes before serving. If storing for the next day or freezing, it's best to fish out the bay leaf before it cools as it can make it taste bitter.
Ahvenanmaan Pannukakku
(Serves 4)
150mL water
50g round-grained rice (aka "pudding rice")
500mL 1% fat milk (I used UHT, as always)
2 eggs
50g golden caster sugar
90g plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cardamon pods
Put the water, rice and one cardamon pod in a small saucepan and heat over a medium heat until it boils, then turn the heat down and simmer with stirring until the water has been absorbed - this took me about 10 minutes but the recipe I was basing this on said it took 30 minutes.
Take the pan off of the heat and add 150mL of the milk, mix really well and simmer with stirring until the milk has been absorbed.
Set to one side and pre-heat the oven to 180°C (160°C for fan ovens). Whisk the eggs, sugar, flour, salt, vanilla extract and remaining cardamon and milk (350mL) using a stick-blender until you have a thin batter.
Pour this into the saucepan of rice and mix really well to suspend the rice reasonably evenly. Butter an appropriately sized, deep (it rises!), ovenproof dish and pour the mixture in, fishing out any large pieces of cardamon along the way!
Bake for 30 minutes until the pancake has set and the top has a golden texture. Leave to cool for 5 minutes and then serve with berry jams or fresh berries.
No comments:
Post a Comment